Ursinus Magazine: What’s the last book you read (for fun, not for work)?

Talia Argondezzi: As an English professor, I don’t know if any books count as “not for work,” but I just read Why Did I Get a B? And Other Mysteries We’re Discussing in the Faculty Lounge by Shannon Reed, a collection of memoir essays and short satire pieces about being a teacher in both K-12 and college settings. I read it as research about how humor writers extend their satire to book length. It was excellent!

Ursinus Magazine: You described your book as “a satirical push-back against runaway hustle culture.” Do people take themselves too seriously nowadays? What value do you see in “leaning out?”

Talia Argondezzi: To be honest, taking yourself seriously is exactly what I encourage in my book. We (everyone, but especially women) spend so much time and energy making sure we’re fulfilling everyone else’s expectations that we forget to ask ourselves how we actually want to spend that time and energy. I’m guilty of it myself: Some weeks I’ll wake up in the morning, get everyone ready for school, spend all day at work; then go home, cook dinner, clean the house, check work email again, and grade papers or lesson plan, or respond to emails, until I fall asleep, only to do it all over again the next day. It’s no way to live. Leaning out doesn’t (necessarily) mean giving up or doing nothing; it means accepting imperfection in the aspects of your life that don’t give you meaning or fulfillment. The idea of the self-help book Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg comes from a good place: If we want a better society, we need more women in leadership positions, and if we want women in leadership positions, we need women to be brave and strong and assertive in the workplace. My book questions the idea that the burden should be on women to hustle this better society into existence, at the expense of their own joy. But really, this makes my book sound more serious than it actually is—a humorous book of advice. At its core, it’s a bunch of jokes about how it’s okay for your house to be messy.

Ursinus Magazine: What makes an effective piece of satire?

Talia Argondezzi: The best satire writers take a ridicule-worthy aspect of the human experience and turn up the volume on it, just a little bit, so that we can see how silly it is, or sometimes, in the case of satire about flawed institutions, how reprehensible it is. Satire has the ability to defamiliarize our own experience through exaggeration, then hand back its recognizable flaws in a funny package. When I see good satire in fiction, it’s usually small satirical moments embedded in a more dramatic or tragic narrative, and I love Lorrie Moore, Miranda July, Sam Lipsyte, and Elif Batuman for that satire-withinserious brilliance. I also love short satire of the sort you read in McSweeney’s and The New Yorker’s “Shouts.”

Ursinus Magazine: What makes you laugh?

Talia Argondezzi: The authors and websites mentioned above, of course. My kids and spouse are an endless source of hilarity. I also love tv comedies, which have gotten so funny I hesitate to call them “sitcoms” because that label evokes that formulaic laugh-track comedy of yesteryear. Recently I’ve enjoyed Girls5Eva, Broad City, Only Murders in the Building, Killing It, Insecure, Fleabag, and Catastrophe. I probably laugh the most, on a daily basis, around the lunch table with my colleagues in the English and history departments on the third floor of Olin Hall.

Ursinus Magazine: What do you find rewarding about working with students and colleagues at the Center for Writing and Speaking?

Talia Argondezzi: My favorite moments are with students who claim they are “bad writers.” We find they’re not so bad after all. The so-called “badness” is rarely lack of skill, but it comes from lack of engagement with the material, lack of understanding of the conventions of the genre, or fear of criticism (from self or others). Students are often surprised to find out that people who are considered “good writers” almost always write terrible first drafts and then keep revising until it’s good.

Ursinus Magazine: Do you have any advice for overcoming writer’s block? What do you like to do to find inspiration for what you write, whether it’s satire or not?

Talia Argondezzi: Overcoming writer’s block requires faith that even if what you write down at first isn’t good, you can write your way to something better. People experience writer’s block because they don’t think their ideas are worth writing down. Try writing “I don’t have any ideas. The closest thing I have to an idea at this moment is…” and see where it takes you. I’m a fan of freewriting—setting a timer and writing continuously until the timer goes off, with no concern about quality. Writing satire has become a reflex for me, so I see and hear a hundred funny things a day. I fill my notes app with first lines and titles and topic ideas. What holds me back from writing is time: I need to make appointments with myself to write, or else I’ll let every other priority come first.

Ursinus Magazine: Is writing a lost art? Why or why not?

Talia Argondezzi: No, it’s not a lost art (yet). People are writing and consuming an incredibly high volume of words each day. Think about your group chats, your posts, your emails, your text messages, your scrolling—we’re a highly textual society. All that writing and all that interpreting requires many of the same kinds of skills writing has always needed, of audience awareness, rhetoric, careful vocabulary, and style. What seems to be changing is our capacity to read and write long works on a sustained topic. That would be a sad art to lose, so let’s all put our phones on the charger and ignore our screens for an hour or two a day. I’m hereby resolving to do that myself, starting tonight!

Ursinus Magazine: Do you have a favorite word, punctuation mark, or rule of grammar? How about something that people often misuse that drives you crazy?

Talia Argondezzi:  People often assume that as a writer and a writing professor, I must be a stickler for grammar, but I’m not—I know grammar rules really well, but it doesn’t grate my ear when they’re violated. I believe in language’s capacity to communicate meaning both with and without adherence to conventions. As for favorite punctuation, I tend to overuse parentheses (I probably did in this interview).