And it just happened to Editorial Department which has three people, control of the weekly book page and there is a change in the administration and i moved one step up in the person youve been running the book page moved from one step up and asked if i take over the book page and i said sure because demand for ebooks. It really was purely accidental. I started editing the page with reviews by other people the people who couldnt pay anything but the book itself. In North Carolina come a very good novelist wrote me a note and said why dont you write something for the page yourself, not just a book news thing, but a review. I thought thats a good idea. So i started writing down the lefthand corner of the page, a book review. It was just a case of wanting meeting to another. I was lucky enough to get a fellowship at harvard in 196869 for the Academic Year and i thought i would be studied magical issues but ended up studying american nurture. Youre supposed to go up and expand your mind and not im brownie points. So i discovered that what i really wanted to do and it turned out to be book reviewing. I had my back to greensboro and i wrote a letter to the editor at the new republic as i was very upset about a review that they had run in a think 1971 or 72 about peter taylor. As you know the magazine is going right now, but it was a very good magazine back in the early 70s then we went more said he liked my letter and i said i would write some reviews for them. I was in florida. I thought wow, this is the best magazine in the country and i was really deeply honored to be asked to write it for them. Tonight it for about five years i wrote 50 or 60 pieces for them. As you know from interviewing authors in the people and covering book related events, the world of books is a small place and word gets around the world got around that i was reasonably competent in places like the New York Times book review started calling me up in inviting me to do things. Eventually, in the summer of 1972, the editor of book world of Washington Post invited me to start contributing. I did that intranet lay until 1978 when i joined the washington star is this book editor and i stayed there until it told that in august of 81. You know i have been a pretty lucky boy. It was a ticket to walk across town and i was there for 33 years in four months exactly a third of a century. How many votes . Welcome i calculated that i reviewed about 3000 bucks for the post and if you add the monthly the weekly column i used to write for the first time in five years i was there close to 4000 pieces. How many nonfiction, fiction . Thats an interesting question. When i was the outcome i build my reputation and fiction, particularly southern fiction which interests me a great deal. I have no tolerance about the schools of creative writing, which have taken over the fiction writing establishment. There are very few writers American Writers of fiction now who dont go through the Riding School metal which teaches people to write about what you know and what they know because they are gone as themselves. Too much fiction is coming back and coming out that his family autobiographical, rather than narcissistic. That doesnt interest me. In the last 10 years its been 95 nonfiction here before that it was about 50 50. Host Jonathan Yardley what are some of those schools . The one that comes to mind is iowa. Weve got them d. C. George mason, Johns Hopkins is one of the most notorious. My alma mater umc chapel hill is a good one. They all have something that students expect that you can go and take a course in writing which seems to be projecting yourself on the paper. Host if you were going to teach a course on writing what would be two of your goals . Guest ive done that. Two semesters at the university of North Carolina greensboro back in the late 60s i gasped. In two semesters at Johns Hopkins and what they call the writing seminars back in the early 80s. Those cases i taught at opinion writing. Attack editorials writing book reviews, writing columns expressing opinions in intelligible and coherent way. So that is what i would do. My plans for retirement to not include teaching. I didnt like it very much. If you are teaching a class, where students hand in papers, its that you have good students. The truth of the matter, if you teach a seminar at 15 kids and you have to good students, you are very lucky. They may be bright, but theyre not interested, more preoccupied. And the place at Johns Hopkins where it abraded fenner is fall down, but its not a major part of curriculum those students are majoring in something else. So my writing class was something that took it as they were sort of interested in it. They mightve thought it was an easya, which it probably was. They were all nice kids but only in the four semesters i did at the universities i was hired a total of two really good students, only one of what i would call went into journalism and how to victory in the New York Times. Host in your last column for the Washington Post come the Washington Post come you write your approach book reviewing is a journalist, not a litterateur and ive remained one to this day. What does that mean . Guest at cherie blair newspaper boy and i majored in english at usc but to be honest, what i really majored in was the Student Newspaper where i spent all day long here that eventually was an extraordinarily come a wonderful happy, happy experience. As far as literature the rest of my life has been a catch. On my own. I think i am a pretty good reader. I think that i have learned what to look for in a book. As i sat in the paragraph that you referred to im approaching a book as if i were a reporter. What is this book about . What is the story. What in it is notable in what is not . Wouldve the singular things i need to tell the reader about . What are the things i dont need to get into . What do i think of the book . The leader expects an opinion. What does the book feel like which means i give them quotations from attacks that they can see how this person writes, the style. In some cases the person writes very badly and frankly its always a lot of fun. When youre dealing like ian mcewan or peter taylor or in tyler, you till with someone who you want to get that across to the reader. Host okay here is that a billion dollars question. What is the importance of a book . Guest books generally . That is a big question. Books are the repositories of essentially the millennia of human culture. That is where we put it. Everything goes into the pages of books eventually. Even science goes into the books. People this is not a leading nation in the sense of the book reading nation. Im sorry to say we are not a book reading nation in the way france. We do have many readers as ive known from the wonderful response i have to my farewell column, but books are not a big part of American Culture at the way they are saying british culture, but they are still there. If youre in business, your reading Business Books overwriting them. Certainly if you want to write your autobiography, the guitarist for the Rolling Stones cant remember his name but he wrote a fantastic memoir called life wonderful wonderful book. Book survey of not more than book people. They serve the general culture in all sorts of ways. My wife works at the library of congress. Just started doing that in the last couple of years. There is no greater repository of Human Knowledge in this country than the library of congress. Host did you get to choose which books . Guest eventually. When i was first starting monty haro in the greensboro daily news in the washington star, i was the book editor and chose what i did. But when i was a freelancer, writing for various publications as being a person ive gotten to know when i was freelancing for the post in the 70s, i would look at the regular issues of Publishers Weekly and send them books that might interest them. The bill made the choices or you would call up and say are you interested . I found my way into a lot of good looks that were the peoples suggestions. When i first joined the post in august of 81 brigitte weeks was running both world, an old friend of mine. Fortunately, we got along very well. First it was sort of a collaborative process. We would go into a book room and look through them and decide, does this interests you . And gradually, bridget went on to work on the book of the month club another people succeeded her, putting my wife. I would say by 1995 i would always clear whoever was running the book section at the time. Host keith moon. That is the Rolling Stones. Guest keith moon has written a book. Its mick jagger sidekick. Im feeling very because i do remember his name and its a terrific book. Host did you ever pick up a book reluctantly that is conversely a book he was looking forward to that really disappointed you . Guest that happens more often i would say. Books are like everything else. They are not black and white. They are shades of gray. Most have been taken recommended dings you wish were better. I have been at used to be a too positive with a reviewer. I dont take thats true. The negative reviews would not keep the leadership interested for very long. People are looking not so much for things they might want to create. I have always felt that there is an important advice function. This is in restaurant reviewing or movie reviewing. People like you to see what they might be interested in reading. Seaward rising consumers. Every less that its not my job in an elevated way but its one of the functions of service. And so i remember it years and years ago, for the first 25 years i was at the post a sunday book review in book world, a weekday book of style and my monday Opinion Column in the style section. Sometimes filling out and say what her state or whatever day it was was a problem. I remember one day going to pull down a book called a good man in africa a first novel by a quite young british writer named william boy. I said sure and i took it back to baltimore where he lived in when upstairs and read it in bed and almost literally fell off the bat i was laughing so hard. They have since become one of my absolute writers. Everything since is different surprised. He wrote the most recent james bond novel. I am told it is good, very witty. So the surprise like that doesnt happen very often. So its very gratifying. Because you can tell people about a good but also because you found one. I think that i dont usually go into a book review with any particular expectations. I go into it hoping that when i pick up max hastings inferno 650 pages a couple years ago about the entire world were to come i thought is going to be a lot of work. It really wasnt. Was a fantastic book that i couldnt put down. Sometimes you get into a book and you think ive got 475 pages ahead of me. There were a few books that surprised me and disappointed me. Lie down in darkness which was sort of a monument in my growth as a reader this one of the very much. It was very programmatic. Host on the fourth reading. Guest one of the things and going to do was going down to peru, and i will be reading accountthe account of microscope probably for the fifth time. Ive read the great gatsby god only knows how many times. Im going to read henry james book only for the second time. I just read for the first time a few years ago. All these books you havent read and the are also books you want to go back to. Host well get to the. There are viewers screaming right now teeth richards. Guest keith richards. Host what is it about a count of monte crisco that brings you back . Guest eyed rita. I dont know who the translator is. Its about this it 1200 pages maybe more. Its an amazing story. Its a book, its not a literary novel in the sense ian mcewan is a literary writer. You dont hold you high literary standards but as a piece of entertainment it is out of this world. Somebody else was really good series entertainment and thats john grisham. Isits easy to turn up your nose at somebody who sold 250 million books. But the fact he is a very good writer, very smart. His most recent novel something mountain is about the coal business in kentucky or west virginia. He has really powerful feelings about things. He mostly house powerful things about the law and people who abuse it. Lawyers i mean. I whispery reluctant to read it and i finally thought about my views like this guy, ive got to do. I said enforceable with the firm. I couldnt live a good it was. I read it twice. Love it. Michael connelly, mr. Ryder, fantastic. Karl down in florida dennis lane. Have you read mystic river . Incredible book. It will break your heart. Clint eastwood made a beautiful movie out of it. I think sean penn and kevin bacon. Yeah, its a wonderful, wonderful movie. Host mr. Gardner to youve mentioned a couple of perdition office max hastings, ian mcewan but is there a difference between british and American Writers country well its their language and they did coined it, and i have to tell you in all candor i think they write it better than we do. But on the other hand our english has more energy than tears. We are more willing to coined phrases, to coined words. An awful lot of the slime that a script into the British English is american slang, and the british writers who are not snobby about americans, and max hastings comes to mind and william boyd comes to mind and the in the queue and comes to mind but they understand that weve made contributions to light which as well as they have. British writing tends to be a little more formal. Sometimes a little bit stuffy, but i think the present generation of british, i say my generation people in their 70s or older people like Penelope Lively and anita bruckner, they are really wonderful writers. The closest we come, i mentioned women but theres nothing deliberate about it, but the closest we the people like and tyler and gail godwin, both of whom are very good writers. But american novelists under 50 i had a hard time naming any that i would want to go back and read. That probably has something to do with being how old i am. Host you do right in your final column again, im an oldfashioned guy in a new fashion world. Guest i think ive been pretty good at adapting to change. Back in the miami herald, i was a very early computer user. And when i was working for the post, i first started there, i had, people would laugh. You could see the computer that the post getting to take him to baltimore, it was in the cities. It had a tiny little printer that looked like it tickertape. The printer was this wide. But i wrote on that and the printed on that end of file copies electronically. I can do all that sitting out in your greenroom is my iphone six plus. Im always interested in new things but i also there is trying believe in the promise of good, old things. Host speaking of all things, book reviews are going away across the country. They have been. Guest certainly book review sections are going away. I mean, i remember when my first book came out it was evocative of provided was published in 1977 and i got a full page in Time Magazine with the big picture. Ive never been much event of time that could thats a kick you know . 4 Million People or something reading that magazine. Times book review section is a joke. They might review one book a month, and as usual a pop star autobiography us like that. The post is probably reviewing about as many books a week as he used to in book world but they are scattered through out the paper come in the outlook section on sundays the style section on sundays, on wednesdays in the art section on sunday in the business section. They are there but theyre not there in an organized, coherent way. Look, i was very sad when book world was killed. I think it was in 2010 and my wife was the last editor of book world as a full freestanding section to it was a good section but it was the best in the country. No doubt about that. It didnt have the advertising support that the New York Times book review did but it was a better section. The reviews were livelier and more readable, and does less of an in crowd sort of thing. But yes and a number of readers wrote to me after my farewell piece said whats happening to book reviewing . Is it now reader comments at amazon. Com a . Well, some of those are pretty smart. I dont pay an awful lot of attention to them but my wife and one of my sons and i have all published books, so can they keep an eye on how theyre doing on amazon sometimes the comments and some of them are pretty intelligent. Most recent book is a biography come has got some very smart comments at amazon and im sure at other places as well. Maybe book reviewing is being democratized a little bit, which is not a bad thing. I didnt go to school to study to be a book review. I get into because i love books, and it turned out i could review them pretty well. But there was no plan there. I occasionally over the years have gotten letters from bright young people how do i get to where you are . Theres no real answer. Could i try to you know offer your services to the local paper or try to get some book reviews published, did some experience. It doesnt all happen at once. Its a very different world now, and i the National Book critic circle i havent been a number of it for years but it still exists. Ive looked at the list of the membership at a dont recognize a single name. They are all writing summer but i dont know where. Host we have a couple of different awards here in the trendy. Weve got the nbcc, the National Book awards. Are they important . To the people who write and publish books that are very important to to the people who read them, i dont think particularly. We were talking before we are on the air about these awards and agreeing that when people see a little seal on the dust jacket of the book x prize oh that won a prize. But its not the same here as the booker prize is in england at the booker prize really sells books, which is why theres so much rivalry and why the Selection Process is so fraught with politics and other things. Im glad im not over there. But i think, i think that the pulitzer in fiction and history and biography probably has more influence on book buying habits than the other process, so but because its better known to the pulitzer is a wellknown prize. You know if you ever get a publisher on this program that has published a pulitzer winning book, ask him or her about it because i be interested in what they would say. I dont think goes up like that. Host Jonathan Yardley is there ever a review you wrote that you regret or like you give us read somebodys book and you just didnt want to publish it . Guest no. Im trying to think. There are reviews that are wished i had done a better job on. I think anybody who does anything come any line of work at all is going to have that feeling. I wish id done a better job. Ive sometimes felt, you know, i didnt really fully understand the book, and they dont think i dont think i got it across fully in the review. Ive written some pretty tough book reviews. I wont making the authors of the books, but ive written some reviews that in are the people who wrote them and did nothing to help the sales of the books. But the reviews were honest. They came out of an honest opinion carefully a ride at just as the praise that, i know for example, that i can think of two books that i reviewed, and i should interject here book reviewing is not a very central part of the book selling process. The most important ingredient is wordofmouth. Its what your friends say what your friendly bookseller says. And, of course, your friendly bookseller is not a big computer out in seattle or wherever amazon is. But the recommendations of friends and family are the most important things, and word of mouth it sort of trickles around that becomes a kind of wordofmouth as other people say we like this book enough to put it on that list. I can think of very, very few books over my career that i know i helped. One was gale got once novel a mother and two daughters, which i really love. Shes told me herself that that review made the book. It became a national bestseller. You know im glad of that because its a wonderful book. And then back about 20 years ago there was Peter Taylors short story collection, the old forest. Data was out of the bus ride in the country and nobody read him except people in a tiny little world of books, a tiny tiny in a world of books. I gave the old forest and all out full marching band review in the post, and the book became a bestseller. His career after that, his next book won a pulitzer prize, and i think that there are plans afoot to put it into the library of america. Believe me, those moments dont come along often. Mostly its a work a day job. As i said to me for rupees i loved the job. Toward the end it got a little, i got tired of having a little pad of paper and pencil and making us all the time i was ready to it felt like graduate school. But its also, i noticed that there was a piece online just a couple of days ago by a british writer tim parks arguing that reading with pen and paper is the best way to do. He wasnt taking issue with me. It was a completely separate peace. His argument was that you get to the pith of the book if youre reading it that way, and theres some truth to the. If youre just reading for fun you can just sort of sale through. But i am looking forward to doing some sailing through. Host you also listed in your final column some of your favorite books, and some books you didnt review were brett atkinsons trilogy on world war ii and. Guest right the liberation trilogy. Host y. No review treasury atkinson, whom i know only slightly, was a colleague of mine at the Washington Post for a number of years and book world had a proper policy of not, ill post people not reading other posts people. That ruled him out. I guess by the time he started writing the liberation trilogy he may have left the post but there was still a very strong post association. I wasnt really, i wasnt doing much reading about world war ii when the first of those books cannot but it was really hastings in fargo and the book called savage continent about europe after world war ii. In for no. Inferno. A member the day russell died in the day japan surrendered. I was six years old, five years old. But theres a lot of really, really good scholarship about world war ii coming out now and the aspect of the history is pretty much over. People are beginning to understand that of course, it was a war that had to be fought and had to be one, but it wasnt fun. A lot of really, really terrible things happen, a lot of bad things were done and savage continent is a superb example of getting behind the mythology of the French Resistance which is nowhere nearly as heroic as the french like to think it was. So i didnt review his books because he worked for the post, and i just read them in 2014. All in the big gulp. Absolutely, i just, i am in awe of the. He writes beautifully. His research is stunning. You really feel the battle of monte casino you feel youre there. Slogging across europe after dday wonderful stop. Host another nonfiction historian you list in your favorites is jean edward smith. Guest he has written three good president ial biographies. Eisenhower most recently but the ones of the ive listed our fdr and Ulysses Grant. The one that matters is grant because his reputation has taken a real slide after his death and he was thought of as a drop on at a cheaper politician. He was a very distinguished and accomplished man. We live on logan circle in washington directly across the circle from the house those but what Ulysses Grant junior. Our apartment is the first floor of the building built by a friend of his. We have the only original flowing into going after it was turned into condos, and we like to think that he leases grant trod the boards. I spent much too much money buying a grant signature which hangs in our living room. S. , junior has the remarkable capacity to distill large, complicated lives into 500 page narratives and to make them thoroughly readable. He tells me that weve since corresponded, he tells me is about to come out with a biography of george w. Bush and i will be perfectly honest and say im not sure im glad im not around to do that. Host you go to the sunday post. You look at the bestseller list, and up there at the top of the nonfiction is unbroken. Fiction, don girl. Don girl. Would you pick those up automatically to review why are these bestsellers. Thats what led me to john grisham. I have not read Laura Hillenbrand and the senate with a bit because i gather hes very good at it at the shes also just as a person quite courageous. I will read those. Thats one of the things retire before, particularly the first book about the horse. But the bestseller list as a general rule they have very little relationship to my own tastes. I dont think im, i definitely do not think im a literary snob but, you know selfhelp books movie star autobiographies, you know, sometimes as in keith richards, sometimes a person in the world of pop or Popular Culture can come up with a genuinely good book and im thrilled when it happens. But as a general rule, the bestseller lists tend to be celebrations of mediocrity, and when someone like laura gets on the top, more power to her. Im always conscious of whats on them, but most of the books they get the bestseller lists are going to get on them whether or not i review them. That are kind of self fulfilling prophecies and so im more inclined to think of the book reviewer serves a more useful function of bringing peoples attention to books either that they dont know about or that they know vaguely about but would like to know more about. Biographies, history serious fiction of which theres not much. Host 45 million copies of j. D. Salingers catcher in the rye. Deserved . Guest no. In the course of that second reading series of mine, i said that catcher in the rye and Ernest Hemingways the old man and the sea are probably the two worst famous american novels and i stand passionate behind that statement. I think as a set at the end of my second reading of catcher in the rye, i think the reason, one of the reasons it has lasted so long is, although its about a very little literary merit, its about the transparent sincerity. And people dig that. They know when you know i could never write a john grisham whats his name . Patterson because i dont have that particular gift to if i did everybody would know i was faking it. Salinger wasnt taking it. It was from the heart. It was from a rather interesting art in my opinion but people responded to that sincerity. It also came up just in the moment in American Culture when we were discovering teenagers. I was a teenager when it came out. It came out i think in 51 so had just become a teenager. I remember reading it and thinking, what is the word that Holden Caulfield uses . A bunch of malaria . I thought this was dont. A lot of people read and theyre not all 15. Its staggering. Yeah, hes one of the fascinating figures in american literature, going silent after his second or third book leading that strange, reclusive life very strange relationships with women, holed up in new hampshire, i believe it was but occasionally willing to let somebody in to talk to them if it seemed to serve his purposes. I dont know. And then you had hemingway. I think one of come occasionally there is justice in the literary world, and to think that justice is coming to understand what the not much of his work survives. Its beginning to be be viewed as very mannered very selfconscious. Some of the earth short stories are very good. Theres some passages in farewell to arms that are good, and that strange the more a movable feast, about pairs in the toys was published after his death has some good stuff and also has some nasty so the he was a nasty man. The stuff about f. Scott its gerald. Scots was not adequate. I can read hemingway anymore. Fitzgerald will last. May be the only the great gatsby and a couple short stories, but literary opinion is very harsh. Books dont last very long. Im not sure that theres a single American Writer still alive who will be read at the end of the century. I would be a little surprised. I think Norman Mailer is fast taking a nosedive. Occasionally your sorry. I mean ive always thought that Theodore Dreiser was one of the most important and vowed the american, i dont think hes right outside of american lit class in college now. Anybody, any general reader can read that book. Great profit. But literary reputation is a strange thing, and so many other books that i was reading in the 50s, when i was in college those writers, nobody reads them anymore. I think john cheever was a wonderful writer is fading. There were a whole group of people who vote for the new yorker, Jean Stafford and one of those poets who wrote for the new yorker, there was a lot of really really wonderful writing in the 1950s. But most of it is disappearing. Host how would publishers approach you . With the lobby you to review guest well sure. Even to this day i suspect that when i am put under the ground, that my email will be clattering with, hi jonathan i would like to share with you. Back when i was really a fulltime book reviewer working at home, first in baltimore and then here in washington, i would get catalogs and a lot of unsolicited review copies, which was mainly a problem of how do you dispose of them . But when i was younger, i knew a lot of people in the publishing industry, and liked a lot of them. I would go to new york, which i did in those days, and have lunch with people. But they werent really these people have become my friends so as a general just sitting, you know somebody would take me to the four seasons as i didnt have to pay. Suited me just fine. There were and ensure still are a lot of very nice people in that business, a lot of smart people most of whom are underpaid many of whom are in it because they genuinely love books. But i would occasionally get a phone call jonathan, this is soandso at random house we really think highly of such and such would you like to have a look at it . But they cant, you know they can pressure you beyond giving you a book and hoping that you open it. And let me tell you everybody all my friends used to think it was christmas every day when the mailman and the ups guy came but it really wasnt. It was a pain in the keys to. Those had to go somewhere. Keister. I made some pretty Good Charities very happy for quite a long time but it was a nuisance. Host final question mr. Yardley give us your sense of the state of the publishing industry. Guest influx, but healthier than people think. Ebooks are there. Youre most likely to see them i think on airplanes. I have one. My wife gave me a kindle when it first came out. I didnt like it. I do have a tablet. Its not an apple tablet but i have a tablet that has a nice screen for reading books, and ive a few books in it but ive never actually read more than a chapter or two. It would be fun. You know, if it keeps people reading, great. My generation is headed for the last roundup, and beyond those people who are under 50, i dont know how theyre going to be served by the book industry and how the book industry will deal with probably changing reading and buying patterns. But i dont think its going away. As you know big firms are consolidated and random house is not about 10 firms that were all separate what i got started, and ditto for Simon Schuster in england. All three of those very good firms, published a lot of very good books. Penguin publishers max hastings. I think hold publishers recommend concentric Simon Schuster of which is my wife. Good books to get published. Publishers do care about them. One of the great frustrations for many authors i know this because ive had the experience myself, is working very hard on a boat and the publisher not working very hard to push it. They have to make they publish more books than they should and they have to make decisions about which ones theyre going to give you and which ones were just going to toss out there and let them sink or swim. The once they get beyond they do a good job on. Ive spent my working life as an ancillary of it. So its my business in a way, and i love it. I wish it got speedos but Jonathan Yardley thanks for being on booktv. Guest thank you. My pleasure. You are watching booktv television for serious readers. You can watch any program you see here online at booktv. Org. Heres a look at some books that are being published this week. Look for these titles in bookstores this coming week and watch for the authors in the near future on booktv and on booktv. Org. 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