What does language have to do with relationships? According to author Johannes Lichtman, everything. In the novel Calling Ukraine, protagonist John Turner is unable to talk about his grief over the loss of his father, so loses himself in the intricacies of small talk instead. He accepts a whirlwind job opportunity in Ukraine, where he’s tasked with teaching a team of Ukrainian customer service agents how to “sound American” on the phone with their customers. As the novel progresses, John connects with his colleagues despite the language and cultural barrier, and sometimes because of it, as discussions of their differences bring them closer together.
Calling Ukraine is inspired by Lichtman’s experience living in Lutsk in 2018 and 2019, which is why the story takes place in an eerily calm Ukraine, after the 2014 Maidan Revolution but before the 2022 Russian invasion. Yet violence simmers around the edges of the story, in one case coming to a head when John gets entangled in his neighbors’ domestic violence dispute. Despite this, the narration maintains a level-headed humor and grace. Over cans of LaCroix (after disagreeing over its pronunciation—I was embarrassingly incorrect), we spoke about humor, small talk, and cultural attitudes.
Denise Robbins: You’ve lived in the city where the novel takes place, Lutsk. Did you know you were going to write about a novel about Ukraine when you were living there?
Johannes Lichtman: I figured I would write something, but I didn’t know it was going to be a novel. I did a lot of accidental research. I was interested in Ukrainian society, so I would ask Ukrainians a lot of questions, and we often talked about the differences between America and Ukraine as a way to connect. In America we do this; in Ukraine we do this. Almost like the setup to a joke. When I was writing the book later, I did more traditional research: reading Ukrainian history and Ukrainian literature. But the most effective research is just following Ukrainian people on Twitter and Facebook.
DR: What did you learn through Ukrainian Twitter?
JL: I learned about the Soviet suppression of Ukrainian culture as a tool of empire and how it relates to the current Russian suppression of Ukrainian art, language, and history. I also learned about the Ukrainian sense of humor. When the blackouts started spreading in the fall, for instance, you would get people being saying, Another blackout. Pro-tip: Don’t dry your hair on the stove, you’ll set it on fire! It loses something in translation, but this is how people make light of the situation.
DR: In the book you dig into the different types of humor. How else does Ukrainian humor differ from American?
JL: It’s darker. A fundamental part of my time in Ukraine was learning about humor. In my broken Ukrainian, or more often in their better English, one of the first things locals would do was tell me jokes. My friend told me the Ukrainian sense of humor comes from its historical troubles. He said the choice was to give up and cry, or fight and laugh at the enemy, and they chose the latter. There’s a lot of pain and suffering in Ukrainian history. But there’s also a lot of laughter. Ukrainians are great joke-tellers. Their president is a comedian.
DR: I also like how humor drives the story forward—it’s how John connects with his love interest. Did you know you wanted humor to drive the plot?
JL: The short answer is yes because I can’t really write anything without trying to be funny. I’m trying to think of a sophisticated reason for that, but I just like laughing. I like it when things are sad and funny, both in what I read and what I write. If I’m going to be working on a novel for a long time, I want to enjoy it. I’ve never gotten to the end of a book and been like, I wish that was less funny.
DR: Do you have a theory of how humor works? What makes something funny?
JL: Surprise is the closest thing I could come to in an answer. A lot of humor comes from surprise, from hitting an unexpected note or an unexpected beat. But in fiction, my theory is simple: Humor should serve the story rather than the story serving the humor. You get in trouble when you start writing toward the jokes, if you’re changing the story to hit your punchline.
DR: It makes me think of humor as an evolutionary response—like the opposite of fear. When you confront something unexpected the first response might be fear, but once you realize you’re safe, you laugh.
JL: One of the reasons we laugh is to release tension. And it does feel safe. Melissa Bank had a quote: “Making jokes is your way of saying Do you love me? and when someone laughs you think they’ve said yes.” For me it’s also a way to quell insecurity. If I’m speaking to a room full of people, I can’t tell by looking whether or not I’m getting my message across. But if I’m trying to be funny, I know when I hear them laugh.
DR: Another big part of the book revolves around small talk. So please: Define small talk.
JL: Small talk is low-stakes talk. You can have small talk interchangeably with anyone. It doesn’t involve much of the self. American small talk has some very clear rules that you may not realize until you go someplace new. Like the question: How are you doing? I’m not asking how you are doing, really. But if a Ukrainian person asks another Ukrainian person—first of all, it’s kind of a personal question, one you wouldn’t ask a stranger. Second of all, they’d really be asking, How are you doing? For Americans it’s not personal because we don’t expect a real answer. And when someone gives a real answer, like, “Not great, my son’s back in rehab,” it gets awkward. Like they’ve transgressed a rule. It’s not small talk anymore. An element of small talk is that you don’t have to think much about it. You can almost do it on autopilot.
DR: Is there a connection between the small talk we use and American culture? Does our language shape our culture or does the culture shape the language?
JL: It’s hard to isolate them. For countries in the former Soviet Union, they’ve generationally been living in a surveillance state, which discourages small talk. But of course there are also big differences between how Germans interact with each other and how Americans interact with each other, and so on. Sweden, for example, has had even less war than the United States, but their culture of small talk is not the same as American culture of small talk, nor is it the same as Ukrainian. So it’s hard to isolate it to any one thing, but I imagine that political history is at least a part of it.
DR: In your prose, how do you make small talk “big”?
JL: I’m figuring out what small talk means to me and to my characters. I personally like small talk. I think it’s great. I know a lot of people that are like, “Let’s just talk about things that matter.” I’m like, “I would love to talk about things that don’t matter. It’s so nice.” I have a lot of anxiety, as many writers do, so small talk is great because the stakes are low. I’m looking at why it can matter to people and matter to a culture. And I think the lonelier you are, the more small talk matters, and a lot of American life is pretty lonely.
DR: Is this book going to be published in Ukraine?
JL: Not right now. There’s a lot going on over there—the Ukrainian art scene is still flourishing in really difficult conditions, with Ukrainian war poetry and other art that’s more relevant to what’s happening.
DR: How do you feel like the publication of this book fits in with the political situation?
JL: The book’s not about the war. It takes place before the war and was written before the war. But I hope this book shows American readers a tiny glimpse of Ukrainian life before the war, what that life was and why it’s worth fighting for.
DR: So your first two books were about two very different countries you lived in: Sweden, then Ukraine. Which country are you going to live in and write about next?
JL: You may know that Sweden’s flag and Ukraine’s flag are both blue and yellow. So this is the blue and yellow trilogy. I’ve been trying to find a third country that’s blue and yellow. And I think Barbados is my closest.
DR: What’s your favorite word in the Ukrainian language?
JL: My favorite word is “добре” (dobre). It means “good,” “yes,” and “okay,” among other things. This was the word I said whenever I got tongue-tied in Ukraine, so I have probably misused it extensively. But Ukrainians are very understanding when you try to speak Ukrainian.
DR: What’s your favorite sentence in the English language?
JL: Fuck off!
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