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One final economic datapoint before the program, i promise, is the fact that other independent businesses are feeling the squeeze as well, and if you are interested in deepening your understanding of tonights subject and supporting our wonderful partners, may if i politely suggest that you use the buy the book button on our event page or the url in the comment threads rather than, say, relying on the local behemoth that sells you, i dont know, corn and muffins or whatever. At any rate, we hope you will consider buying your book from them. Katie roiphe is an author and journalist whose work has a appeared across the spectrum from the New York Times and the Washington Post to harvard, esquire, the paris review and vogue. An essay featured in the anthology, 30 ways of looking at [inaudible] by women writers, and her books the morning after, 1997s last night in paradise, two books exploring the lives of writers, 2007s [audio difficulty] her own essay collection from 2012. Shes a professor at nyu [audio difficulty] thank you so much. I am thrilled to be here. Im very sad not to come to seattle in person but happy to be sort of in seattle. And im going to talk a little bit and read a little bit about my if new book, the power note books. Its a very strange book, and when people ask me what its about, its almost hard for me to answer that question. Its about addiction, its about angry men, its about not knowing how to drive, its about edith wharton, its about falling holding a newborn baby wearing very high heels. Its about asking for more money in a job. Its about being a single mother and being on your own. And its about do you read and simone de beauvoir. Its very hard to pin it down. And i actually feel, i called it the power notebooks, but i honestly feel act this book, its a little bit pathological, i honestly feel that the book that my if publisher kind of broke into my house in the middle of the night and stole my if actual notebooks and published them. I sometimes feel that way. Even though thats not exactly what happened. And the notebooks were very hard to write, and it was so hard to write for various reasons thatll probably become clear to you in the course of my talking about them. They were so hard to write that i would only be able to work on them at 4 30 in the morning. So you would wake up every day at 4 30 in the morning when the world was quiet and no one was up, and i could kind of trick myself into thinking that i was, like, alone on planet earth. And it was only in those hours that i was able to write them, for whatever reason. And theyre written in a very different way than anything ive ever done before. Ive always written things that kind of take a strong argument or feel more polished, kind of more scholarly work or essays that are, take a sort of confident form. And so publishing the notebooks was a kind of perverse act, i think, in certain ways. And the heart of them, they were inspired by two things. I was going to show you both those two things. One of them the, i dont know if you can see it here. Okay. So this is a photograph of suh moan de de beauvoir, very famous photograph taken in 1950 by the photographer art shea. As you can see, shes in her 40s. Shes getting ready, and shes in a bathroom. Shes wearing very high heels. I dont know if you can quite see those. Shes cutting off her hair. And somehow this photograph has always obsessed me. Its the contradictions of it. The fact that shes wearing heels, but shes naked. She wasnt really she didnt technically give her permission for this photograph, but she did leave the door open with this strange man who was the photographer kind of sitting right there. And he said, you know, he heard the clicking, he was kind of like, naughty boy, she didnt really care. But what you see in the photo is sort of her not caring that the world is seeing her in this intimate moment. And thats what sort of projected there. And i guess the two things that i said inspired this book from that photograph are both the idea that maybe its okay to, at a certain point in your life, to sort of show yourself in that kind of intimate, unguarded moment. Like the real self, the real you. And that was one thing about the photograph. And the other thing about the photograph that interests me is something that simone de beauvoir herself was really interested in which is kind of showing women in all their contradictions. The kind of weird, jarring fact that shes putting her hair up, shes wearing heels but shes naked. All the contradictions of who she is in that moment. Shes, like, a brilliant feminist intellectual. Shes just a woman getting ready in the mirror. And all of that kind of contradiction that goes into being a self, kind of interested me in this book. And so the second thing that inspired the book, also related to simone de beauvoir, is manager she said. So one of her biographers asked her, was talking about her relationship with jean paul sartre. She was very they had an open relationship, it was very tormented. She was extremely obsessed with him her whole life, but they, you know, they sort of mutually had this open relationship, but she basically wanted more of him than he wanted of her. It was sort of an unequal relationship. She would write him letters saying, like, without you i am mutilated. She felt that her relationship famously with him was her greatest achievement which irked a lot of people because she was such a Brilliant Writer and floss ifer if. Philosopher. So she said, you know, what do you say to feminists who say that your relationship was at odd with your feminist theories, and simone de beauvoir looked at her and said, well, im sorry to disappoint feminists, but i just dont give a damn. I lived how i wanted, and its too bad so many of them live in theory and not in real life. And i just, i found that quote so interesting. Maybe that cop sent of dis concept of disappointing the feminist partly because i myself have disappointed the feminists for many decades. But also the idea that, of that gap between theory and life, that you could be somebody who lived sort of subjugated yourself in your relationship the a man, but youre also this incredibly powerful person in your work and in your life and in your intellectual achievements. And that paradox, i think, is at the heart of this book which really obsesses a lot over the questions of how and i look at my own life very frankly in this book how sometimes you are strong and successful and sometimes youre not. And simone de beauvoir in her work, he says at one point, you know, i wanted to write about women as they really are, as divided human beings. Not as they ought to be. And i kind of am interested in that deof was in that question of just those contradictions or those paradoxes in our relation to power. And so that was kind of, those were the sort of nexus of intellectual ideas at the heart of this very strange project i embarked on. And maybe ill just read a little bit now to give kind of a sense of it. So, and its written as notebooks, and some of them are shorter than others, but theyre all as if theyre kind of notebook entries or im sort of working out these the issues for myself. First ones called catastrophe. Talking to a friend at the gunning of her beginning of her relationship by cat sew, youre headed for a catastrophe, she said. I told her she was probably right, but i felt it was the kind of catastrophe i didnt want to avoid. This ones called emily. My sister emily once said to me, there is no man anywhere so psychotic, so drunk, so helpless, so brutal, so indifferent even just so annoying that some woman somewhere isnt dying to take care of him. And this ones called the fall. And it is about me, this is one of the ones about single motherhood. My daughter violate is 6, and violet is 6, and i had my son on his own, and hes very tiny in this story, maybe a few weeks old. One morning im walking violet to school. Shes pushing the stroller, but im carrying the baby because hes fussing. Im wearing pink suede three and a half inch platforms. I have a work meeting afterwards. My heel gets caught in the sidewalk, and i lose my balance, and i fall forward. Somehow managing to put both my hands up and cup my babys head. Hes crying but only out of outrange at such a sudden and undignified changing of position. Of course a crowd gathers. A woman carrying a new born has fallen and is bleeding. Violet is beyond mortified. She actually tries to stand a little away from us so that she wont be associated with us, but being 6 with only limited success. I try to respond politely to the concern while also trying to get away from the people so violet can stop dying of embarrassment. She likes to be angry. Ing she i wore the heels the same way i wore stilettos to parties nine months pregnant, and this time it endangered the baby who she sort of only thinks of as mine and mostly thinks of as hers. Later i will tell this as a funny story which is a way of hiding or a magical instincts of motherhood story which is another way of hiding. I never tell it as a story about how reckless or selfish i am and how these various roles i am trying to play are fundamentally not conducive to staying upright on earth. I see myself suddenly from the perspective of one of the women rushing to work who stops on the street; vain, anxious, overcaffeinated, narcissistic, unable to give up men looking at her on the street for even the first few months of her babys life, trying too hard, trying too flagrantly, clinging to the most hackneyeded and unsettled indicator of female sexual power. I think, not for the first time, why am i allowed to have this baby . I would not at this point be entirely surprised if someone in a uniform came and took him away. A couple months earlier one of my nowcolleagues swung by my office noticing that i was visibly pregnant with no man in my life, he said, wow, you really do whatever you want. I laughed, of course, but the comment stayed with me. The admiration but also the warning undertone. I was getting away with something that you usually cant get away with. Being a sexual free agent and having a baby. As if i were shoplifting the baby, getting him for free. Violet goes right to the heart of it. Why are you wearing those shoes . At 6 he wears exclusively sports clothes, soccer jerseys and sneakers. She has not missed the sea of brooklyn mothers in sneakers and silver berkeen stocks which seemed to telegraph some sort of shimmering vortex of female serenity i will never obtain. And im not, at 8 20 a. M. , trying to impress anyone. Women do not see their emancipation from the duty of sexual attraction as death and life. Doris lessing, quote you only begin to discover the difference between what you really are, your real self and your appearance, when you get a bit older. A whole dimension of life suddenly slides away and you realize what, in fact, youve been using to get attention is what you look like. It really is a fascinating thing to go through, shedding it all. The true power must be in not caring how you look when youve slept maybe three hours. But i do it by habit, by the mysteriously lingering imperative to be recognized as me. The baby is fine, thank god, but he wont always be. Or could so easily not have been. The bruises declare themselves in festive yells lows, greens yellows, green, mauves. This next section is about violet again. Shes now in this section 14, so its many years later. And this section is called how to ride the subway. My daughter is taller now than i am. Shes 59. She wears cutoff shorts and white sneakers with gold stars all over them. Even though shes 14, men start to follow her down the street, talk to her as shes coming up the steps to our house. She writes an assignment for a class, quote put your earphones in and be aware of surroundings. Stand alone but not but close enough to people that you are not totally isolate ared. Move away from those creepy men who watch and talk about you and make sure to adjust your shirt so it doesnt show any skin. Put your sweatshirt on, that will help. And, youre fine, just dont make eye contact. Remember when the drunk man asked you to come over and sit next to him and how when you didnt, he cursed until you could leave the car, and think to yourself that it could be worse. Dont tell your mom about these men. When she gets around to showing me this, the obvious comes as a shock. The dawning of her power over men is simultaneous with her growing vulnerability. She experiences both so violently at once. She discovers her power to attract men as a burden, a danger. It arrives already fraught. Simone de beauvoir describing this stage, quote mens gazes flatter and hurt her at the same time. She feels herself at risk in her alienated flesh. Her power is itself a threat, so much of a threat that shes already writing howto guides on protecting yourself from it. The line for girls is razor thin. You have to be confident but not too confident. Ive noticed girls her age say shes really feeling herself about a girl who seems too exuberantly confident, too into herself. Quote she is really gassing herself. The irony of these phrases is a cover for an elaborate and variously articulated contempt. They are delineating a taboo for each other. At times at that age, it almost feels like the secret police will come in the middle of the night and take you away if you are standing out in this way. If you are feeling yourself. In the lonely crowd, david reeseman quotes an interview with a 12yearold girl. A, i like superman better than the others because they cant do everything superman can do. Batman cant fly, and that is very important. Q, would you like to be able to fly . A, i would like to be able to fly if everyone else did, but otherwise it would be kind of conspicuous. So before i read the last entry of the notebook that im going to read, i just want to talk a little bit about the form of the notebooks and why i chose it because, well, i guess because its so strange to kind of write in these little pieces and fragments and try to work things out in that way. And the reason i chose it is partly because ive always written notebooks. Ive written notebooks since i was 12 years old. And so for me, its kind of a common way of processing the world. And in my scholarship, i have a ph. D. In literature, and ive written some books that, you know, very researched, kind of bioif graphical books biographical books, ive always loved reading peoples notebooks. For me, theres a thrill to sit in a library and read through someones notebook. And ive always liked the intimacy of them. But what i really wanted to get across in these notebooks was the unfinishedness, the idea of the rawness of them, of somebodys thoughts where they havent actually put them together into a polished thing. And for me its very hard not to try to, i have like a kind of orderly are mind, so i want to resolve contradictions, or i want to work things out, and i want to, i want everything to be, like, neat and linear, basically. And so this book is much more like the way the notebooks work because if its fragments. Its more like a jigsaw puzzle. Its like i start with this mystery or these bewildering questions, and i lay out all the pieces and, hopefully, like, at the end you can see the picture. Its a much different way of thinking, and i wanted to kind of force myself into this very, for me, very uncomfortable territory of letting myself have these contradictions and kind of choosing a form, the notebook form which embodies because its notes. You can go off on a tangent, you can go in one direction, you can explore one thing and then at another point in the notebook in another mood, you explore it in a very different way. So for me, the form itself was an effort to do that, to kind of encompass the way that we really think about these questions which is so much more complicated than the sort of easier political ways we like to think about them. And so the form itself was meant to create that sense of, like, my mind working through these contradictions or these strange vignettes or moments or little, tiny power struggles. Or, you know, as in the section i just read, that question of why do we resent powerful women, how do girls kind of grow up, like, learning to hide their power in various ways. So these are the kind of questions that i wanted to write about, but i didnt want to write in big generalizations like all women are this. If i wanted to really stay in these little pieces. And so thats why i chose the notebook form. And incorporating the boyle if my of these biography of these women, im about to read this section on sylvia plath which ill read now. Sylvia plath. Quote i am aware of the power thats in myself, a wanting to give up. If i could, read, enjoy people on my own, head leaving would be hard but manageable. Quote how can i live without him . I mean, if i could write and garden and be happy with my babies, i could survive. But i am so sick is and sleepless and jumpy, always a mess. In years before he leaves her, the letters obsess over her dream of a perfect, artistic domesticity, how tantalizingly close she is to it. When you send me two pairs of tights, when we paint the floors, when we borrow a proper heater, when you send me toll house chocolate morsels because they dont have them here, when i get a sewing machine, when we get a white house in the countrn we get a flat in london. He rules over all of this, brilliant, vir reel, dangerous, the sexual happiness, the only man she cannot [inaudible] he takes her steak and mushrooms and a glasses of red wine in bed when she is recovering from the strain of [inaudible] the letter he writes to an american psychiatrist shocks me. Its early july 1962. She has just discovered for a hard fact that ted is cheating on her with an exotic looking woman who work z at an Advertising Agency and has rented their flat in prim rose hill. She is trying to solve the problem of herself. How can she change to accommodate him. The moment of trying to hold onto this consuming love before she sees that it is over. The letters are darting, the stress wild. How can i make these women unnecessary to him and keep up my own sense of seductiveness and womanly power . I dont want to be sorrowful or bitter. Men hate that. What can i do in the face of these processes . Quote can you suggest a gracious procedure when you see some little not little, big tart is after your husband at a party or a dinner or something . Do you leave them to it . Engage a hotel room . Smile and vanish . Smile and stand by . What i dont want to be is stern and disapproving or teary. But im only human. Quote i am, by the way, not fat. This feels familiar, also repellant. How can i solve the problem of myself so he wants to stay. She writes, quote other man seem ants compared to him. Im physically are attracted to no one else. All the complex iftieses of my soul and mind are involved inextricably with him. Quote i was prepared for almost anything. Just having the odd affair, traveling, drinking, i mean, getting drunk. If we could be straight, good friends, share all the intellectual light that has become meat and drink for me, for he is a genius, a great man, a great writer. I am tempted to throw the book at a wall. The elaborate accommodating, the clinging to any small part of him. Plaths famous cold fury is more palatable. Quote out of the ash i rise with myred hair, and i eat my red hair, and i eat men like air. A genius to keep a man, for american psychiatrist rights to her first, middle and last, do not give up your personal oneness. Do not imagine your whole being hangs on this one man. The letters make it clear it is a creative force. She saw very clearly that the poem she was writing were by far her strongest, that something wild and original had been shaken loose in her. She ate very little, she took sleeping pills at night, she wrote at 5 am before the babies woke up but that wasnt enough. The poems werent enough. She offered to pay the doctor to write back, the doctor refuses the payment but rights to her anyway. Do not imagine that your whole being hangs on this one man. The sad thing to watch is that she was trying to make her way to the doctor, quote, the part about the personal oneness, my god, i cant seem to think straight. Four months later she was dead. So that is a sad note to end on. One of the things ive tried to do with biographical portraits in the book is to look at some of these women writers i admire and these contradictions in terms of power in their own lives. We look at sylvia plath, she writes about ted hughes, at some of the point, why are you attracted to him and what is the appeal and she writes, he was the only man i could not by, he bashed my head in and she says this as a positive thing, straightforward kind of description of the attraction like of course he was the only man i couldnt buy surround and so we think about this brilliant creative, i. E. To men like air, that is sylvia plath but also there is sylvia plath who is in rapture do by the only man she cannot box and what that complicated relationship to her own power is and the other biographical story i think about in the book, somebody like edith wharton, also an incredibly accomplished, successful woman, in her 40s she has a relationship with martin fullerton who is very sketchy, treacherous, not very intellectually dazzling or accomplished person and she writes at one point i want to lose everything to you. And so again that paradox, she wants to lose to him, she doesnt want to be in the strong position in relationship to him and i think also about a writer like Mary Mccarthy who also was this incredibly fierce, successful, almost intimidating public figure in her life but in her relationship with critic Edmund Wilson she talks about how he would humiliate her in all these ways in front of her friends and she would have to ask him for a nickel to make a telephone call. I kind of look at these different biographies as a way of thinking about how complicated this idea, that gap between theory and life, the question of who you are to the outside world and who you are on the average day, night, when youre just sitting at home. I tried not to there is that scene where i talk about wanting to throw the book across the room, i feel that same frustration, what about your theory . I feel that frustration too and it is tempting to kind of judge or say these relationships are not healthy. There are all kinds of ways that we get sucked into this judgment of women when they act this way. I didnt want to do that in this book and i didnt want to take a moral stand or say this is good or bad or anything about it but just to look at it, how those contradictions worked in a single life and the sort of way i think come to peace with them. Somebody told me it is empowering to read, not what you want to hear. It is a little harrowing, it has what i think of as a happy ending, peace for now, there are a lot of struggles but it ends with peace for now and kind of ends semi peaceful note and i think part of that piece is coming out at the end of the book after the section i just read to you with the idea that these contradictions are okay, that you can live with them not just in your feminist heroines but also in yourself and it is that nonchalance, when she is standing there in front of the mirror with the door open for when she says i am sorry to disappoint the feminists but i dont care. That feeling of just okay and us with your self, the divisions and contradictions, the ways, the messiness in a single life. The biographies and delving into the news, the way these contradictions work with these writers was part of the process for me, one of the weirdest things about me is when i am confused about something i read biographies and do research into peoples lives and the figures keep me company in this book as i work out some of these issues for myself so that is the center of it or the heart of it, and i think i represented the full weirdness of this project, very strange as i said and the reason i wrote notebooks instead of what i think of in my head is a real book, never became a real book with a single narrative because that would sort of defeat the purpose of this book which was meant to represent these fragments or these moments in a kind of messy way, and unresolved way, nonlinear way and that is what i wanted it to look like in the end. That is how the forms worked for me and also the process of writing it worked for me. So even though it was a little harrowing book to write, it came out in the end, i think with that idea of it coming together in a certain way and being able to tolerate contradictions and it was kind of the inspiration or the figure at the heart of it started me on this project and one of the male characters, i call him the claw in the book, the claw whose this very mean kind of intimidating older man figure that i had a relationship with, i said to the claw at one point i am interested in the question of women who are very strong and powerful in their outside lives but some of abject in their relationships to men or in their private lives in the claw said, you mean like all women . Which simultaneously i thought was funny but also extremely maddening that he said that. And that comment was again the paradox that this book came out of a strange question and i dont think it is all women but i do think that it is more than just me. I did resist generalizing in this book but i did kind of want to write about something i see in some other women or something i think is a little more common as a phenomenon, but applies to from men too. That is my project. I dont know where we could turn to questions if anybody has any questions. Thank you, katie. My computer was acting temperamental. If you have thoughts or questions you would like to pose to katie, now is your opportunity. As we get the pump primed i will start with something that occurred to me. You spoke eloquently about the form of the notebook and adopting the form in a very conscious way, how well it suited itself to what you were trying to achieve with the book but notebooks to me also imply a sense of unfinished exploration of the topic, almost like the raw fork material. I guess i wonder in the context of other works in your career how certain or how confident in sort of ascertaining the entirety of your topic, of your issue did you feel when you came into it. To what extent do you feel command of the subject sort of helped dictate where you push the form of the book and is that making sense . Did i bring in my previous work . That is part of what i mean but also interesting that because youve written and thought about it before you actually subsequently went to a form that connotes a sort of unfinished quality, a certain exploratory form rather than the culmination of what you study and explored to this point yields a beast, right . I am interested in how you drag forward what you learned in previous work and also how the exploratory nature of notebooks informed your confidence to write what you wrote about. It is funny. When i was 23 and writing my first book i had a lot more confidence about my conclusions, the world is x. I was certain i understood everything and my interpretation was the right interpretation and this book, maybe because i am old and a little bit wiser i have a lot less certainty now. I think i wrote much more confidently with much more certainty when i was younger. What i wanted to do with this book was interrogate my uncertainties and really look at these problems in an incredibly complicated way and i benefit from some things, in particular i write about an affair i had with the rabbi when i was very young. I was in high school and he was in his mid30s. When i was younger i wrote about it in a just comingofage story and it was fine and it was fine and i felt like i had much more power in the situation but thinking about it at this point in my life i was able to look at the story in a much deeper way. I have always resisted in my work political language, easy political language. I talk about it, resisting George Orwell talked about words that do your thinking for you. I resist those kinds of words, they try i talk a little in this book about not wanting to use the word abusive to describe the relationship. It is that kind of word to me that simplifies something very complicated. I would rather look at the complicated thing but what i wanted to do in this book was examined some of these questions that i wrote about in a much more polemical, argumentative way outside of that political framework and that argument and the polemic. Not that im rethinking things i wrote before, not that i am recanceling or changing my previous opinions but i wanted to write in a different register. I have become less interested and a lot of us have in the kind of political generalizations, there is something predictable about this kind of politics in the way these things get talked about and i want to take those questions about power and look at them outside of those arguments so i think i brought more, i think the notebook form allowed me as you said to bring my uncertainty and doubt and confusion and put them on a page which is not something i would have ever thought to do when i was 23 or 33, something that only now it feels to me the confusion or the doubt is valuable or interesting and so the notebook, they are unfinished, they are raw, give space for that kind of exploration whereas if i tried to write an essay with a through line that moved through the whole book i wouldnt have that as much. I almost feel like i have gone backwards in terms of how much i understand the world, now i am definitely like i understand the world way less than i did when i was 23 but i was able to put in a little more nuance and a little more complexity and a little more of something that feels very feel about these experiences went into this book in a way that i was not able to do with them in my previous work. A few questions we can turn to now. Records to know how long it took you to write the book and given the form you chose how did you know when to end it . Really good question. It feels like the book took me 27,000 years. It was very hard to write this book because it was got up at 4 30 the morning, always exhausted. I felt often many times writing this book that i couldnt pull it off or shouldnt, but i shouldnt do it, but i couldnt do it, that the form seems very strange to me and wasnt sure it was going to work. It was very hard. It took me about two years, Something Like that and many times ive thought of abandoning it and many times people discouraged me from doing it in various ways. I talk in the book about the character diana, copy editor of mine who doesnt like the characters, she is unlikable, it was very awkward that she was me, this person was my most trusted editor. We had that awkward moment of why did she think the character was so unlikable, what can i do to change the character but the characters and character. I had a lot of discouragement. I did 2 things ive never done in my work before, at one point i found myself, this is slightly embarrassing, i found myself, like when you are in sixth grade with index cards and you are writing a turn paper you spread them out on your floor and you are trying to figure out where they go. I had them all, these colored, what do you call those things, paperclips and i was spreading them out on the floor and trying to figure out what order they are supposed to go in and at one point during this sixth grade moment i did kind of think this is not how grownups write their books so lots of despair, lots of almost not doing it and maybe put it away for another few decades, merry mccarthy wrote a book about intellectual memoirs at the end of her life when she was 82, maybe i should wait until then and that was all about her sleeping with two men in one day, but when i stopped writing the book it was interesting because it happened like this. One day i just, it was like 4 30 in the morning, i opened my eyes at the time i get out of bed to write the book and suddenly i am going to go back to sleep. I just felt like i am not going to get up today. As you point out, this isnt a book you can finish. By its very nature the work is never finished. This pointing out of the contradictions could go on forever. When was the book finished . It just ended. I felt no longer felt the need to get up and write the notebook. It happened like that, vanished like a fever. It ended. When i say it ended, kind of has a happy ending, i finally my catastrophic taste in men came out and sort of worked out happily but piece for now. Very complicated, piece for now. It felt that i was finally sort of able to live with these contradictions, they were not killing me and tormenting me, and it was just like i ended it then that day so i dont really understand why it into her how it ended but that is as close as i can explain it. Host i have so much i now want to ask you about that but we have a lot of questions suddenly. Alexa. A couple of them are very closely bound. Alexa wants to know how much do you think the time they were writing requires these women to present as strong powerful authors but in the time period they were writing a vulnerable or less forceful womans voice would not have been heard or published . The time we are living in requires them to be successful . Guest maybe to a certain extent. I think that is true. I ink there are ways that women have historically approached authority in their writing and somebody like susan sontag was aware and conscious of and trying to sound like a man. She writes at one point i am going to be arrogant like a man. She chose to have this powerful voice in her writing so i do think some of these issues are different now than they were in those time periods but i feel like those contradictions. Merry mccarthy in particular was very aware. She wrote before her time about these contradictions a little bit in her own work, in her characters, they are fictional characters but some of these contradictions are true now and they were true then and there have always been ways powerful women are supposed to act, and resentment against powerful women and always been powerful women filling about their own power so some of these issues are also sort of timeless in a way. Host on that point pk wants to know if your definition of a strong woman has changed having written this book . Guest yes. For one thing, i myself am not dont normally express vulnerability. I am not one who ever shows vulnerability. Me and my work, unlikable and daunting and fierce in my writing and this book is quite different where i just put in a little bit of a different side of myself but even for myself my definition of strength changed in this book, you always have to be strong. It is okay to put in some vulnerabilities and i think my i pushed up against sometimes there are moments i am frustrated. I am reading a letter and feeling frustrated or there would be a moment when he would say to her, she would plan a trip with another man and he would say i want you to stay and she would cancel plans, drop everything for him and i would get this sort of judgmental thing and think that i just stopped feeling those. I got myself through that judgment and that feeling that you have to be consistent, you have to be strong. Got a lot more tolerant to myself and these other people that you can be superstrong but also at these moments you dont want to be strong. I think i understand the strength is not, i had a literal idea about consistently strong person that i no longer believe in or think is important. Conforms to your first point how your earlier writing on the matter on the topic was more dogmatic and more linear, more conclusive, revisiting some of these ideas you are willing to admit a lot less certainty and a lot more space. So a couple more questions. Courtney asks, working through your own thoughts, which biographies where did it go . The most profound or impactful . So many biographies had a huge impact on me. I have a list, at the end of the book i get a list of it is not a bibliography or anything. It is work that inspired me. I have always loved Virginia Woolf biography, it is incredible. I love a bunch of the merry mccarthy biographies. I love Janet Malcolms book on sylvia plath which hugely influenced my work. So many biographies, i am in love with biography and there are so many of them. There is also a big effect on me, roses, parallel lives had a big effect on me. There is a list but so many of them are so incredible. I find biographies comforting. Not sure why i am reading about peoples lives and struggles, comforting. A couple more questions. If you agree, power in public versus their private lives which is more vulnerable, how men have to be as well. What is the difference between how men have to perform . I really i really tried in this book, i tried to resist that, falling into these relationships, romanticizing objection, giving up their power, men who fall in and are less powerful, look at them in their homes and jobs. These contradictions are true of both men and women. And it uttered that comment. And the relationship to power, we have a culture like powerful men. I say this in the book, we like the idea but dont like powerful women themselves. I love mary dears book on power, a section in this book where i talk about, women feel like they have to apologize for their power, how much of our energy goes into the competitiveness of the world, somebody says you look great, i have dark circles under my eyes, i am hectic in everything falling apart. They hide interviews their own power. In that little section, i talk a little bit about hillary clinton. A line in her book that i found really sad where she talks about, would people like her more if she cried a blue streak or stamps on a table, yes, people wanted to fall apart. Not a terrible powerful woman that we hate, she is just like me. I feel there is more resentment against powerful woman and powerful women are more ambivalent about their power resulting, you learned this from girlhood, hide your power, not stand out from the crowd, talk about the little girl, she doesnt want to fly, it would be too conspicuous. Asking for a raise from a female boss, she knew the boss responded, what makes her think she is so special. I feel that idea that you dont want anyone to think she is so special. You have to say that. It is kind of great, powerful and power. Maybe i am oversimplifying. Power is a little easier for men. Ambivalence in the culture about powerful women, they dont feel as comfortable, i wanted to stray away, how women experience life, how all women experience life, and that would never be me. That would never be me and im sure that is true. There is a sort of sizable portion of women who know what im talking about and recognize some of these things. Host talk about how you see the roles changing the literature of authors or characters and that is impacting social progression. I think that is a very big question. I think obviously theres a ton of amazing women writers, great characters and i do feel to affect things. A lot of this fiction and nonfiction i like the most is about complexity. I noticed in this me too moment, the more interesting things coming out of this moment are fiction and i feel in novels, the questions of power and exploitation, really complicated stories of what happens between two people. I see them explored well in fiction, that helps get people to think about things in a complicated way than in a simple way. There are ways we can think about these things that are not very challenging to us. It is written around these subjects, these political subjects, there is a lot going on, challenging and getting people to see things. Host we have one more question. You cuts touched on it in your last answer but i hope one more person has come over. I want to flip this a little bit, try to group them together, there seems to be a contradiction, but im not so special in women like the ones writing about their own lives and they negotiate this contradiction to deflect or defuse their power. How do you negotiate this contradiction. Guest i have a section in the notebook i talk about this idea of being relatable. He is relatable and they love that word and i hate that word, that should not why are we looking for somebody, i am amazed by this persons idea. I feel like it especially comes up with women writers. I talk about how one of the ways i see women writers making themselves relatable is they have these moments in their writing writing about themselves, what the ima mess moment is is you this brilliant person like Leslie Jamison or baby smith and put in a moment like i was so nervous before i was going to teach my class that i almost threw up or so drunk when i walked down the street that i took off my shoes or i was crying. There is a line talking about crying everywhere she goes and crying in the chinese laundry and i think some of these, not trying to say they are tactics exactly but there is enormous pressure on women when they are taking authority to put in something that shows them as a mess. Im not the daunting, terrifying person you think i am because i have this intellectual confidence. Im actually a mess. We have a famous incident in the early 1940s, one night stand on a train, it is hard to get our mind around, and embarrassing moments, why did she put that in, a biographical story, i think that idea of showing weakness is a way of saying i am not that threatening. I might be threatening. Im not that threatening. This strategy if you go back to Virginia Woolf, as confident, as dazzling, as ambitious as she is, she will have moments, throw back in a pond. As she is taking authority and i think that that, those, that impulse. And like i wasnt, my marriage broke up but i survived at the time. Wouldnt it be better if you put in a scene where you forgot to give your kid breakfast and they matched it into the stroller and the stroller was disgusting, then i tried to and i will put in one of these vulnerable details and it sounded weird but that pressure, to be relatable. Some part of me in this essay in the section of the notebook, why is it relatable, can i just be a terrifying person or do i have to be my best friend. The strategy that you are getting at, the idea of humanizing your self, say im not that special or unusual and i think writers who dont do it, i think of janet malcolm, there are very few, cant think of tons of women writers who deploy in this way. It is a struggle and i dont come out judging anybody are saying theres a right way or wrong way to do it. If one is a confident and powerful writer you need to find if what you are writing seems narcissistic at times unless you do these things and there is a pressure, it is hard and i dont have any answers about it. Anything else you want to share or add as we bring this to a close or should i just make a bold reminder people should buy the book . Sure. Thank you for joining us tonight and being willing to share this phase, an investigation into these ideas and to share this point of your progress. Hope we will have you back in seattle in the actual realm. Got to be good, please pick up a story of the the power notebooks, join us for something else. Talk to you soon. Either and historian jill lepore talks about the covert pandemic at the library of congress. Is a portion of that event. A certain amount of attention, the reopening of america but almost all of the population have been fairly compliant with the need to take action to protect not just yourself but the Larger Community of your neighborhood, city, town. There actually has been a lot that has happened. Out of the political gridlock, hyperpolarization of recent American History since 2008. The trends in polarization are terrific but it would take a lot of leadership at the National Level for Economic Reforms that could of earned a greater tragedy than we are experiencing now. It took a lot of leadership at the congressional level and i wouldnt exactly call it an opportunity but there is absolutely a call for a kind of political courage and political will that has largely been absent. To watch this, all the coverage of jill lepores books, visit our website, booktv. Org and search for her name in the box at the top of the page. Welcome to the hudson institute. I am brian clark and i am talking with Christian Brose about his new book the kill chain defending america in the future of hightech warfare. That Christian Brose just released. He is a former staff director for the Senate Armed Services committee. Prior to that was senior policy advisor for senator john mccain, previously held other positions ov