And over the past 12 years the center has awarded 44 major fellowships to working biographers. Each of these fellowships is now worth 72,000. So, not chump change. Today some 20 biographies have been published including ruth franklins biography of Shirley Jackson which won the Prestigious National book critics circle award for biography. I also want to spread the news about our brandnew unique Masters Program in biography and memoir that has just started this autumn with at least 17 students enrolled which is phenomenal and brenda is actually a former director of the leon leavy center and teaches one of the courses. Wednesday september 25 o 25th at 6 30 p. M. With david nassau getting the annual lecture on biography. Tonight im delighted to have with us and those are in conversation with brenda. As i said brenda is a former director of the center and the author most recently of the impeachment, the trial of Andrew Johnson and the dream of a just nation a very widely reviewed and timely book for our times. The last book is why this world a biography for the National Book critics circle award. The book was just published two days ago and is already an amazon best seller that garnered quite interesting reviews in the New York Times and new yorker and elsewhere. In todays New York Times, its described as a book as handsome, provocative and troubled as its subject. This is a biography not to be ignored. Brenda will interrogate now for about 40 minutes. Its an interrogation of the author. Then they will take some questions at the end and afterwards, both then and brenda will be signing their books sold by books on call in new york city. So, please tell us about susans life. [applause] thank you. First of all, thank you. Its wonderful to be here with you and your wonderful new book. Its a book for our times and its going to be i think already the definitive word of susans. You did an enormous amount of work for this book and one of the things that is stunning about it the material you have to go through in the archives and i dont even know how many interviews there were. I think its been said and you told me this its not really an interrogation of a great admirer and of course in this book and i consider myself an honored friend so its nice to be here interrogating you as a result of that. I understand that you are the socalled authorized biographer. I guess there have been unauthorized books and i wonder if you can talk a little bit about what that means for an audience who may not know what that is. What are the advantages or maybe the disadvantages of the authorization and then we get to susan. That is an interesting question. Its very hard to explain even though it doesnt seem like a hard concept to me. I was the authorized biographer but this book is in the authorized biography. When you say authorized biography it sounds like you got a seal of approval. I have to be independent to draw my conclusions. In the thoughts and opinions about her often were correct and even more often incorrect. I wouldnt have stepped into that. I thought finally off the hook i can go to the beach or something. Its a nice day for the bookstores, which is what i usually do. I got an email saying we have appointed you. Some people including her son and her publisher had read a bunch of books and thought it was something i could take on. So then i had an agreement that i thought the state could look at the book and comment on the buck and ibook and if there werl issues we could talk about that thebut they could make suggestis and those were hopeful. Did the that give you accesso the numbers of people or maybe it inhibited some of those. It gave access to some. There was a rift between her son, david, and her partner. The people in their world split into these camps for all kinds of reasons i go into in going e book. That didnt go well postmortem. They didnt like it because they thought i was davids little errand boy or something. Annie did eventually speak to me but the exciting thing i got access to or the archives that were restricted. You made a tremendous use of their journals in the book and you have a strong voice i want to talk about and i mean that in a completely positive sense but of course she has a strong voice and in the book is a difference between the inner voice or personal voice whatever you want to call it, and the voice that she cultivated for the public even though theyve changed over time. I was wondering i incoming to pt the book together, when did you begin to think about the motives you used and let me just quote here because there is one that is very interesting and i think you might give this away you say the process gives narrative to the writers life. One of the things we want to talk about the mindless progress so you are looking for the way she thinks in that sense but you have to have a way to develop that further reader to make that explicit. When did you begin to fear that you have an understanding of the terms that you present to us . It goes back to the question of how many opinions were affixed to her. In her 20s was the first time she was featured as a character so she was quite fictional seeming and they say things about her that are not true. One of the things that happened with her is peoples opinions are often very negative about her works are to give an example, she wrote four novels and a lot of stories. Its easy for people and common for people to say she wrote these great essays and all of these horrible novels. Theres two ways first of all, i dont agree. I like some of the novels and think some of the essays fell short. In the biographical setting, i am not the person judging that in the way that a book critic looking at this as one book saying three stars or four stars, whats interesting is that she is in constant evolution. Not all books are equally fabulous but they lead to something. Its hard for people to understand but understanding it in the book very often we just kind of exemplify that over time but she really is evolving. There are certain motifs that are interesting maybe we should go back for people who dont know much about her life. Im going to talk about her life and just for people who dont know, she is from the west which many people dont know and she lived in so many places, california, arizona. If you want to talk about that . Its important not only that shes from the west but her father died in china of all places are just 33. Her mother was an alcoholic from new jersey from montclair mayor to a place los angeles was a little city still before the world for. Her mother grew up as hollywood grew up in the former jewish neighborhood east of downtown that was ruined by all sorts of typical disasters. Her mother and grandmother from eastern poland came to los angeles because they loved the movies, they loved this thing was just coming up. It became one of the most recognizable and Important Industries in the country all around the world and hollywood became something that was certainly famous symbols though. The first books about hollywood in brazil come out and about 1913, 1914. The mother loses her mother and then the father dies and the mother is an unhappy woman whose beautiful and dedicated to appearances and is always kind of looking for a place to be happier. They moved to florida for a while, new york, new jersey, arizona, los angeles and then finally to hawaii. This is an isolating experience for people if you know someone in the army not only did she not have a father but she doesnt really have a mother or any friends because shes being moved around every couple of years. She has her books and the world that is in her mind and that becomes extremely important. Even though she wrote eloquently about the elements and someone that suffered terribly especially when she had Breast Cancer the kind of chemotherapy that was available and the kind of surgery. Even when she had an abortion when she was very young, the only anesthesia they turned up the radio loud so people wouldnt hear you scream. There is a lo a lot of stuff tht people didnt see behind this figure. Then it becomes an interesting phenomenon that there is an iconic figure that there is a human being living and suffering behind not very often and point of fact she is evolving and changing and one of the interesting things. To be very clear about the fact when she got married very young and barely knew the man she was marrying. This would be astonishing to read. If he was assigned reviews or things to do, she read the books in most of the reviews. And she was excited about that. Beyond that, beyond the reviews its clear shes the writer of the book he became known for and that in private she was very clear about what she had done but it wasnt very publicly known. One of the fascinating things about this book and life is she seems like a very contemporary figure. Actually a lot of the categories have changed so much that its hard to think back to the times. I saw her sister a couple of days ago and of course you wrote it, we all know that wasnt something you could really say and there was a piece in the guardian they were not going to break this news that she had written freud and a lot of the older women that i interviewed during this process all emailed me like what is everybody so surprised about, it happened to everybody. Everybody has forgotten what it was like. We all rode our husbands books back in 1948. One thing in the 21st century she was born in 1933, hitler came to power, not lately. She did it and it was so funny to see the outrage among the younger women compared to the eye rolling big deal from the older women because the academic women were very rare and her generation. There were very few role models and i think in the biographical setting again i will show how it is writing a womans life and i guess that she is younger than the base of it. Not to bite off too much. She said that growing up if you were an intellectual that wanted to ride is only one figure that you could really look too and that was not on kerry was biography by her daughter who was the only member of the family not to win a nobel prize and her mother got two of them. Her husband, brother, dad, everybody but she did write an excellent biography and that was the only thing girls had to look to. So, now we are used to a woman professor, writer, journalist. The first journalist ever in brazil. It is called short and kind of change. One of the things, was the title her title or dof her title or dt was his . I dont know, but it is very her. Thats why i wanted to ask that. The reason i thought it was so interesting is that there is a kind of tension that i feel and i think that you speak of it as moralist and she talks about it early on to the interpretation and that we understand art as something that is purely aesthetic and yet when we think of the later work especially when she revisits photography she becomes herself so clearly a moralist and i think that was always there in a way. Its interesting that would be the title whether it was hers or his. The worst you could see they collaborated. She was always interested in these are sort of the moral response of the artist, and you make much of this representation which becomes interesting. Its very problematic and fun to talk about if anybody will indulge me. But i think that there is some its funny because she says i made here at him twice over. So you think so are we. We know what thats like. Its not the easiest. An ideal world perfectionist is held up to you in a lot of different ways and i think that in america particularly if you come from the west and this is what is important to talk about californias literature. Gertrude stein came from the west in this sort of similarity. Its similar because the responsibility to live up to this country that you have been given becomes very isolated and i think you can find that already in massachusetts in the 17th century. God has given you this place as the richest country in the world and you are a little slow if not quite measuring up, so i felt it keenly. She finds it in socrates and the greek moralists she really does feel strongly about morality and aesthetics are the same thing and this is some thing that she resists in a certain way. Shes trying to be kind of more of shes trying to get away. Shes basically trying to get away on the one hand from the systems that were quite suppressive to people i think in this generation because they were so dominant and overarching and complicated and they did offer you the key to culture if you could really master the remarks you could understand how the world works, how the personality and psychology and politics and aesthetics but then already by her generation they are sort of starting to show so she chooses something that isnt natural at all which is just kind of rocking out enjoying music and painting and film and people. Its not a natural thing for her. And i think when she gets back into the moralism she is on more of a solid ground. I dont know what you mean it wasnt natural. There was something sort of very exciting about this that she found that she was thrilled by it in a way that i think, and i dont want to put words in your mouth, but it seems that over time, she became less comfortable with that. Of these things are time bound so the interpretation is very much product of the age that shes living in and by the time say for example shes going to bosnia or even before that the trip you talk about very, very well she writes a trip to hanoi and the key herself ma maybe its realizing that she needs to rethink some of this pleasure or she sort of wants to reintroduce a plaintive view. I think when you look at this it is important to begin to realize how much has changed and also how much did change. Four years, five years, 63 to 68. Whabut what happens come and something that i found touching but i didnt realize and maybe its wrong but somebody said to me and it makes sense the literature of postwar america until after the 50s, a lot of it is about the personal struggle. So, even if it is you are living in a country that won the war of the most rich powerful in the world would have all these problems it is also the time of the black Civil Rights Movement and a time of feminism and all this new exciting american freudianism that seems to be exerting people to live more free lives and so you have books like jack and norma o. Brown and even Alec Ginsburg would be part of that and its kind of about you. Its not really about society. It has society and it but then you have the greatest triumph of the new generation symbolized by john f. Kennedy. But she is held in 1956. But the death of kennedy is close to a lot of people and me also because my mother almost saw it happen. She was from dallas and saw it before it happened when america kind of snaps, what happens almost immediately after that will indeed immediately when the talks and Lyndon Johnson continued to escalate the war in vietnam which is something that my father always says is the biggest difference between the generations when he was in college and when he was a young man off he thought about was getting drafted. There was a darkness that settles that i dont think we could have gotten rid of that comes out of this time in vietnam. And so there is its just one second about the interpretation. Experiencing this and all of a sudden 30 years later it seemed normal there was a new masterpiece and its so exciting, but that excitement becomes a nightmare. And she was very far from being the only one and she is really struggling reconcile the vietnam that shes wrote about in the New York Times which is a metaphor which is a description narrative and place and finding that she doesnt really know what people are talk about. Exactly. She doesnt understand the language, all looks the same to her, do i look the same to them . In america people see that im different, i have a personality, a name, here am i a tourist, what am i i think to it here, she ruffles with it in the essay in the way that make it, i think, really comparing and again when youre talking about watching the profession of the mind, yes, even in the pages of the one essay you see that. Yes, yes, because there was a distancing too that some shes trying. Not quite there yet. Well, shes trying, well, i should be objective about this, i should write it this way and not that way, but its very rare to have that kind of dram dramatiization and i specially as a biographer, critic, i dont mean credit nick the sense of criticism but one that has a point of view about her own work is that we learn a lot about her and the way shes thinking through how she writes about other people. I love that. Your idea. [laughter] yeah. Thank you. Its true when you read the profiles because shes the first person in america to write about the mainly european authors thats right. Often not translated, people that she learns in france or europe, she has reputed great social functions in the literary culture ecosystem was that she would tell you about the new person in france or italy or somewhere at a time when france and italy were further away than they are now because books come on amazon in 2 dais, days and its hard to imagine how paris it was, it took a week. When you have these portraits, really interesting things about her contribution but i think that one one of the functions oe biography, when you look behind it, thats why shes so interested in the book, its because shes talk about the same thing, whether its intellectually, or in her career, these people stimulate her and i could tell you all sorts of things this this personal that im personally interested in and that i foreground more than somebody else would. Sure, of course, thats inevitable. Of course, thats inevitable and doesnt disqualify her as the writer anymore that would qualify you writing about her, i mean, we are all sort of understanding motif or understand or see or pick up different motifs, i mean, you know, you come at her underseing what shes doing and i think that is what gives the book shape really in many ways, we want to see that because there was a way, at least in your telling and strikes me as very true, a way that she was probably not the best phrasing but the way she was escaping very often in the creation of well, a persona and you have to speak eloquently. Shes a little girl and reading, thats her escape from her dreary loveless unhappy childhood and, of course, she continues doing that and i find it i find it quite touching and i find it really interesting to see how, its a use of literature, i think that the idea that youre writing something, reading something that would be outside would be relevant to your own life, i can tell you if thats the case, you dont finish the book. Right. Thats absolutely right. You read things and youre touched by things and impressed by things and stimulated by things because theyre relevant to you. Dont have to be in any literal way. No. Makes sense to you or they put into language a feeling that you didnt have the language for, you dont have the images for and she