Rumaan Alam Explains How We Cope With the End of the World

Even sunny days have a menace to them in Rumaan Alam's novel Leave the World Behind, though the family at the center of the story doesn’t realize it. They've arrived from New York City at a bucolic home on the uncrowded outskirts of Long Island that they've rented for a little summer vacation. But in the middle of their second night, with their two children in bed, Amanda and her husband Clay—both of whom are white—hear a knock on the door. Clay opens it to find an older black couple, named G. H. and Ruth, who claim to be the owners. They say there's been a blackout—something seems wrong. They've fled here, to their second home. They're hoping to stay.

Much of the novel—a lean, unnervingly hilarious thriller that’s a finalist for the National Book Award—takes place inside the minds of the characters as they face (and blissfully ignore) frights that are at first familiar but eventually, it seems, possibly cataclysmic. With the Internet and TV malfunctioning, a great unknown looms over their lives. All the while, they create little fictions to calm themselves, so they feel they're up for the tasks that they are very much not up for—like we all do. And it's in these thoughts that they often fail.

By placing the characters’ various worldviews, reactions, and rationalizations under both small and seismic stress, Alam comically strips naked the psychology that persists even when we confront our ineptitude: of the ways we seek not just information but affirmation, crave both superiority and the comforts of community, and believe that what little we know can save us. One by one, their senses of security—technology, intellect, bodies—are detonated, and the characters prove embarrassingly relatable even when they appear absurd. At times, reading the book can feel like laughing at what you see in a cracked mirror.

With several large unknowns invading reality, it seemed like an especially good time to ask Alam if he had any insight into the panic and the dread and the little voices in our head we’ve been hearing so much from recently—and what to make of the delusions we’ve all been crafting.

GQ: So much of the novel takes place in the minds of these characters as they're panicking, as they're experiencing a dread of a larger, all-consuming unknown. By immersing yourself in that psychology specifically and not having it just be a fleeting thought, did you learn anything about how you or people in general respond to panic or dread?

Rumaan Alam: Well, I've learned that the way that we mostly deal with it is by looking away from it. You read the headlines and try to be responsible and think through what you're learning about the state of the world. But sometimes it's so unsettling that you have to stop and look away. I think we all do that. I remember a Thanksgiving—I'm not sure what year—being really disturbingly warm. Not even just like a mild autumn, but more like a summer. And that feeling can be so strange and your body even knows that it's strange. And the answer is not like, “Oh, I'll use reusable straws” or something. That's not going to do anything to change like how off-kilter the world actually is. But you don't know what to do, and that feeling is just so overwhelming that I think you have to stop and focus on what you do know, which is life as usual.

You poke fun at the absurdities of these small things we think will comfort or save us, and at the character’s inner voices as they create these sort of calming fictions or self-mythologies.

I mean, don't we do that? Don't we have these coping strategies that we know to be fiction? Oh, we'll be fine. Everyone will be okay. Everyone is okay until the moment that they're not. And I think you have to do that. Otherwise, you can't, like, go on. You know you could get hit by a car any day, so how do you deal with that? Mostly by pretending it's not going to happen.

And yet these little mythologies metastasize—particularly with Clay. He is constantly reminded how little he knows. He even takes his recognition of his ignorance as a source of pride. But he nonetheless volunteers to take on a very important task in the book, which actually leaves everyone with perhaps the least capable person doing the most urgent thing.

That's hubris. It feels very masculine to be like, "I'll be the dad and go deal with the problems of the world." And he's ill-equipped to do that. But I think what's more interesting about what happens to him is not just his failure to actually solve the momentary problem in front of them. What he fails is a morality test. And I find that a really interesting and uncomfortable place, hopefully, for the reader. I think we all want to believe that in a moment of crisis, in a moment of heightened tension, we would make the right choice, the moral choice. But I also think that history shows us time and again, humans fail to do that.

Think about the narrative of the Second World War and the handful of everyday heroes who stood up and said, "You will not take my neighbor away.” Those are great stories. But maybe the larger story is really the people who are like, "Yeah, it's sad that you're taking my neighbors away, but oh well, what can I, one person, possibly do?” Those pictures of Ruby Bridges walking to school as everyday people are sneering at her and throwing eggs at her. It's so crazy to think that context could change, and then, I don't know, would you have been that person who was sneering and throwing eggs at a little girl going to school?

And what are we doing right now? I don't think you can morally agree with separating infants from their parents because their parents have dared to come and seek asylum in this country, but that's precisely what's happening—and it's happening not with our approval, but it's being done by the government in our name. So we're all failing morally, even though we're so sure that we're not going to when tested.

Have you found a balance between those two things: That urgent need to act and to also comfort yourself?

I'm as complacent and impotent as anyone I'm talking about. Like, what have I done? My own complacency and complicity is what it is. It's just a fact. And I think we don't want to believe that of ourselves, but I think you kind of have to. I hope the book backs you into a corner with respect to that. We heap ire upon Kellyanne Conway or Ivanka Trump—rightly so. But what about our own responsibility? What do you do with your moral outrage? I really don't know. I mean, how old are you?

I am 30.

So I think among the politically progressive part of your generation, there's a sense of rolled eyes when people say, "Just vote." And I think that's right, because I don't think simply saying, "Oh, by January we'll have a new administration, and it will address all of these problems” is an answer. A change in power isn't necessarily going to change how power is deployed.

There is a sense at the end of the book that the ostensible solution that's found amounts to just a slightly better version of what they already have.

I think that's right. The condition on the ground may feel different, but I think it's a reminder that life has always been about moral choices, and all the other stuff is this convenient illusion.

What are the factors you think shape your own inner voice, your own inner rationalizations? Class, race, gender? Or are they universal?

I'm just like the people in this book. I mean, I'm having a lot of fun with them. But for example, when Clay has a sexual feeling in response to the dishwasher—that's where we are as a culture. What matters to us is nice things. And I like nice things. I'm an American. This is my culture, too. I'm not somebody who lives with nothing in some state of political purity. So I understand firsthand the temptations of the fiction of material wealth and comfort as somehow protective. But of course they are protective, right? That's not an illusion. That's a reality.

After G. H. and Ruth arrive, Amanda is sort of vacillating between calming rationalizations—these are just motorists who are lost—and concerns that they're murderers or scammers using white guilt to get inside. And you write, "She was at least appropriately ashamed by her conjecture." Even in shame, she's comforting herself for being appropriately ashamed.

When Obama was running for office, he was describing his white grandmother as having the sort of ambient racism that had she passed someone who looked like him on the street, she would've held her handbag tighter. I think that distills a lot. We know that we are a product of these mythologies and these cultural narratives. You're just a product of the circumstances in which you were raised.

Do you wish, though, that people didn't find so much comfort in quietly conforming to these norms?

Gosh, I wish I had a good answer. I think you have to look at this stuff really closely and sit with your own discomfort of your own moral failings. And that's not easy to do. And it's not convenient to do. And actually there are many ways in which we really never have had to do that.

You have another line about "ignorance as a kind of knowing." Are you comfortable with how little you know about the world?

No! Of course not! But in this country, at any rate, or to be a middle-class person in this country, there's a lot you simply don't have to know. In this country, you have to adhere to the standards that we have determined matter. And if you don't, then we almost feel sad for you—as if you couldn't be moral and happy and interesting, unless you cared about middle-class American propriety.

Coming from the opposite direction of Clay's thinking is G. H., who is sort of an evangelist for the power of information. He dismisses what's happening as a "market event," though he sees his salt-of-the-earth contractor's knowledge as more valuable than anything. But this event is happening on such a grand scale that it makes nobody capable of really doing anything. How do you cope when everything feels so big that you may not be able to do anything about it?

I do the very things I satirize in the book. I buy stuff. I cook something. I think about my children. I think about being a good dad, a good spouse. You don't really grapple with the responsibility to be a good human citizen that much, you know? And so you float around, and you feel better buying the recycled paper coffee filters. And you tell yourself "Well, I made the good choice. I made the responsible choice"—even though you know that's a fiction.

There seems to be a sense in the book that, despite all of these differences, we're all making these little lies together.

I think that's right. Maybe “optimistic” is not quite the right word, but there's a sense of optimism in this book? I think that there's a sense of some promise of something. And gosh, I hope that there's some comfort in that. The fallacy of George's belief in [his contractor] Danny's masculine ability seems so laughable, but also feels very real to me. I feel for him in that moment, because I understand him in that moment, because I'm somebody who can't do anything. Sometimes we'll have people into the house to fix a plumbing problem or put up shelves or something, and I'm like, "God, you have this ability. You understand how to do this thing, and you've got it." And that person could also look at me and be like, "Wow, what the fuck are you doing sitting around here all day? Why don't you have a job? That must be nice." There's a way in which everybody kind of can envy everybody else.

Was there anything actually more freeing about fictionalizing one of the worst possible outcomes for the world, rather than something that was affirming or inspiring?

Yeah, probably. It's almost a relief to grapple with it. That's not the animal instinct. You delude yourself and delude yourself because otherwise you would just give in, and our very existence is a delusion to some degree. But if your bigger question is whether I felt better or relieved after looking at these things, I don't think that's the language I would use. [Laughs] It's unsettling to grapple with unsettling issues.

After writing about all these little failures of common knowledge under stress, did you go out and learn a new skill? Did you become a prepper and buy canned foods?

[Laughs] I didn't, because I think that that is also just the ultimate fallacy, right? What's stopping a prepper from getting hit by a truck? Shoring up supplies isn't going to protect you from the real risks of actual life. It protects you in some theoretical scenario that you are convinced will play out, but there's no relationship to the actual threat of existence. Buying shotgun shells and those straws that filter water, yes, that will protect you if you find yourself needing a gun or potable water. But you don't know what you are going to need. Prepping is just a way of telling yourself that money will protect you.

In the book, there's this awkward moment when Amanda remarks that G. H. looks like Denzel Washington. Now Denzel is set to play G. H. in a Netflix movie based on the book. Was that something you tried to reverse-engineer when you wrote it?

No—I mean Denzel Washington obviously possesses a very particular place in the culture. And what she is saying in that moment is what I think a white woman of her generation would do mentally: She would sort of categorize a man of a certain age and a man of means who happened to be black and sort of good-looking into the context of Denzel Washington, right? She's turning the moment right in front of her into this narrative that is distant from her and filing him away as this type. And that's all it is. It's a joke, and I hope the reader recognizes the kind of joke that it is.

I have no idea what Sam Esmail will do with that particular joke. But I think it's very shrewd casting because of course Denzel Washington is a genius and a brilliant performer, but I do think he exists in that space. If you were going to conjure a black man of a certain age who seems distinguished and trustworthy and handsome, and has this level of polish, you are going to think of Denzel Washington.

So, there are several large, looming, scary unknowns that are present in our lives right now. What's your plan for surviving them?

I mean, there's no plan. And that's what the book is talking about: The plan is the same that it's always been, which is just to do what people do. And what the people do in this book in response to crisis is really just the response to anything. It's the animal response. They have sex. They eat. They drink too much. And they hang out with their kids and think about how much they love them. What else are you supposed to do?

Originally Appeared on GQ