On behalf of all of us at the book fair, we want to welcome you to the 29th of book fair. [applause] this is a remarkable undertaki undertaking. It takes the work of utterly hundreds of volunteers. We have a remarkable board of directors. None of this could have been without the good support of everyone here at miamidade college. Lets give them a huge round of applause. [applause] we are appreciative of the sponsors. Without the sponsors and fundi funding, we wouldnt be able to bring you this wonderful literary extravaganza. Thats a way you can support this book fare and make sure that it goes on for another 29 years as well. [applause] if you look downstairs, you are more than welcome to sign up if they would like. Id also like to tell you make sure you pick up the fairgoers guy on thguide on the way out. We have a remarkable program. Tomorrow night we start at about 4 00 with lebanese make it delete delete the lebanese make he will be there at 4 00 followed by general diaz, wonderful writer and then chris hayes. He will be there ending the program. We have more than 70 writers from Different Countries like latin america and spain as well as the featured countries and we invite you to the opening next thursday and we will have the first lady of the country doing the honors so please come by and learn about the whole weekend. The executive director of the book fair i wont tell you how many years. But the executive director of the Cultural Affairs for the entire miamidade college. We want to congratulate her. [applause] thank you. Thank you. Looking forward to that and part of my new responsibility is to work with the Miami International festival celebrating 30 years in march and we would have the director here with us this evening. I hope is that you will see books with them so the influence will be everywhere. Can i take two more minutes of your time to see if you can join me in recognizing the 30 years for his leadership [applause] she said we couldnt do this without our sponsors but we also couldnt do it without the publishers and we are very fortunate to have one of the brilliant publishers not only in this country but worldwide our sponsor that we have had for many years theyve been huge supporters of the Miami Book Fair to get the program off the ground i want to bring up the Vice President and chief operating officer please welcome her. Thanks. [applause] have a good evening. [applause] thank you, everyone. I am from your Public Television station. What i love about the Miami Book Fair is that for me it represents how we should be known here in miami. We have beautiful beaches and some in trusting politics. I think increasingly we will be known for our wacky characters but if you look to the person from your write and speak to the person from your request what you will find our engaged, informed, cultured citizens in growing numbers. We are a smarter city than we give ourselves credit for and we need to get comfortable with that idea. I ensure there is no better way than to hear from the literary icon. The mostly doing general assignment reporting and i bet if i call on many of you coming you could easily name his novel the right stuff in our times and now back to blood which reflects back to all of us. How lucky are we and what better way to start the conversation then a published author in his own right and synonymous with his leadership our own mayor with me turn to you hopefully we can get him up here. [applause] good evening, everybody. Lets get started. You chose to work with wall street in the Upper East Side as your setting a you wrote about College Sports many believed it was deemed especially since your daughter attended. My question is why miami, how did you come to choose it as a backdrop to. To write a book on immigration this is when i was still working on my last book and people would say what are you going to work on next and it was always the same response, thats interesting. My first choice was the vietnamese huge numbers i couldnt read the paper and then i heard the following fact it seems the only city in the world people from another country another language and different culture took over a big metropolitan area with plenty of generations. We have a gentleman here to my right. I thought the great industry was tourism and then i found the shipping that we the Federal Reserve more cash than most of us at the Federal Reserve banks put together but now it seems to be pretty honest work. It is choice number two for everybody. Once i was here i knew so little that i have a lot of friends including the mayor and the chief of police. That isnt a bad way to start. I dont know how many of you remember his face. He is the ultra irishman and when you look at him you know you are talking to a tough irishman. He only had to call his pistol twice. The anyway, that is how i got started. The you can sync them unless you shoot holes through them. Nobody could turn them over. Racial and ethnic strikes and tensions at the classic antagonisms seem to permeate and you purposely look for this and choose a location or does the location meet to describe . Maybe im bragging but there are so few writers on th their e and ethnicity and all those things but that is what america is all about. I was born and raised in richmond and there were only two types of people there, blackandwhite. I went to get my first in springfield massachusetts. I didnt know what they were talking about but it was a city where people would come to the city of 170,000. It was important to know where you came from. I said i came from the valley. Somehow they get here and is a fantastic accomplishment. There are some of course you probably dont know what they are talking about but they criticized some of the characters that they are onedimensional or simplistic or play the scenario sometimes. [inaudible] try to find some complicated sites what about the main character in the New York Times critic there or some choices that your characters make that distinguish them from those around them. What do you feel they have in common with some of your other is in specifically what did his choices have in common . I did this a little bit backwards. I walk in and wait for the characters to arrive because i had a quick introduction to one of the great figures and it was always the right direction. John couldnt be here tonight. He was in bahrain running heavy stuff. [inaudible] angel had the greatest voice and temperament that i have ever seen. When a crisis had come they didnt put the chief, david angell and also a id was never put on. He had a great job and i was so shocked a couple of years ago. What made you zero in on it the way you did . It was on the fact that it is a pretty important aspect of others understanding. I arrived here thinking it was a race track still, it is still there but they had things like the quarter horse races and it was the greatest track just to look at in america. They had flamingos on the infield and the way they kept it was the planted shrubs that the required to keep their pink color and if they turn ligh ture feel terrible. Anyway, it was a gorgeous place. When i got there to the author corral i found Little Havana but its not very little, 225,000 people from the city limits just over 400,000. You can see for yourself what happens the one thing i could not do was let any cameraman in on private interviews. But other than that the costume is a very good in the movie thats the first thing i noticed. A few years back you came to miami and spoke about the contributions and your books are high and then play an important part especially in a rich guys apartment in manhattan. Can you take a minute what it means today . Is to be underestimated now its a driving force of the Growth Developers in america. I see this in new york all the time. They take that godforsaken neighborhoods in the worst part of brooklyn now the next thing you know the rich cannot wait to pour in and buy. [laughter] look at the success of wynnewood at that development. Sometimes in Providence Rhode island that he was a multifaceted figure that he got the bright idea and talk to real estate people who have a lot of dead property warehouse and someone and the artist use the loss token money like 50 a month and it was the smartest thing he ever did. Suddenly he found corporations to move in of artist of all over this particular area significant improvements were happening the river there in connecticut used to be covered in pavement for more Parking Spaces he had all the asphalt taken away and each week he had about come down the river spraying incense and music was playing on the below and people would gather around the river. That is the power of art and it doesnt matter what the artist was like just as long as they were artist. On the other side i dont really know. Every welltodo art collector has an aa who chooses for him or her what he or she likes. I didnt know i like that. [laughter] but it just works. It is a form of religion. I really believe that in which you dont have any morality but just places to go to worship. [laughter] by the way i will ask one more question then we will open to all of you who im sure who has questions for tom. After bonfire of the vanities you got into a few tiffs of other offers about writing and a nasty spat referring to them as the three stooges were you just trying to start a fight just to be provocative . He seemed choosing sides along the 43 street court or often siding with mailer and company did that have negative impact on those of your book did they use each as a chance to get even . Yes. [laughter] i could not resist its crazy if they show your hurt and sensitive but they were all old man. But they dont sit around writing reviews. But john updike was so old he complained of bladder problems. [laughter] Norman Mailer who had two hits going around on crutches i made fun of john irving he was pushing 60 which really isnt all that old. [laughter] and there were three of them so i had the perfect title of my three stooges so astute on stage is someone who sets up the lines for the comedian. I said thats all theyve done they set up lines for the comedian. But a lot of people never forgave that but a lot of people still thought it made a terrible gaff thats not true but a gaff to a politician is when he says what he really means. [laughter] he should have known better than that. And the reason i have a longdistance love of joe biden there was a big outbreak of some disease in mexico very contagious. I dont remember and he was asked by a reporter he had a daughter would you advise your daughter to go to mexico tomorrow . He said hell no. [laughter] but their denunciation for him to tell the simple truth is unbelievable. You those politicians in honor their gaffes. By the way, officially this program is about back to blood but really on friday is the publication and the launch of miami transformed. I minute. When time came down there is a big dispute as to what really transform cities and of course he was talking about art earlier but it was all about security in safe neighborhoods. You know john better than i do but i cannot agree with you more. Help me out with some questions. Thank you for holding back on the last one. [laughter] [applause] we have time for some questions i really hope there would be questions that would be unique but we would love them to be questions. [laughter] line up behind this gentleman enviable get to as many as we can. A book or two ago you wrote a description of hiphop music that was so on the money i thought to myself tom wolfe really gets hiphop music and he really likes a pop music. Do you like hiphop music and second, as a writer do you do anything special to get inside the brain of something that so foreign to you . Or is that just Second Nature . No i dont like hiphop. [laughter] but i do like country and western. One of my favorite titles is my truck in her driveway. No lexus or toyota in the driveway isnt that great . Is just wonderful. And railroad music. [laughter] stick and never had a chance to say this before. [laughter] i remember the last time you were here. Someone asked why dont you write about miami . You said theyve done a good enough job for that but did you feel any pressure reading any authors from miami to do Something Different or were you inspired . I have Read Everything he has ever written. He is brilliant in the sociological sense. But you find a guy in a strip club and then you go on from there. I would even think of topping coral. I dont read people who have done miami justice because they dont really look around. Certainly there are things to be written about south beach but there are other parts of miami. And that they tend not to write about but i Read Everything. Maybe they have but i havent seen it. Playing such a big role in your books and your characters i remember when i saw you in new york five years ago you told the audience that sex is gods little joke. What did you mean by that . Say that again. [laughter] you were in new york five years ago at the end you said sex is gods little joke. What did you mean by that . I still believe that. Just read the papers today and yesterday. [laughter] you have all these ambitions. But you cant get rid of that urge. [laughter] its gods little joke because god says you can do whatever you want that you will procreate and we will have more of your client if you want it or not. Thats why very curious what will happen with a country so full of unwed mothers. Its a tough thing to pull off and its very hard to be ceo of a bank and also the him mother, a good mother. It is gods little joke and sometimes it isnt funny. [laughter] good to be here. Im an immigrant from the bronx new york. I am just wondering if we could get by with or without spanish as an emigre i find it very difficult not to get along well this spanish and having my own difficulties with that. Also how is your salsa dancing . I am great at the tango. [laughter]. But im interested how you got along with the spanish did you have an interpreter . How did you amass your ability to transform this town into english . I will ask you i learned only about 45 minutes ago that i made a mistake. A glaring mistake. I was pointing out that because the miami herald years ago massive immigration was coming from cuban in latin america so roughly speaking a gangster and there are a lot of buttons and i was just informed is not correct spanish im just asking your opinion that should be. [speaking spanish] which would you use . I dont really know. [laughter] and i think with this town not becoming a bilingual town as it has been over the years now children are taught in Public School is still not a blanket statement this is a bilingual town and i think thats a flavor thats missing that those that are caucasian or africanamerican are not bringing in to speak spanish and english. Thats what needs to happen here. [applause] thank you. Hello. I im referring to Charlotte Timmons i am wondering after you transgender into charlotte if you think there is any help for Young College women . I am a College Teacher and i am wondering if you think there is any hope for the College Women these days . In general terms . When i wrote i am Charlotte Timmons, i went to many different colleges. It wasnt meant to be duke but my daughter went to duke. But i honestly was supposed to be entirely fictional. But the saying among undergraduates at that time except that duke was if she doesnt come across on the fourth state thats it. Today it is a little different. If she doesnt come across by the second date, and i was talking to one student was bringing this up he said whats this about dates . [laughter] may be thats it. That this is a theory worth paying attention to tell me if im right. The ubiquity, they use everywhere of cell phones which also take pictures just as the ipad takes pictures, has cut down some of the wildness that colleges because if youre doing something absolutely insane and this haunts people. It gets in the wrong hands it gets on youtube. Youtube loves these wild college parties. And it makes people much more careful. I cant say if its true or not but wouldnt it be interesting if there was a good affect of Information Technology . [laughter] three more questions. I am native from miami and thanks to you about 20 years ago there were three gentlemen running across i95 asking if they could help my husband and i and i knew it was going down having read bonfire of the vanities. They were not coming to help me at all. We were up against gunpoint. But we have been here and raised three children and it is a wonderful city. I love miami. After having done your research and meeting all these interesting characters we clearly have no shortage of this is the kind of place you thank you could live . There is no blanket statement i could make because it is such a variety. I dont know the statistics for single mothers and things like that. But it is such a complicated subject. But it wouldnt hurt to get down a little bit it seems to me. Do you thank you could live here . Sure. I would say some of miami you could get a four or five bedroom apartment down near the ocean 400,000. [laughter] but real estate decline hit miami long before the recession of 87. But i hear you cant get those great bargains. In the beginning of the bonfire of the vanities the mayor of new york city is told back to blood and now i noticed that the title of your book is there any symbolism to the fact you use that phrase . Back to blood. Tell me that phrase again . Back to blood. [laughter] i felt i had to explain in the prologue of the book its not what blood if there any horror fans you can interpret that but it was blood lines. I do believe in the age in which religion is fading particularly among educated people. Its kind of aghast to admit you are religious. You could be in the English Department say you dont believe in evolution they will find a way to get you out. It is unfortunately true. And in it needs like that everybody wants to believe in something. Absolutely. Everybody wants to believe their own beliefs are chiseled in stone. If not by god then by darwin. And it is quit