Welcome to book tvindepth program, this is our special year of fiction on indepth. You see authors such as david baldacci, jody people, Walter Mosley, last month we had david ignatius, Washington Post columnist and thriller writer who writes about the cia and such. This month we are pleased to have Pulitzer Prize winning author Colson Whitehead as our guest with the most recent book is the underground railroad. Mister whitehead, whats the appropriate response when your book are are praised by oprah, president obama, you win the pulitzer and National Book award, whats the appropriate response . It took the pain away. This book is taking off in a way that is startling and wonderful so mostly i just thank my lucky stars and i sleep a little better, im in a better mood generally. And i tried to enjoy it. Its my best effort. Why does that put you in a better mood . Ive been writing for 20 something years, doing fiction for 20 years and you know, sometimes you write a book and people digging and people understand it and then sometimes you write a book and they dont care and it sort of disappears. So you know, i have the pride and i did a good job with the book. And the bonus of other people taking it as well. Your first book was the intuition us, how do you sell a book like that . Exactly, with that book i puta two page description and either , i said to my agent either you did the concept of people having groups of elevator inspectors or you dont. So its your either sort of along for the ride on the long description or not. When i was writing it, my second attempt at a novel, my first one was terrible and it went to a bunch of publishers and everyone hated it. I had agent, the agent jump dumped me and i wasnt going anywhere so for a year and a half i said to my friends i want to write a book about elevator inspectors. It was stupid and they would make fun of me so eventually after a year and a half in writing, i finally got down to what sounded like an interesting book. My newagents , luckily i gave them double agent as well. Is there a connection between the intuition is zone one and the underground railroad . Guest a couple topics i circle around , in these cities, im a new yorker and i Love Learning about new york and vitality and energy from the city. Pop culture, race, race in america, technology and some of these themes are in some books, not so much in others. My book about new york, its about a racialized take on new york as it is black new york. Mypoker book , the hustle. Doesnt have much to say about technology but theres this four or five areas that you kind of circle around. How should people read your book, social commentary, autobiographical . Guest summer autobiographical, differently sag harbor, its about growing up in the 80s and does from my childhood. I would say the underground railroad is my least autobiographical book. Just because im not in there in some sort of coded way and that character which is probably why people like it. But so i think read them from the first page, from beginning to theend, thats a good way, start to finish. And then some books are funny, some are a little more tragic. I hope thats the experience is worth your time. And sometimes its social commentary, sometimes they are commentary on whatever weird thing im going through that year in sag harbor did you benji with a bad haircut . Guest benji is a kid growing up in new york in the 80s. As i did. My life wasnt very interesting so i have to exaggerate , the summer of 85 was not that cool or compelling so you have to take a little bit of lessons. When i started the book i wanted to base characters on my friends and unfortunately none of them appeared on the page, they became less and like my friend david or scott so it started off as autobiographical and im definitely in there but the demands of the story always supersede autobiographical or memoirs, trying to make a compelling story which means exaggerating what actually happened. Host Colson Whitehead, what is the process to get to elevator inspectors or zombies or a underground railroad that actually exists . Guest i like to mix it up and not do the same thing from book to book because i think if you know how to write a certain kind of book, why do it again . Perhaps thats foolish i think writing a book that may be very plot heavy and following up with a book thats not as plot heavy is a way to very it up and not do the same thing. A book that had a firstperson narrator, a book thats funny, not so funny, thats a way to keep it varied for me. So the last couple books on on a diverse kick. I went from sag harbor, a story about the 80s to zone one, a apocalyptic zombie tail, to Noble Hospital which is a poker book to this book, the underground railroad, a historical novel so i am keeping a very different time. I get my ideas from articles. Just weird musings i have on my couch. And so sometimes the ideas stay with you and you get an open spot in your schedule. You consider it but youre ready, do you want to do it, sometimes they fall away. They come from a lot of different places. Host there seems to be a common theme in a lot of your books about a guy who really didnt get the rules of life has a certain unease around other peoples sure, i was going to say its autobiographical but i dont want to take my hand to early, we are here for three hours, i want to save the good stuff for the last hour. I think theres something about an outsider and i think whether you are misanthropic like i can be sometimes or where all sort of outsized way, and an outsider makes a good observer, the protagonist, a good storyteller. Youre in the action also apart so someone who observes and whose part of the scene but also removed i think is a good vehicle for telling a story and definitely in the apocalypse, in the world of elevator inspectors, its nice to have a point of view. Most of the time elevator inspectors sadly, and so my outsider characters in addition for the reader to enter the story. Host zone one didnt come out until 2011 but i think i read an article that you had written as a young guy in eighth or ninth grade. Guest no. I was a big horror fan. I majored a lot in horror fiction and Science Fiction. And love the zombie genre from going back, no, i wrote terrible stories in college and i really didnt start writing fiction until my mid20s but the obsession with zombies does go back to my childhood. I had parentswho love movies, we watched horror movies together and i remember seeing night of the living dead at an early age stayed with me , to refresh your memory, its a story about the eve of the zombie apocalypse. People are trying to hide, they dont know whats happening and the main protagonist is a black man being pursued by white people want to devour him and eat him which of course is part of the story of america. So that growing up as a horror and Science Fiction fan, five books and i thought i was ready to spread my influences and trymy hand at a horror story you say you watched horror movies but the impression is that there is session with horror movies. Sure, i dont know if i want to get all georgie. But yes, a real interest. You know, my brother and i, we were born in the vcr boom we go to crazy eddie, an Electronics Store in new york and read horror movies, Science Fiction movies every friday, go to them, return them and start all over again the next week. And you know, it was sort of Science Fiction, horror and comic books that meeting want to write. I wrote a lot of Marvel Comics, i was growing up. And stephen king novels, i came into my brothers room and i would read them so fantasy, horror, has always seemed to be a potent storytelling tool. And in zone one, i wrote different ideas about what zombies mean for me. Sign my own interpretation and put my own stamp on the genre was fun and important. What do zombies mean . I think different generations interpret horror genres with their own needs. Like dracula, vampires mean something in the 19th century , in england, they mean something to the twilight generation. Zombies mean Something Different to i think teenagers now. To me theyve always been an expression of social anxiety, fear of other people. The zombie story, you go to bed and you wake up in the world has changed. Your loved ones, neighbors, teachers, coworkers are zombies out to get you and they stop pretending. Theyve always been monsters but we put the mask down and now they are out to get you. Thats totally my pathology that i interpret zombies that way. You know, the zombie myth always stayed with me and i also found a way to grapple with these various ideas in theback of my head. Is social anxiety a common trait in zombie movies . I dont know. You know, im not sure. I think it helps, i think worrying about your work or doing a good job maybe a good skill for being a novelist. It helps to not post. Worrying about others what they may think of you . Are you doing a good job, social anxiety versus worry. I think a healthy amount of worry, that helps you make sure that its putting everything into this paragraph for that page. Making sure its coming out right even if you dont, you have books under your belt. Host in the new yorker in 2012 you were quoted as saying to be a good novelist for you, its to fully inhabit onesdelusions and get in to every cookie aspect of ones britishness. Its a handy survival strategy. I think what i like about my different books is that they are sort of allow me to express my ideas about the world, about myself. These different theories and i think writing is becoming a way of me to interpret the world formyself. You figure out how i feel about things, how i feel about vital systems, politics, people and so that license is very important for me. Not being tied to expectations, following my own inclinations and just because writing about an elevator inspector sounds like a bad idea, can you make it work . And can you sell it to the reader at the same time youre selling it to yourself . Sothe delusion that you have something to say , the delusion that your work is worthy of being read by others i think is useful for being an artist. Host where did the germ of the idea for the intuitionist come from . Were you on an elevator, do you see an inspector . Guest in the book that everyone hated, i figured host what was that book by the way . Guest remember gary coleman, the teenage little black boy . A tv critic at the time and he was writing about black imagery in pop culture so i figured ill write a novel about a gary coleman child star, grows up and has misadventures. And it seemed like a great idea to me. In the novel hes on a sitcom called im moving in. He was getting adopted by rich white people. [laughter] so im moving in, for a bit of realism and throughout the book, everyone hated it. So i think i became a writer then. I was going to get a real job, become a lawyer or Something Like that but i was writing this book and maybe people will like it, maybe they wont but ill learn to write by the end of it. But i figured people like plots, maybe i will have a plot driven book. So i wrote a lot of detective novels and a lot of suspense and i thought i was watching 2020 as ioften do in those days, in my 20s. In the 1990s and there was a piece on the hidden dangers of escalators. Apparently if you dont repair escalators they can detach from the sides and lose a tow, its a terrible thing obviously. And they had an escalator expend inspector that the interview. And i said thats a random job and then growing up in new yorkalways see , there is a law, not necessarily enforced anymore but the elevator inspectors sign a certificate, everything here, everythings fine and they come once a year to your work or your school and suddenly you see that the elevator inspector has been there. Wouldnt it be cool if an elevator inspector had to become an inspector , tosolve a criminal case . Ha, funny, postmodern detective story so i went to the library to see what skills and elevator inspector would bring to a criminal case and of course the answer was none because there elevator inspectors so it became more like a murder mystery but solving the mystery of a fallen elevator and i made up a culture for elevator inspectors, i figured they are conservative and possessive, that became the empiricists who does it the right way, the intuition us who are sort of aggressive and that duality plays out in the book in different ways. The elevator inspectors school, elevator inspector philosophies and really i was trying to teach myself how to write. I havent had a female protagonist before so i had a female protagonist. I didnt have a book that had a plot for linear momentum so it was trying to do that and then i took it in this weird whimsical idea of an elevator inspectorsolving a criminal case and following through to its execution. So, the captain. Prior to starting this interview, you look at your books here on the table and said tory for the clunkers that you had to read. What do you consider to be a clunker . I think theyre all pretty good but hopefully if you do something for a long time you get better at it. And you know, certain books ill think about and i wonder why did i use so many asked kids . Wasnt there a simpler way of saying that . Maybe that book i could lose a page or two here or there but hopefully, you become a better writer and do things in a more efficient way. Hopefully you get better and better and then obviously you plateau and start sucking but hopefully im still in the Getting Better face and Getting Better at my job, taking it out to the next level. Does im moving in still exist . Guest the manuscript is there. For a while i thought maybe ill strip mine it for similes or something but its really terrible and the energy would take up, my now very high standards. So its in my drawer and if my children have a gambling debt, they can sell it for some money 30 years from now. Make some quick cash. Pawnbroker. So twyla may watson is one of your female protagonists. Corot is another, whats the reason to write for a womans point of view . I think women exist and i think some of them tell different stories, you should get different points of view so its part of that. I have this thing about male protagonists for this book so which seemed sort of wise to mix it up. I think if you know how to do something, why do it . So emma may watson, i couldnt take my hipster new york voice, that was in my firstnovel. I was forced to, i chose a third personnarrator. A female protagonist, which i hadnt done before and by doing it i could hopefully become a better writer. Which i had done before. And then before i had a few female narrators in rome, theres a famous narrative written by harry jacobs called instance in the life of a slave girl, he writes about how when the slave girl becomes a slave woman, they grow into much more terrible form of slavery. You now praise your masters desires which you didnt before. Of course its about more babies, that means more slaves, more property if youre a master. That predicament with female slaves , you were the other point. Sometimes im trying to mix it up, sometimes im trying to learn something and you know, keep the challenges going. What was your favorite ones right . Guest i think you know, this book was hard to write because i was broke. This book is hard to write because i was broke and i was depressed. There are different challenges and then when you finish you can look back and say oh, it was pretty terrible but it was a special time in my life so i think with the noble hustle, perhaps that was the audience but bob noble hustle was one of the most fun to write. Its a humor book taking off from a trip i took to the world series of poker. I just tried to cram as many jokes as i could in their area theres a journalistic framework, so theres linear movement. I really was trying to cram as many weird jokes and bit of myself into it. And it was really fun. I think it started from a journalistic assignment, there was a magnet call grant land which was popculture in sports for a couple years and they had some great writing and they called me up to see if i wanted to write about the world series. The world series of poker and i was like i dont want to go to vegas, is really hot but then i said what if we are paying you for the article, we paid your entrance fee and you got to go to the world series . Ill do that. But i do actually know how to play tournament poker so i started cramming. I would drop my daughter off at school. And the other parents would say what are you up to . Im going to Atlantic City to train or a poker tournament so i got on the bus to Atlantic City and gamble and come back. And then i got to the world series and you know, i stayed at home mostly, for the first time i had to get out of my comfort zone and basically provide this area around the account. So get out of the comfort zone, learn how to play poker so i wouldnt embarrass myself, my family and new york at the world series of poker. And then when i was writing it, i was writing an article and when you write a novel, write a joke, you make yourself laugh, you see it before someone else read it and you feel stupid backing your own jokes. But with writing in a serial way or like dickens did back in the bay and those that isd, you get that Immediate Response and people like it and i did and it gave me energy to keepgoing so it was a very sort of special writing experience. In terms of the material , in terms of how it came to be so i look upon that six months very fondly. Host imgoing to paraphrase the first line of that book. I got to wear sunglasses inside. It was good for me because im half blood english. Guest for years ive been told i have a good poker face and i realized that because i was half dead inside. Which people mistake for the by half mask of a good poker player. My National Lack ofaspect was for once an asset. In certain situations. You want me to unpack half dead . Host ill post you in our therapy sessions a little bit. You do write about having a mask and you do write about the fact that you are semiimpressed, hermetic when you are writing and that you are adifferent person. Is that important, is that depression important to your writing . I think it partly is impartially i think its good to have a healthy joking relationship with the things you do in life whether its art or anything else. So not taking myself too seriously, i think is important. I think in terms of sharing how i feel about my work with other people, this design is important. As far as i know, theyre just sort of crawling along the pavement trying to