Profile shot of Rumann Alam
David A. Land
“It’s very, very hard to resist seeing things in dollar value. In fact, I would argue, and I think the book argues this, it is almost impossible.”
Bestselling author Rumaan Alam is happy to promote his new novel Entitlement (September 17). “I spend all of my time in this room hunched over this very computer, it’s nice to have an opportunity to exist outside of that.” After the massive success of his last book, Leave the World Behind, Alam is now focusing on money. “We valorized the rich, and by the same token, one must logically admit that we disregard the poor.” Entitlement follows Brooke as she navigates the world of the megarich. “You can’t help engaging or understanding yourself and your accomplishments in American life via money.” Set in the not-too-distant past, the novel says a lot about where we are now and how we got here. “[Michael] Bloomberg as mayor was a fascinating cultural turn. It was the point at which we accepted if you are rich, maybe you know how to do something better. Which is obviously, on the face of it, ridiculous…the end result of that is Donald Trump. Somebody who is not gifted at anything, but feels like he presents himself like he is by virtue of his wealth.”
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Editor’s Note: This conversation has been edited and condensed for publication.
How does it feel to have a book coming out that people are genuinely excited to read?
Well, I wouldn’t know, because I refuse to allow myself to believe that. There are two muscles that are so important in this, one is the writing and one is the publishing. And, in a way, one has nothing to do with the other. Maybe muscle is not a good metaphor, because muscles all work cohesively. But I do think they’re like two separate endeavors. And the moment that I’m in now, which is about publishing rather than writing, I hold it at some distance for myself, because I just think you’re better off doing that. There’s an imperative to be able to have a conversation like what I’m having with you, or just to be able to talk to booksellers or bookstore audiences, about what you’ve done. But I have to remember that as distinct from what the real job is, this part is just the fun part and the public, outside part. And I think it’s good. I think it’s useful to have this experience every couple of years when you’re publishing a book. I spend all of my time here in this room hunched over this very computer, it’s nice to have an opportunity to exist outside of that, but that’s a different person. It’s a different thing that’s happening to a different part of my psyche. I try not to think too much about the theoretical readers, which I certainly don’t take any of that stuff for granted, because publishing a book is competitive.
What inspired you to write Entitlement?
It’s a book about money. That’s a subject that’s always interested me as a reader. It’s a subject that has always seemed very rich to me as a writer, and it’s a subject that, as a middle-class person, which is what the book is arguing, you can’t help engaging with it. You can’t help engaging or understanding yourself and your accomplishments in American life via money. And you can feel, at its extreme, like a loser if you don’t own a home, for example. Even though you’re participating in and in some ways victim to an economic system that is so different from the one that our grandparents would have lived under, in which homeownership is really a nebulous and vague promise for most of our peers, right? So you are caught in these contradictions, and even though, like most normal people, I think would say, “Oh, money can’t buy happiness.” “Money doesn’t matter,” all of these things. You also have to acknowledge that that’s not really true, and that money can buy happiness, it can preserve health, it can provide access to education, can provide opportunity, and those are things that are profoundly enriching and make you really happy. So what are you supposed to do with that particular disconnect? With that particular dissonance? How do you go forward? We valorized the rich in this society, and by the same token, one must logically admit that we disregard the poor and that there is some moral value. You live in Los Angeles, I live in New York, there’s no shortage of people in real crisis, real deprivation on the streets. You look at those people, like most normal people, you do not walk around thinking these people are garbage, these people are trash, whatever. That’s not what you think. At the same time, there is some message inside of you that is, these people have not worked hard, have squandered some opportunity, they are ill, whatever, all of which may be true, but is a whole other idea apart from what I’m describing, which is that money has assumed this role as value. It’s very, very hard to resist seeing things in dollar value. In fact, I would argue, and I think the book argues this, it is almost impossible.
What about this time period really inspired you?
First of all, I got to avoid writing about the pandemic or Trump, which are subjects I was not interested in exploring. But when you write about the recent past, what it does is, it feels legible to you, right? Like you were like, I was in New York at that time. I know what songs were on the radio. I know what I cared about. I know what was interesting, and you know how the story concludes, or you know what happens next in the timeline of the book. But they [the characters] don’t know what is coming. And that tension adds something, I think, to the reading experience. I wanted to write a pre-pandemic book in part because I wanted to write about this New York that I am now nostalgic for, in which there were lots of people on the subway in the morning, or you could go to a restaurant [at any time]. Restaurants close really early now, it’s really weird. I remember an experience in New York City where you could just go to a restaurant and get a table at 10 or 11. That’s no longer the case. You almost have to have a reservation. You kind of have to go at seven or eight, which is fine. I’m an old man, I like to eat dinner at seven o’clock, but sometimes you go to a play and you get out of the play and you’re like, “It’s 11 p.m. let’s go to dinner.” And it’s very weird to be in New York City like, “Wow, there’s nothing open. There’s nowhere to go.” It’s a bummer. So I was sort of trying to capture that New York.
The economy is also part of it during this time period, around Occupy Wall Street, the economic crash, etc. I think that’s going to be relatable to a lot of people out of New York City.
In retrospect, I think that Bloomberg as mayor was a fascinating cultural turn. It was the point at which we accepted, the electorate seemed to accept, the mass seemed to accept that if you are rich, maybe you know how to do something better, right? Which is obviously, on the face of it, ridiculous. Bloomberg, he knew how to run an organization, so he ran New York City like an organization. You have to give him that he was self-made, whatever we mean by self-made. He wasn’t really, no one is, but anyway, the end result of that is Donald Trump. Somebody who is not gifted at anything, but feels like he presents himself like he is by virtue of his wealth. Or Elon Musk, similar thing. Elon Musk is not like some great inventor, he’s an acquirer of companies. It’s all like based on happenstance. But I mean, he has people who passionately care about him because he’s rich, which is not a personality trait. It’s not anything. It’s not really something to admire. But we, culturally, we do valorize the very rich, we really do. And it’s kind of strange. I’m trying to think of all the billionaires I like, and none of them are that interesting.
Is Martha Stewart a billionaire? I think she’s great.
Yeah, I like Martha Stewart. I like Oprah [Winfrey]. Oprah’s a good one. But actually, Martha and Oprah are both interesting counters to what I’m describing. Both women, one must notice, who took a very personal thing and spun it into money, and their femininity and Oprah’s Blackness are an essential part of their approach to the discharge of their power. Which is not salient for Michael Bloomberg and not really salient for the billionaire in my novel.
How much of yourself do you add to characters in your work?
I am not the person to ask that question. You should really ask my husband. When he reads my work, he’s always says, “Oh, this is just you.” He says that of all the people, everyone in the book is just me. And that is interesting, because it’s probably true, because that’s the tool you have, the self, right? I’m not a Black woman [like the protagonist in his novel], so she’s not me in a literal sense, and also she’s not real. So of course, she’s not me, but a lot of what she describes thinking and feeling is stuff that feels familiar to me. I’m not crazy, and there’s a question in the book about her psychic stability. She has an experience where she gets provoked by somebody’s dog. I’m often provoked by people’s dogs. I was at the beach on Tuesday—beautiful, quiet day at the beach, only me and my husband, and this woman’s gigantic wet dog ran onto our blanket. And she was just like, “Oh, he’s friendly.” And I was like, “Get it the f**k away from me. What are you talking about? I don’t care if he’s friendly. He could be Snoopy, I don’t want him on my stuff. Like, what’s the matter with you?” I didn’t attack this woman, but still. I think you cannot help endow people on a page with things that you’re interested in, or things that you do, or things that you say, or things that feel familiar to you. I can’t help it anyway.
What do you read while you’re working?
When I was writing my first book, I was really afraid of being too closely influenced, so I didn’t read anything for the period in which I was really intensely writing the book, and that made me feel really weird, because I’m such a reader. I felt so untethered from everything. I think now I kind of understand the impulses as distinct. Of course, what I’m reading is the fuel and engine, right? And so I can’t help but in turn to some extent metabolizing what I’m reading, and that works effect on the finished book that I happen to be writing is hard to say, but I no longer worry too much about it. So I just read. I read a fair amount of stuff that I might be reviewing. I read a fair amount of stuff that I might be reading to blurb or as a favor to a friend, or because I’ve traded work with a friend. So I read in that way, yeah. But then I also just read for kicks. I read a lot of Phillip Roth the summer I was writing this book.
I mean, I can’t imagine not reading. It’s my default. It’s just what I do. I get angry when I can’t or feel like I’m not reading enough.
What I’m always in pursuit of as a reader is a fiction that takes me out of the self. I spent all day being myself, and then I get into bed at night and then I’m inside of something else. That’s almost like a magic trick to me. I can’t believe that books can do that. And that’s what I want in a book. I always tell my kids, bring a book. Get a book. You’re gonna be bored at this party, bring a book. I have so many memories of being utterly bored out of my skull as a child. And then I just would have a book. And it’s like it didn’t matter. My parents would take me to some stupid party, and I would sit in the car and read my book.
Your last book was huge. It was even made into a movie. Does that add any pressure to this book?
I should probably feel more panic than I do, but it’s not profitable to think about it. It’s so unlikely that I will be able to replicate that particular experience, that particular success, and in some ways that should not be my ambition. And it’s not my ambition. That was a thing that happened to that one specific book, and it’s incredible that it happened, and it’s incredible that Sam Esmail wanted to make a movie. It’s incredible that he actually got the movie made. It’s incredible that the movie is good. It’s incredible that Julia Roberts is in it. It’s incredible that Mahershala Ali is in it. All of these things are very, very hard to believe, and all of them are completely outside of my control. All I can do is appreciate that that’s what happened, and know that that’s not what’s going to happen with this book. It’s just not, it’s not like that. It isn’t like that for most people, I suppose, even Julia Roberts herself, right? Like she could make a movie that makes hundreds of millions of dollars, makes another one, wins an Oscar, makes another one, and then makes one that is more minor. You can’t operate at that level at all times, and you shouldn’t actually aspire to because ultimately, it’s the work that suffers if you’re always living in this high. I should probably feel more stressed, but I’m just gonna choose not to.
What are you reading now that you’re loving?
First of all, no one’s ever gonna run out of things to read. And no one, in my opinion, should feel embarrassed or abashed about things that they haven’t read. There’s just like a such a huge list of classics that no one can really say they’ve read them all. And so I’ve been sort of enjoying reading into the canon and reminding myself that the books when you’re 15 that you’re assigned to read, or whatever, that you think are boring or dry or 100 years old and have nothing to hold, I’ve been enjoying discovering the extent to which that’s not true. That a book like East of Eden, which I read earlier this summer, which is a century old, has a lot to say even now, which is why it is a classic. And to find that is so surprising. And so I’ve had a really weirdly fun time reading the classics, which is such a weird answer, and also sort of a troubling answer, because then what you’re doing is reading a lot of books by white guys. Because, they got to decide what the classics were going to be, and that’s what they decided. But so I read a book by Sinclair Lewis, American Nobel laureate. Nobody really, I don’t think, really talks about Sinclair Lewis at all anymore, but he wrote this book called Main Street that was his big, big book. Big commercial hit. And it’s a big fat book, and it is so good, oh, and so funny. A really funny book about the collision between idealism and reality, and between the collision of liberalism and reality. It’s a really funny book about America. And the way reading is taught, or the way it was taught, at least when I was in high school, would have done a disservice by you. The teachers are asking you to read like, Thomas Hardy or Willa Cather, and you’re 15, and you’re like, I just want to make out with a boy. I don’t want to read this boring book about covered wagons or whatever. It’s only when you’re older, I think, or have more of a grounding and reading that you’re able to understand that Thomas Hardy or Willa Cather or Sinclair Lewis can talk to you across the distance of a century. And so I would say surprise yourself by rereading something you were forced to read in high school that you thought you hated.
About the writer
A writer/comedian based in Los Angeles. Host of the weekly podcast Parting Shot with H. Alan Scott, every week H. Alan is joined by a different celebrity. Past guests include Tom Hanks, Keke Palmer, Melissa McCarthy, Michelle Yeoh, Jeff Probst, Tiffany Haddish, Jamie Lee Curtis, Idris Elba, Bette Midler, and many more. He also writes the Parting Shot portion of the magazine, the iconic last page of every issue. Subscribe to H. Alan’s For the Culture newsletter, everything you need to know in pop culture delivered to your inbox every Tuesday and Thursday. H. Alan has previously appeared on The Jimmy Kimmel Show, Ellen, CNN, MTV, and has published work in Esquire, OUT Magazine and VICE. Follow him @HAlanScott.
A writer/comedian based in Los Angeles. Host of the weekly podcast Parting Shot with H. Alan Scott, …
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