Transcripts For CSPAN2 In Depth Colson Whitehead 20240712

Your books are praised by oprah, president obama and you win the poets with the National Book award, what is the appropriate response . Before we take the pain away, this book is taken off and away unexpected and startling and wonderful and i thank my lucky stars and they sleep a little better and that her mood generally and try to enjoy despite my best efforts. What is up doing a better mood. I been writing for 20 something years doing fiction for 20 something years temperature write a book and people to get and no one typically cares and it disappears so i had the pride and think it i did a good job from the book and the bonus of other people reading it as well. Host your first book was about elevator repairs, people, how do you sell a book like that. Guest exactly. With that book i wrote a description and i said to my agent you dig in the concept of elevators inspectors or you dont. Youre either along for the ride in the description or not indefinitely when i was writing it was my second attempt at the novel in my first one was terrible and i went to publishers and they hated it and the agent dumped me because i was not going anywhere so for year end have had to say to my friends find a book about elevator inspectors and that was really stupid and they would make fun of me. And eventually after year end a half we got down to the town like an interesting book in my new agent. Is there a connection between the intuition nest, theres only one in the underground railroad. There are topics the circle around in cities i live in new york and a lot of ideas and energy from the city and pop culture, race, technology in some of those themes are in some books, not to mention others in a book about new york is a racialized tape of black new york. My poker book and does not have much to say about technology but there is a four or five areas a circle around. Host how should people redirect social commentary, graphical. Guest definitely sag harbor which is the fourth novel and have grown up in the 80s and from my childhood, i would say the underground railroad is my least autobiographical book just because im not in there in a coded way and its about character which is why people like you. I think read them from the first page from the beginning to the end start to finish, that is a good way to read them. Some books are funny and some a little more tragic, my hope that the experience is worth your time and sometimes social commentary and sometimes commentary on whatever weird thing and going through that year. Host are you benji with a bad haircut. Guest benji is a 50yearold kid growing up in new york in the 80s, unfortunately my life is not very interesting so i had to exaggerate and nothing was cool or compelling say have to give a little bit a license. So when i started the book i wanted to base characters on my friends and unfortunately they never appeared on the page and became less and less like my friend david or scott and so we started off as biographical and indefinitely in there but the demand of the story over seems to to proceed autobiographical or memoirs to try to make a compelling story which means exaggerating what happened to me. Colson whitehead what is a process to get to elevator inspectors or zombies or railroad or underground railroad that actually exist. I like to mix it up and not do the same thing from book to book and if you have a certain book why do it again. But i think writing a book that is plot heavy and following up with a book that is not as plot heavy is a way to varied up and not to the same thing in a book that has the first narrator and a book that is funny. The last couple of books on a perverse streak i went from sag harbor in the story about the 80s to apocalyptic zombie tell to this book underground railroad a historic novel, i am keeping a very different and i got me ideas from articles, this weird accounts and sometimes ideas stay with you and you get open spot in your schedule and you consider it already or if you do not want to do it sometimes it fall away and sometimes they come from a lot of different places. Theres a lot of different themes in your book about a guy who did not get the rules of life and has an unease around other people. Sure i was going to say thats autobiographical but i dont want to tip my hand to early but were here for three hours. I think there is something about an outsider and whether you are misanthropic like i can be sometimes arouse site in different ways. An outsider makes a good observer and protagonist in storyteller injury and the action is standing apart. Somebody who observes and is part of the scene but a bit removed as a good vehicle for telling the story indefinitely in the apocalypse and the elevator inspectors and devil point of view capture for the readers and most of us are not elevator inspectors, sadly. So my outsider characters become in addition for the leader into the story. Host zone one did not come until 2011 but i think i read an article that you written that as a young guy in eighth or ninth grade. Guest no, i was a big horror fan from eight through ninth grade and from going back decades from stories in college and the fiction to my mid 20s. But the obsession with zombies goes back to my childhood, my parents who love for movies and watch horror movies together. And i remember seeing melanie died at the very early age and stayed with me to refresh your memory in the story about the Zombie Apocalypse and they dont know whats happening and protagonist is a black man being pursued of white people wanted to bar them and eat him which is part of america. So in fact growing up as a horror and Science Fiction fan maybe to try my hand at a horror story. You said you watch horror movies but i get the impression there was an obsession with horror movie. Guest sure, i dont want to get all judging but yes. A real interest. My brother and i came of age with the bcr boom and we would go to crazy eddies and Electronics Store in new york in rent five horror movies, Science Fiction movies and every friday go through them and return them and return them the next week. It was really Science Fiction, horror, conflict that many want to write and when i was growing up stephen king novels and i was going to my brothers room and read them. In fantasy, horror always seems to be a potent storytelling tool and we found were the people of a different idea of what zombies mean for me and i from my own interpretation and put my own stamp on the genre and it was fun and important. Host what do all these mean to you. Guest i think the generation or the horror genre according to her own needs, dracula and vampires mean something in the nothing century england in the twilight generation in zombies being Something Different and for me they boys been social anxiety, fear of other people in the zombie story, you go to bed and work up in the world has changed. Your neighbors, teachers, coworkers or zombies out to get you. And they stop pretending, there always monsters. He speaks very poorly that i interpret zombies that way. In the zombies always stayed with me and i found a way to tackle it and i have the various ideas in the back of my head to put in the page. Host is social anxiety a common trait among novelist. Guest i dont know. Im not sure. I think worrying about your work, you did a good job for being a novelist, helps you not coast. Host worrying about what others may think of your work. Guest no are you doing a good job but i think a healthy amount of worry helps you make sure and into the paragraph and page and making sure its coming out right even if youve done it and have eight books under your belt. Host in the new yorker in 2012 you were quoted to be a good novelist for you to fully inhabit ones delusions to given to every kooky aspect of ones freakish nest and its handy survival strategy. Guest i think what i like about my different books is that they are odd and they allow to express different ideas about the world and myself in different theories and i think writing is becoming a way to interpret the world for myself and to figure out how i feel about things and societal systems, politics, people in that license is very important for me and not being tied to expectations following name my own inclinations into something about idea, dumb pathetic idea, cant make it work and can you sell to the reader as the same time youre selling to yourself. The delusion that you have something to say in the delusion that your work is worthy of being read by others and its useful for being an artist. Host where did the term of the idea intuition come from. Were you on an elevator and did you see an inspector . Guest i read the book that everyone hated and i figured. Host what was that book about by the way . Guest do you remember gary coleman the tv star, i was a tv critic at the time in writing about black imagery and pop culture and a novel about gary coleman as a child star enables open house adventures. It seemed like a good idea to me. And in the novel is on a sitcom called im moving in. He was always getting adopted by rich white people. So him moving there was a stop to realism and throughout the book everyone hated it. So i think i became a writer and there is going to get a real job and become a lawyer and maybe people will like it maybe they will not but i know how to write them and i figured people like plot and maybe have a plot given book and erode all these novels and studied suspense and i was watching 2020 as i often do in those days in my 20s and in the 1990s their piece on the hidden dangers of escalators and if you dont repair escalators they get attached from the side and you lose a toe, very tribal thing obviously and im an escalator inspector. I thought that was a random job in them from growing up in new york uac there is a law not as sincerely enforced anymore and they sign the certificate, everything is fine and they come once a year, to your work or school and suddenly you see the elevator inspector has been there. Wouldnt it be cool than elevator inspector had to come and be an inspector and solve a case. Ha ha, funny, modern protective story. He went to the library to see what skills and elevator inspector would bring to a criminal case and the answer was none because they are an elevator inspector. It became not like the murder mystery but of a fallen elevator and a made up a different culture for elevator inspectors and i figured theres conservatives and progressives and not become the empiricist to do it the right way inspecting elevators in the integrationists who are progressive and placed on the book in different ways in the elevator Inspector School, philosophy and really i was trying to teach myself how to write and i had not had a few more protagonists before, when i had a female protagonist oral plot or linear momentum to try to do that and then i took a weird idea of an inspector solving a criminal case and following it through truth execution. So i sold that happened. Host prior to the interview looked at your books and said sorry for the clunkers you had to read. What do you consider to be a clunker. Guest i think theyre all pretty good. But hopefully if you do something for a long time you get better at it. And certain books all think about and i wonder why do i used to many adjectives, just a simpler way of saying that. But maybe that book could lose a page or two here and there. And hopefully ill become a better writer in the more efficient way and hopefully you get better and better and obviously plateau and start to suck. But hopefully im in the Getting Better phase and Getting Better my job and learning from each book and taken out to the next one. Host does im moving in still exist . Guest for a while i thought maybe i will strip minded for good similes but the energy it would take to bring it up to my very High Standard is far better spent writing something out. Its in my drawer in different children have gambling debt, they can sell it for money, 30 years from now, make some quick cash, call a broker. Host when your female protagonist, cora is another, what is the reason to write through a womans point of view. Women exist and if they can tell theres different stories you should take different points of views. I had a string of protagonists before this book so it seemed wise to mix it up. I think if you know to do something, why do it. I think watson, i could not do my new york voice, that was my first novel and i was forced, i chose a third person narrator so i could rely upon my first person narrator in a few more protagonists were not tenable for and by doing it i could hopefully become a writer like i had done before. Exploring system times we try to learn something and keep the challenge is going. Host what was your favorite one to write . Guest this book was hard to write because i was broke and also depressed. Different challenges and you can look back and think it is a special time in my life. I think perhaps it was a freudian slip, but it was one of the most fun to write, taking off from a trip i took to the world series of poker. I tried to cram as many jokes as i could. It was a journalistic framework but i was trying to cram as many weird jokes and it was really fun if they called me up to see if i wanted to write about the world series of poker. I was like i dont want to go to vegas. Then if theyre in opinion from the article. The i wouldve dropped my daughter off at school and gamble gamble, come back at night but i got the world series but for the first time i would like to get out of my comfort zone and a 5foot area around my and then when i was writing in a play when you write a novel, joke, make yourself laugh at t the. It is a very special writing experience in terms of the material and how it came to be. So we look upon that six months very fondly. Host im going to paraphrase the first line i got to wear sunglasses inside and it was good for me because im half dead anyway. Guest for three years ive been told i have a good poker face and they realize because i was half dead inside. My aspects was for once an asset in a social situation. Host you do write about having a mask on and you were semidepressed and you were a different person when you were done with the book. Is that pain or depression . Guest i think its good to have a healthy joking relationship with most things you do in life whether its hard or anything else. I think in terms of sharing how i feel about my work with other people, demystifying it is important. A lot of times writing is unpleasant to figure out the problem weve been working on a not taking it too seriously. Then also if these are the default setting in my Public Relations so what the heck, go for it. Host what was the easiest book to write . Guest they were all pretty hard i have to say. Im going to go with the shorter ones. The book im working on now is pretty short, so sure it isnt easy, but it tends to not prolong the agony of a 400 page. Host when you win the pulitzer, does that put a lot of pressure on the next book . Guest theres always pressure imposed on myself because i wanted to be good and do Something Different. I dont want to coast. So fortunately, when i get good news coming and im in the middle of something, i can do really good and then the next day its this kind of terrible job and so its always hard. If it wasnt har hard it wouldne worth doing. And the pressure is selfimposed and its always been there whether it is should i write another book so thats always a weird pressure. Host good afternoon and welcome to book tv on cspan2 this is our monthly indepth program an and this entire yeare are giving a specia doing a spen edition with bestselling fiction authors. And this month on our author is bestselling author Pulitzer Prize winner Colson Whitehead. Heres a list of his book. I want to get a full list. The intuitionist is his first book that came out in 1998, john henry, 2001; the colossus of new york, 2003; apex the herd 2006, sag harbor, 2009; zone one, 2011; the nobles hustle, 2014; and of course the most recent, the underground railroad which won the Pulitzer Prize and National Book award etc. We want to have your participation this afternoon in the conversation. Heres how you can participate. 202 7488200 if you live in the east and central time zones. 202 7488201 for those of you in the mountain and pacific time zones. We have several social media sites that you can also contact Colson Whitehead if you have a question or comment. We have facebook, twitter, instagram, booktv is the handle you need to remember for those and here is our email address as well. Booktv cspan. Org. We will begin taking those comments and calls in just a few minutes. What is the first line that you wrote in the underground railroad, what is the first word you put to paper . Guest it ended up being the opening line the first time caesar approached about running north and she said no the beginning and at the end of. The first one came very quickly when i was organizing the book. To actually get into the book. Host what is the vetting process . Guest its genius and then two days later its really stupid and i dont know why i felt that way. In this case, the first line was durable and sturdy and that one sentence then stayed with me. Host from the underground railroad about the graverobbers only then was he the white mans equal. That takes place in the early part of the 19th century. The book does take a sort of routes to the american history. The main storyline takes place in 1850. That was my sort of mental cut off for technology. There is a healthy trade in grave robbing. People would go and compete to find fresh cadavers. There were gangs. They would beat each other up. Doctodoctor stevens who sees hif as very liberal and talks about prejudice in boston, 19th century and uses that despite the racial prejudice and this ikea of cast upon black folks in america. Ironically these folks become equal. They are something elevated only in death to a level of equality. Host did you know you were going to write about that when you started writing this book outlining . Guest i mentioned the outline, yes. I had a silly note about the start of the 9 11 wanted to have the opening being an overture and followed from six pages from africa, the Middle Passage to different plantations into a place that corot cant go. Her mother after a certain section i would think who should get them and we need a team that have takehad taken her in and ws uninteresting. The. Short sections are very useful in terms of a giving voice to how the book was evolving. Host can you read the underground railroad as historical fiction . From the late 19th century i had the idea to make the underground railroad and metaphor to Something Real and so there is a fantastic element and theres different alternative americas and i think a lot of that power and successful conception comes from having a fantastic structure. But i take many liberties and my motto when i was writing the book is i wouldnt stick to the facts that i would stick to the truth of the larger american truth that isnt bound by chronology of the different kind of connections. Host did the plantation actually exist and did you visit these places in your research . Guest it is my own creation in doing the research i have the latitude to make my own and i think from popculture a lot of us have the idea thats really big with slaves. You could be one of three on a small family farm, a virus two thirds of the way through and figure out System Research including new orleans and took a few plantations. I got on the tour bus and i was the only black person on the tour bus and we are going north and the tour guide is giving her spiel and this is a river road down to the port city running a plantation wasnt just sitting on your porch. You have to keep track of accounts it is a travelogue and i went to two places which is a museum for a fiction writer to sort of giving the atmosphere on my skin and the sounds of the insects seem that implements when people came into some of the names i got from the petition or the book how much people were sold for and all that kind of stuff and then we get back on the bus and go to the next petition which you probably see in the movies and the stereo typical if you want an antebellum themed wedding you can bring costumes. Big hotel rooms and if you want to break free from hotel chain you can stay here. Writing a book about slavery and getting peoples Actual Stories in the early 21st century ironies about race and the sort of absurd way we deal with it is nothing compared to the Actual Stories of slavery themselves, so they feel weird adventure and yes i did go to some plantations for research that host did the tour guide ignored you or spend too much time talking to you . Guest i felt neither under the microscope or ignored. The same speech two times a day and one doesnt really even think about it. And i think with slavery we dont necessarily think about the condition, the complete vast array of dehumanizing apparatus for slavery. We dont examine our assumptions about what it costs in terms of peoples families from the peoples psychology. And foanswer the same way if yot of the speech about louisiana plantation life and in that sort of deep and thorough way would get a deep understanding. Host this fiction is new to us as cspan as well and it became almost a monthlong reading for my colleagues. Im going to read one from our colleague who just finished your book and she wants to know about the five ads for the escapist waves in the book. Or the othe others actual ads m newspapers . Guest they are. The university of North Carolina has a great digital archive and they invite me to speak and hopefully i can express my gratitude to the digital archives. When the slave runs away, what do you do, you place a classified in the newspaper. As a fiction writer i like giving peoples voices and how people talk but can we complete with the runaway slave ads and they encapsulate and capture so much in such a little space. The format is usually like 50. Betsy ran away for no reason at all. She has a downcast expression, burden on her arm from an accident. Last seen in the vicinity of the community so how did she get that burden, theres so many levels of denial in the ad that i decided just to stick them in there and see what they are. And also in the research it was a sort of observation that to be a farmer or slave master to hold up the system, you can be a journalist working on a newspaper and you are part of upholding the enterprise and the link in the chain that keeps it going. You also make the iron rims for the wheels of a taking cop into the market. You are making nails for the house is popping up in the new slave economy towns. So, you know, when i was researching i ended up thinking about how fast the enterprise was in had the classified ads gone there to broaden the idea and scope of the world how fast. Host you have the line in there that everybody is working with eli whitney. Just for the inventor of the cotton gin. The phrase and then dust with antagonist in the book he was as much as anybody in bondage. Everyone is probably nothing and is caught where the city is gripped. Host did i miss rea misreadr is there a sympathetic aspect . Guest i think that he recognizes this humanity. I think that you should see yourself in the heroes and villains. That is what makes them threedimensional and recognizable and make them live. He is a terrible person with a terrible philosophy. But in the same way, when cora is revealing her flaws, you see her as a human being and when you see him in his weakness to recognize how he sees the world if you can recognize that quality in your self, thats what makes it work. Host when you teach a class and you have taught several universities over the years, what are two things you want the students to leave with . Guest we have three months so people can write three stories. So i think of Something Different. I teach about undergrads. If you would like stories about new jersey because you are from new jersey, why not go crazy and right about a 23yearold boy from pennsylvania only writes fantasy stories and vice versa. Three months with a sympathetic workshop and audience. Try different stories. If youve avoided the first person voice, try it. Why do you avoid it, maybe it works for you and you have some trepidation about stretching your self. So, thats one thing. You have three months to fail, pick yourself up and try Something Different, so use it. And then i think if you find an author that you really love, and sometimes when teaching people who are architects, engineers, bankers and then theres the art class people like lori moore or chino diaz or cc pepper that dont necessarily read once they get out of school. If theres someone you like, Read Everything by them and figure out why you are attracted to their work, what makes them compelling. Then read a lot to find out what kind of writer you want to be and write a lot to find out what kind of writer you actually are. Two different things. Inspiring voices as they are printing our own voice on important. Host was it hard for you to write your antagonist as a white southerner . Guest no more than no more than having an inspector, a human being, and i know people and your own knowledge of yourself when you see other people cant speculate what makes other people operate and whatever small collection of insight you have about humanity. So, if you have a cast like the railroad you are always finding yourself a places where you are different and hopefully what you know about yourself and the people who are not like you. Host another colleague that has been reading all of your books had questions from several books but im going to start with the intuitionist. He wanted to know who was james . Guest its funny because the person i think about you write a book and it isnt yours anymore, people have questions and academics have questions. I remember when the book came out i was invited to the college and someone asked me obviously that is based on [inaudible] and i said no i looke looked oue window and was the first name i saw. So, james fulton is the inventor of the intuitionist School Elevator inspection and the intuitionist you sort of step into the elevator and divine whats wrong with it, like using the force and hopefully elevator inspectors in your community do it the right way. In my book they are sort of a insurgent progressive force in the department of elevator inspectors and he is the man that has come up with their philosophy. I grew up in the 80s and went to college in the 80s so that meant wars between the multiculturalists so when i made my elevator Inspector School you have that conservative and progressive or play out so they are conservative and the intuitionist are those kind of multiculturalists fighting the establishment and james bolton comes up with a tech is at this point either my book sounds good or bad. Going back to the first question either the book sounds cool at this point or totally stupid. And so, im recreating my own way [inaudible] host i literally have no idea what you just decide said m sure the audience followed closely. [laughter] host is sag harbor a real place . Guest is on the tip of long island. The hamptons resort community for the last couple decades, and the town is sort of nestled in a more famous part of the hampton and theres an old town mentioned in moby dick. A lot of goods went from that part of long island town. Starting in the 30s and 40s, there were africanamerican doctors, lawyers, teachers doing out there getting places. They have extra money and its a safe place to go, bring your kids, wordofmouth. People in harlem are going in the 30s and 40s. They told her cousin in new jersey and they start doing so my mom started going there in the 40s and i spent my summers up there. We grew up in the city you go out there every summer. This is sag harbor of the book is based on my adventures in sag harbor, the town. Host here you write is there anything worse than a bigger kid playing keep away with your stuff then rehearsal for adulthood . Guest to have a main character that is 15 and doing a lot of identity formation. Figuring out where hes part of this community, where he deviates from his community, his peers. He is a black kid that likes susie and run dmc. Hes figuring out what it is to be a person and a lot of that was geared identity battles continuing as you get older and the kind of psychological warfare you are engaged in with your community and the world. When you are a teenager you sort of wake up to being an individual. Host guest its sort of upscale middleclass and it seems like youve made it. Sometimes its embracing the fact that you are a little bit posh. Host back to sag harbor. Getting rid of the house was unforgivable like sellin somethr kids off to the circus for crack money. Do you still have your house . Guest my mom has been living out there since 1990, so she owns it. Its not mine. But what i for this sort of lovy about the place is people go out therpeopled aboutthere for gene. My grandparents and their peers their kids grew up there and defend their grandkids spent her summers and of course like any place in the world, the Community Changes and i dont want to call gentrified but a lot of families used to go out there. You are going anymore so you sell your house and defend other people take over the neighborhood and in the 21st century is more educated no incubated now. Its changed somewhat from when i was a kid and part of it is to talk about that place in this moment before it becomes part of the hamptons proper and sort of posh environment. Host what was your moms reaction and was your dad still alive when it cannot . Guest my dad passed away a short time before but im not sure he would have liked it. My mom dug it. Iit came out and everyone for nw there seemed to embrace it. If the. I havent read it but it looks good. He does voiceover work and that is what kept coming up but it always really bothered her. What was the reaction to this line, again this is fiction. If the scripts were all the same and we had the formula. Guest it doesnt have much to do with my family but pop culture and a sort of talking about the comedy show and when it came out. And in many ways the first time we saw ourselves in that particular way on tv. His relationship to the cosby show and talking about the lie of that affection. The inhabitants are in the world road warrior or hiphop becomes a way and they had to exaggerate to make this interesting. Host did the magazine really put in whenever black people were going to be on the . Guest Diane Carroll was going to be on the tonight show so they would have a runup with a listing of any black person on it. It was rare and lovely. Host weve talked for an hour thanks for your patience you are going with author colton white house. Caller you dont have to hao think before i patience. I think its been wonderful. Ive enjoyed listening to the show. He always talks to me about finding the hardest time sometimes there is drudgery and you are stuck iindia want it to happen in a certain way and then talking about making sure that you maintain that moved into the book forward and things of that nature and then also the beauty and of the difficulties in opening your self up as you do the historical novel anthat hise fact you have to take some creative license being true to the story. Theres been so much talk about and he has this sort of idea plot and structure and background sometimes youve got to read this page is down. So my friend had said about persevering. Sometimes you have this daunting task ahead of you and it can be overwhelming if. Guest it is work and some days are definitely into the project and everything sort of coming together just struggle for a paragraph. Unlawful is a marathon. Thats one paragraph is a lot. Its like 400 a year like a novel and then some days you get a, see a movie, read a book maybe they are tuesday, wednesday, saturday, sunday, tuesday through friday. But it sort of keeps me sane. Some days i wake up and i dont feel like working. You are making progress towards the end of the book. They have a sense of detachment from your characters . Guest the intuitionist theres a sort of show scene and i remember writing and getting very angry. It is very personal so i felt wrong writing a lot and then with writing about slavery which also deals with institutional racism and more horrific aspects of america i do get angry went i research and sort of him writing separate key is the assistant at ridgeway and i had the idea for the book many years ago and i waited until i was ready to write it. If it were ten of ten years ago i would have over explained the psychology that there were slaves who upon being free stayed with their masters and knew nothing else except the plantation. They were raised by a house slave who would swear shes part of the family and she raised me but of course you torture, rape, abuse her family and children and have thatia of you are on with a thin white head Steve Christie six calls colton white ha. Caller for the media and the cinema . Host thank you, sir. Caller i went to harvard for undergrad and had one class in American Fiction after 1945 basically a and i studied in the Drama Department and they kind of have this structure is important in my work. At the times when i would need money i thought maybe if i write a screenplay i would get pretty pages in i know how to write a novel so i end up going back to fiction. But i grew up on tv and film into those meetings are important to me and i got a lot of ideas from film one comes from Science Fiction. I could fiction and nonfiction but i dont have the chops to leave the two genres. Host is underground railroad being serialized . Guest this book has been an brave stand when it came out we sent it to hollywood and various people looked at it. We got a call from a young filmmaker. We saw an early version of it and if so i had to interview him to see if he was right for the job and i dont know what to ask filmmakers Thomas Andersons there will be blood. He got the oscar and the contracts came through a week later said he was taking it around and then Amazon Studios is going to do a miniseries and we will see if it goes forward. Host dean is in new jersey. Caller you were kind enough to autograph my copy at the Schaumburg Center in idaho that you and kevin young, was he ahead of you, i know that you were classmates. Guest poet, nonfiction writer. Host we are going to let you go, its a little hard to interact with the delay in new york. Guest he was always the more professional one and i was more slacking. There was a first book of poetry and now hes the head of the schaumburg library, africanamerican library and new york city and the author that came out a few months ago about hoaxes in america and spawning the public. We traded work. Host carol stream illinois, please go ahead. Caller hell did they come up with underground railroad and how are they built and guest in the 40s the locomotive is transforming america. Its very powerful so there was one who ran away from his master that broke up the next day and said to himself theres no trace of him is as if he disappeared on an underground railroad and that they can turn for this Human Network that would help them escape to the north and they could be a person with a seller hiding someone for a couple of weeks until the coast is clear maybe taking someone in your wagon 200 miles to the next city, handing them off to somebody else. People risking themselves, risking their lives so there were eastern seaboard routes and you could end up in indiana, massachusetts, new york. It was obviously not a literal train. When the book came out of cour course. In the underground stations decorated with i wanted them to be different. Some are grand and some are accommodating. So thats different characters of the train stations. Bob in eastern pennsylvania you have referred to your couch more than once. Is that where you write and what is your typical day of writing . Guest i get up, take the first snap of the day on the couch. This. Trying to figure out what to make for the family to get the satisfaction of sharing with people with. Guest some people go to cafes and work and id rather be able to make a ham sandwich and take a nap. There are so many people out there who. Host with your notoriety as the underground railroad, can you still be anonymous . Guest from small communities since the book has come out it is sort of uncomfortable. They just recognize me. Thats why people say im teaching the book or i just read your book, i just gave it to my mother. I could be on a taxicab and if somebodys taken the time to read the book it brings you back to a nice place. Host in 2002, you were invited to the bush symposium at the white house and maria who is the editor at the time asked the question how you felt about africanamerican sections in the book store and you didnt really get an answer and i was wondering if you had a more definitive answer. The good is the literature section and africanamerican book section and sometimes Toni Morrison would be in the africanamerican section of off literature and ideally, you are in both. When i was in high school i would go to the section and browse and find a random person you never heard about. Frederick douglass, who is this guy. It was a place to find books about the culture and a good idea in the 70s of black studies but why did you have Toni Morrison and the black section and thought literature. I think she is in both sections and its not as much a. It had a purpose and that was its purpose. Caller thank you, sir. I would just like to tell this gentleman i was raised in the suburbs of philadelphia. We were never, never taught that there was a variable and i just apologize to you that this is what you have experienced. So, thank you for your work. Its wonderful and i appreciate all that you have gone through. Thank you. Guest thanks for reading and im glad you grew up in an area that was progressive outside of philadelphia. A lot of the country isnt as lovely. It has sort of terrible side and a lot of that sort of terrible part of the human character ends up determining so much of our history. You grew up middle class and did you go through a lot of . Guest its based on the color of your skin so of course he is like most handcuffed and interrogated for being on the wrong block at the wrong time to what are they doing in this neighborhood and you never know when that will episod episode to escalate into what happened with Police Brutality so we have these conversations and then we stop the. Whether theres a National Conversation about if its part of my existence ever since i broke and became seen as a target. Host were you giving the talk . Guest sure the first person to give it to me was Richard Pryor about being stopped by the police. White cops will shoot you in a second and when you go to show your license and registration, the dashboard goes im reaching into my glove compartment for the first one was Richard Pryor and whenever i left the house i was made aware that i am the target and i coul they could bet any moment basically. So you pick the right narrator for the job. I am in a concise mode right now with the book im working on now and i feel that some trying different kinds of voices, narrative styles, sentence styles, you exhaust one and move on to the next to invigorate what you have done before. And hopefully you get better as you keep going but thank you. Host what about the new book . It takes place in florida in the 19 sixties maybe i go funny than dark type of book underground railroad has the smallest joke per page count than anything i have done. Like to jokes but also has a darker vein maybe i should just mix it up by doing to dark books in a row than the next one is a little lighter. Host keokuk iowa. Caller can i call you colson are do you prefer mr. Whitehead . I wasnt sure if this was pre recorded or if it was live. I have had books in my head for years since i have been in my twenties and have had people tell me i should write but then you get busy to make a life and feed a family and you get distracted when my mother was alive she passed away at 92 i always told her i would write about it i only remember calling her ob because my dad called her a nickname that he came up with. I had older ladies that took me to church in the neighborhood they said thats horrible calling her ob just call her mother every time i did she said youre pulling away from your closer to me when you call me ob. Has some thoughts and maybe i was adopted. Host c has some books in his head. He is 73 years old and lives in iowa. If you like that story and you like it then write another one. I teach undergraduates and grad school and summer workshops in people are in their sixties and seventies writing the first novel writing a story they have been carrying around and then they get to it. This is my eighth book and i still struggle with if i find the time having a family and job thats always a struggle of your age books or your first nobody will write it for you only you know who ob is to tell the story. The sooner you start the sooner it will be done. Host what is the biggest mistake first time writers make . I realized my twenties writing the first 100 pages over and over. You can always fix it later but you get to the end and then fix it dont get caught on making the first 100 pages perfect. Go forward and revise but dont get stuck but the end will tell you what is wrong with our beginning. Host cleveland good afternoon. Caller i have two questions. The first is when you are writing, who is your target audience . The second question is, is there any subject that is offlimits that you would write about . To good questions with the intuition is my ideal audience member was a 16 yearold black kid who thought i can write i am a weirdo this guy is a weirdo like the invisible man at the early age and then the book came out and there is no 16 yearold kid in the audience white or black and i stopped expecting who my audience is because of genre time gaining and then losing people sag harbor was realistic harder to describe i got new leadership following up with a book about zombies so im used to getting new readers and disappointing them and they move on so i dont think about my audience anymore. A taboo subject . I dont know much about football so thats unlikely thats a matter of just taste and not taboo i never thought i would write a book about the world series of poker but as you go through life things become more or less interesting there is no way i could have predicted a lot of my books. Host the next call from allentown georgia good afternoo afternoon. Caller yes. I havent read any of your books but what about the african slave trade and talking about when the arab traders came down to east africa pillaging the villagers to get the 5000 slaves of course there are buyers in the new world thats like the drug dealers now if there is buyers people sell the slaves i would like your comments i have a section on the african slave trade before i get to america with american and slavery. But where there is money, people tend to explore the worst impulses there is a lot of money in the african slave trade and there is money now building iphones in a factory or on the shrimping boat unfortunately money makes people do terrible things. Host longbranch new jersey go ahead. Caller hello i read the intuitive and our interpretations were all over the place at the book club can you expand the main character . The intuition is just much more ambiguous than the other books what does it mean . Something in terms of technology. When i started the book i didnt think about it but it without elevators you cannot have a modern city so before inventing the elevator you can only have five stories. That is one meaning of the elevator. I was writing the book and the phrase uplift the race and then elevation and sometimes its about transcendence and achieving a Higher Consciousness or higher level of being so that is very open and its open to a lot of interpretation and once im done with the book it is yours to read and interpret and ignore. Whatever you have, have fun with it. Host whenever you are done with the book it is yours. If you have a comment or question here is how you get through. Colson whitehead acceptance speech at the National Book awards late november 2016 right after the election. We will also show you some of his favorite books and influences and what hes reading now. T the last four months have been so incredible like the Makeawish Foundation and my dying or something . Everybody is being nice to me. [laughter] it is also confusing my model for acceptance speeches the oscars the first one i saw was 77 and then star wars and then annie hall one and i was crushed i never thought i would become a writer and actually be at one of these things. For 18 years i was going to blsay who gets to do this and then robert caro. [laughter] well done. Maddie at home watching on screen if youre watching go to bed you are 12 years old i started living the day you were born thank you for your ongoing gifts to my wife. [applause] and all these ideas about things and then my book is dedicated to my wife. [applause] its okay to write good books when you are unhappy its better to write good books when you are happy. Thank you. [applause] so last two months have been crazy Oprah Winfrey from her fame she got the word out people read my copy and say i dont know that oprah says read it then people do and then its crazy. [laughter] so this time last year is finishing up the book 19 pages to go dont mess it up. You never know what will happen in a year now the book is out i never thought i would be standing here. You never know where ill be in a year from now outside is a blasted hellhole of trump land which we inhabit that who knows what will happen a year from now. Because im still promoting the book anything about the election . Im stillll stunned. And then to find something that made me feel better and i guess that was hopefully a pretrial. Be kind to everybody and fight thems power. That seems like a good formula for me. [applause] host Colson Whitehead in your speech you referred to the terror of trump land that was just a couple weeks after the election. I grew up in new york as a teenager he was a weird tabloid buffoon creature but yet he persisted i watch the reality show and then he was so repellent during the Campaign Season with his xenophobic speeches and frederick it was startling having writing a book about White Supremacy to have a white supremacist in the white house again. Host you consider him to be a white supremacist . He says racist things and governance in a way that benefits whites to the detriment of people of color consistently and over time that seems white supremacist to me if you say they were marching in charlottesville raising not see and confederate flags calling them nice people that is evidence of sympathy. Host wilkerson one of the books that inspired you. Yes it captures the story of people who moved to the north in the early part of the h century thats how my family ended up in new jersey and new york. My dads family came from florida. Run out of town supposedly when his father got into a fight and then the classic story that you hear from all different families and then when they got to newark thought it was new york and get off the train and it was new jersey they thought they were in New York Penn station so that is so much a black americana escape being jim crow and thats how i became a new yorker. Host i read that your mothers family were free black blacks. On my mother side one who descended from a biracial woman who came over her 17 something who was irish and black on James Madisons farm plantation those were free. And then his mother is in barbados and the American South georgia and florida. Host does the invisible man hold up . Eight years ago i taught it in a concise and then as a teenager the first section with the american and short stories reading fantastic literature. And then that was important to me when i was younger. And then the real inspiration. And with that american voice that is tragic and sarcastic and those that retreat on the infinite loop and then watching on twitter and then three lines pop up i think he is a genius so the series of impressions about the city and then to reach that in every voice. Colson whitehead rights with all human endeavors it is yours that is destiny you cant take capitalism from human slavery they have a value placed on them and then to make it into a Global Player because of slavery. With capitalism and then to wrestle with major forces that shaped our country. Host the next comes from new york you are on book tv. Go ahead. Caller. Host we have to lose bill turn down your volume when you get on the air otherwise there is a delay and it can be confusing. Next can from spartanburg South Carolina. Caller hello mr. Whitehead. I am enjoying the program. It seems my question has been answered but i wanted to know who is one of your favorite authors and when did you know it would be a lifetime duty from going out to get her real nine to five job . Host we will get an answer to that in just a minute but what pride are inspired you which of his books have you read . Larson has been one of my most inspirational writers and i am reading mr. Whiteheads book now. The underground railroad. Im presently reading it now and enjoying every bit of it. Thank you. Host what do you do in spartanburg . Actually i work for the hospital here. I am a nurse. Host thank you. The end of the book i hope it is not disappointing with those realistic short stories i guess early influences those like stephen king so basically what i wanted to do horror fiction writer Science Fiction writer. So what does the term magical realism mean to you . Those are presented in the same register so giving marquez came up with it as a bigger practitioner listening to his grandmother who would tell stories about her village when she was growing up and mixing in a fantastic detail and she presented it and he never knew what was real or unreal and if you read his work and then we veer off into something fantastic that was a merging of the two and then the underground railroad and each day is very different in terms of time and has a much broader fantastic flourish. And spina instead of having a final spinal tap it is magical view and how that serves the story so encountering the fantastic moments it is presented with a matter of fact town and it serves the book. Host what did you study at harvard . I was an english major. Theory conservative. Africanamericans studies classes. And then teaching somebody over the intuition asked. And then the 20th century books could be taught because now i am officially old. I thought that was funny. Host the apex is there any connection to harvard . I go to harvard the was because i remember going there. But it seems like whatever it takes to get your name onto the harvard dorm. But an annoying for four years been out here with us. Youve mentioned depression yet your sense of humor comes through in this interview. How does humor seep into your book . Guest i mentioned Richard Pryor, George Carlin and if they are makintheyare making fun of d presenting its absurdity and offkilter perspectives and tragedy and that is the sort of life and i think it it goes from the ecstatic and we are also moving from hour to hour in our lives. Trying to capture that and so i write books that are funny and that can accommodate a certain part of my personality. Host is that in your outline where you are putting that together im going to do this first person and its going to be outrageous and then its going to be third person . Guest the book will be satirical and i know youre joking. Its treatment of slavery would be so frugal in the first couple of pages this is a narrator and im going to tell the story. Host with you from gloria. Caller is your name a family name and second, there were a couple of ways people can communicated about the underground railroad. One was through the song. Were there any other ways they communicated to each other . Guest thank you maam. The first question, it is a family name. My father was named archibald. Colson is my middle name and his father or grandfather worked in a hotel in virginia, worked in a hotel, would hire himself on weekends that she got free and then kept doing that and brought his daughter out of slavery in terms of vindication, if you are caught they would be put to death. It is very clandestine. It didnt go that far south. He would never make it through the carolinas. You could escape south to the caribbean but there were so many different ways people communicate and if you were caught you could be jailed, beaten to death, strung up. Host houston, good afternoon. Do you need to be from a program to find an agent and number two, but if you write different genres held as an agent settle on new . Guest half of my friends that id go to graduate school. For me my apprenticeship is how i learned to sit down for five hours and knock out a piece what i couldnt pay my rent. My first agent i got because i worked at a newspaper so it was something i knew. When i had to find my age and same with now for 20 years i got a recommendation from someone that passed on my first book and asked who do you think would be open to that and they recommended a new agent at that point who represented the as in so from her list she had a sensibility that seemed to overlap with mine. If you have an author that you like that writes in the same way as you. In my case i wrote a few page paragraphs and description of the book wasnt offputting underground railroad has but been a bit of a phenomenon. Its an incredible few years of writing it and then coming out. Something i could never have dreamed of in terms of people who picked it up and endorsed it. Its sort of a onceinalifetime thing so i am enjoying and appreciating it. Host how do you find out that you won a pulitzer . Guest its a live stream so thats not really a theatrical, it is a quick live stream. Can you watch with me so she came up and we plugged in the ipad and had a bigger thing. So we had a little dance party and then i met up with some friends who were in town and we celebrated. Host what was your friends reaction to winning the macarthur genius . Guest people ask was their burden, expectations you dont have to have something in at the end and the way that i could get was ive written two books, sort of audible apprentices. I took it as encouragement. I wasnt anxious about it. It was pressure to live up to. Youre on with author and novelist Colson Whitehead. Caller the praise that you have received from the Washington Post and miami herald, you deserve it. I would like you to give a short overview of sag harbor because you and i come from north new jersey and i am the curator of the underground railroad here in my town so go ahead and tell us what you can. Host was there a station in flushing ohio . Guest this is the Northwest Territory right off the ohio river and what he said is up to date. Guest it is an important book for me because i started with a sort of intellectual question i was trying to look for and that was the premise of the novel, so sir john henry, what if i updated this Industrial Age for the information age, what kind of story would generate and then it seemed i had been avoiding going from personal material that seemed this time too and so it was important to me to access different parts of my reality and fine world and put that out there. And it started with a character as opposed to intellectual question and a setting. Since then, i have had work into my characters and then in the underground railroad a culmination theres a strong character grounding it and ive been learning from sag harbor as thisthe only one and it looks fr the last eight years this abstract promise was made it into Something Real so there is the early strain of the premise and the character work so its important to me as a person and i see its influence in this wo work. Host caller how are you doing this evening. I am an author here in the state of delaware and im amazed how this gentleman writing this book the underground railroad i just got finished. You are definitely the ink in your kingpin because you have a sense of humor. The last name of yours is that like a slave class name because my father is also from barbados and my family had a heart is so enlighten me how do you keep a sense of humor . Guest the name the family comes to new york, ellis island in the 1920s and talking about the buck not killing others and last summer someone sent me a genealogy that they did it for me piecing together a news and so this person traced it back to florida and then before that, georgia in the mid19th century so before that im not sure. I know there were a lot of white people named whitehead. And in terms of economic and better by doing it so you write a story that is successful and the only one that can be better. So you learn from that and i keep a sense of humor about my work because that is my point of view about the world and i just try to keep going and keep Getting Better. Caller i have a question. How much should i accept a Nonfiction Book as factual, is there a bias or can i rely on facts from a Nonfiction Book . Guest caller in the general i like history, autobiography. I accept fiction as a novel that they may have some historical facts. But it may not be the truth. I will give you a simple example. The specific war, how factual is the bill oreilly book . Guest i dont read a lot of bill oreilly, but i grew up in the 80s and that means in the age of postmodernism there is no objective truth and perspective or political bias or social conditioning affects how you told the story. Your cultural point of view is a subjective account of how useful things i that your mom and your cousin may disagree so in terms of how much do you believe, is that nonfiction has to get it right and can make it up. Arent you getting in trouble by mistaking the real and fake. I assume when the book says the novel it is a piece of fiction and shouldnt be taken as the gospel of how it actually happened. I know that we lose, people die every year when they step into tornadoes, thinking that it will take thebecome to the wizard of. That is and ever you shouldnt take fiction seriously. I refuse to go to costa rica because i know that is where they filmed Jurassic Park and im deathly afraid of dinosaurs. For most people they dont have that problem and can differentiate between fiction and nonfiction. Host you really want to costa rica are you serious about that . Guest im joking. [laughter] host just as a protagonist that are for a first name. Guest i have been sort of cagey about peoples names. I was trying to take this figure of folklore. I will leave it at that. Host i want to go back to something you said you do not feel responsibility to the reader. The experiments do not happen. Immigrants, people of color didnt happen and if it did happen later. They had been moved do more research and that is great. Our is possibility of a plea not to bore people too much is to have been worth their while. The responsibility to my family and friends be a good husband, father and friend. Besides that if you think it sounds compelling, pick it up and if you dont think it sounds compelling, dont pick it up. Host next called betty in tennessee. Caller hello. Im not even to see well after, but he was talking about the way that the things they used to get out, they used quilting, they would hang them on the clotheslines. That was used in the deep south. I am elderly and i am not welleducated, but i have read a lot of history insightfully as read a lot of books blackandwhite and god gave me a little fluff in my heart. This guy is interesting to wat watch. They have a paper here somewhere that shows the different patterns if i can find it again where they would hang them on the clotheslines. Host before we let you go, tell us a little bit about yourself and if they were raised in tennessee and whats tennessee was like over the years. Guest caller i lived in georgia for different tiers that i and s when i realized that part of tennessee i was raised and they didnt have that prejudice, but the part of georgia i met some people have never forgotten, and i couldnt believe. Whats on the front porch, we cant do that. That was like 50 years ago and it was a painful thing. But i just thought that was used in the deep south. Host thank you, maam. Guest the audio book is very well done. I can do the raping of a practice them and ive done the audio books but really exhausting indigos into a dramatic reading of a novel. So professional actors and people that like a version then you were talking about tennessee versus georgia since the book has come out i remember when the book came out people would say its going to be we are taking this book dow down to the southe slavery happened and then North Carolina gets a bad rap its an exaggeration of what happened under jim crow. Host but so did South Carolina and georgia. Guest im going there this week. Ive been there i think five times people come out to the events and it is a reckoning if you grew up on a piece of land for generations and South Carolina, how do you reckon with the fact they tortured or brutalized people and that is what paid for this land for the house but you are still in. Then i was researching the story and in many ways i shouldnt still be here its luck that my great grandparents want this or that. No matter where youre coming from its interesting to see the reaction of people connected the French Resistance to the underground Railroad Workers its been interesting to see peoples different cultures and countries react. Host do you enjoy the College Lecture circuit . Guest i do. Host does it give you insight a . If im doing something new for the first time i would want it to turn out and read from my new book later this spring and how people respond. Host is it finished . Guest im two thirds of the way through but with certain books that is hopeful. Or people wanting at the jokes were falling silent as the terrible part. And if you get a good reaction its not such a crazy idea and people do understand what you are trying to do. Host without delving too far into your character, if you didnt sign up for the College Lecture circuit, would you be essentially tethered to your couch . Could you easily do that . Guest they spend a lot of time there and going two for then traveled four in travel, travel allows me to see a lot of different places that i wouldnt normally do this it is a good and positive part of the work. Work. President obama praised underground railroad. Did you get the chance to meet him while he was in office . Guest i did from one of his assistants. Then i looked up his name and he was a white house worker and so i went and invited a bunch of novelists. He said hed been in the white house for almost eight years. It was the week before he was going to leave and he said he always wanted to chat with writers and have lunch with them and then he only had a couple of days left. We were sort of dazed 510 coming in and lighten up, we did sort of light enough and he talked about writing and has some great books and he got really animated talking about being a writer writing his first book. He was riding in a hot and there were some lizards that would croak loudly and he got animated thinking about the creative act of us can relate to. Honolulu good afternoon. Caller its so nice to be on the air with you. I familiar with the writing van italian . He wrote in the sixties his most famous work is the cosmic comics its not a novel each chapter is a short story unto itself but when i hear you laugh i thought maybe with a cosmic comment and also wrote i know how its translated in english that the parent in the trees. Host why is this appealing to you . Caller the magical realism he came a little earlier language is beautiful with that imagination. He is great they are great books and i felt affinity with him when i encountered his work in college has a highbrow writer and the storytellers i adored growing up or the see clerk 11 and that whimsical voice is inspirational the books are sure to pick them up. According to what you sent us you are reading a comic book. Yes. Mr. Miracle from when i was writing sag harbor that is about 1985 and popculture we we created from 1980 makes tapes and im not up on all the stuff coming out now days but it came out with great reviews so i downloaded it and it is a small corner of the dc comics world having a postmodern 21st century take and pick them up. Host tulsa you are on book tv. Caller thank you for taking my call to preface my comment, one of the most interesting summers i ever spent as a teacher in 2003 as a Teaching Fellow for speed cspan mr. Whitehead probably knows its difficult to encourage students to read. Could he send a message to my students of the benefits of reading books as opposed to other activities. Sure. I am a writer because i loved reading and as a kid reading comic books and sciencefiction and zombies and robots and werewolves and may be writing serious fiction. It doesnt matter if its twilight or hunger games if you like it read it dont worry about what other people say if you like hunger games or other utopian books you might like different writers and it becomes a gateway to different kinds of fiction like stephen king was a gateway that yeah occasionally will savor the website Say Something nice why do we need books . Why do we breathe or eat they sustain us. Host are your kids readers . Yes. The four yearold, not so much and batman and joker pieces between three and seven. That means are big now she is 13 and now moving into the why a staff. Caller i watch you every week on sunday and sometimes during the week. Mr. Whitehead will you do the book reviews in our area . On the website when i am on tour in the spring perhaps i come to a town near you. New jersey . I was there i am going to new work on tuesday actually which is in too far. Maybe i will see you there. If you do come wave. Host your speaking at rutgers. Do you do book signings . I do. Host what the most common comment people make to you are the most offensive . Offensive . Its funny because there is a different acquaintance with africanamerican black culture there basic questions that makes sense but could a white person and have written this book . You never ask a white person could a black person have written this book. Can they write outside race and thats a big question new are the exotic black person. Do you get apologize to . Some have apologized some have apologized for that culture with their great great great grandparents did or did not do. Thats a small percentage and does not bother me. The most common question with a female protagonist mixing it up and sharing that dilemma but basically im really happy. Because of the underground railroad and because of your book have you become the africanamerican writer . And with slim recognition people do want you to talk about black lives matter. Why dont you have somebody about black lives matter talk about it not a dumb novelist. And those of 1850 with the contemporary culture its not my job to fill the fourth seat on your talkshow i really am a writer. Host missouri good afternoon. Caller thank you for the fascinating interview. Two quick questions. Are you familiar with the slave writings of William Faulkner especially in the long short story and that stream of consciousness. And what you think of the postmodern novelist. Its fascinating the postmodernist novel in the executions in the fifties and william gatz from st. Louis but its an interesting school of writing. I have read faulkner and now im blanking on the other ones. I dont think about them often as it influence. I havent read them in 30 years i remember reading the babysitter the first year in college and that was very important for me and then with that summer continue to study up on them. I did my time with the recognition and jr i prefer jr to be distinctly american novels with those interpretations of American Culture Richard Nixon is there as a character of the rosenbergs and to take those characters to put them in your book with your own spin. It was okay to do that. From the profile view of the guardian with the executive Recruitment Firm and was less than delighted when he announced the desire to become a writer. My father grew up poor firstgeneration college. So his children would it be broke i was broke many times getting out of college because of my career choice. [laughter] that they were hoping i could get a job like a lawyer and then when the intuition just came out they realized i was in it for the long haul. Can we read this is your father in sag harbor . He kept changing the channel out of habit cnn in the nightly news with only things he watch. The faces on the screen, the anchors this days victim in the every day he rose. And then those that they call them out he knew the commentary by heart the televangelists snuck his hand into the collection box the problem with black people is they waste time praying to god when they should be looking for a job nobody ever gave me anything i ask for anything some people need to get off their ass. He had a very conservative take pulling yourself up from your bootstraps he had his own company that definitely of the last part but sadly the first part now that sounds like me. [laughter] cnn and msnbc i would get work done or may have six months free but i became such a news junkie last spring that i started working on this new book and it helped between ten and three i was off the tv news nepal. Host have you remain sober . Exactly. [laughter] is something is happening is this actually happening in america . Then i get sucked back in. I will finish this before the latest charming round of news because those who were drooling idiots like did trump really say that . And really to open up the National Park with uranium . So i know people it was a comedy in our living in a dark time. So im glad i finish my book before this new cycle. Host new york city. Caller thank you for taking my call. To questions. What does mr. Whitehead think of the nword if there is a difference in his mind between stereotyping and racism or any ethnic backgrounds. Host what is your answer to those two questions . I live in Washington Heights harlem as a white woman and hear the nword a lot but god forbid if i let it slip it is a big wrong. So all vocabulary should be available to all people. But i think stereotyping is the gateway or could be a mindset that there is a difference so if i hear somebody to say black people have a great sense of rhythm is that stereotype or racism or is that dangerous . Host where did you grow up . Originally im from germany and emigrated to Washington Heights. Very good. The differences between the stereotype and racism. Racism depends on the negative stereotypes of people with different skin and massage any and gender and xenophobia and other cultures and the distinction between the two that im not smart enough to make. With the nword as someone is dealt with black culture for many years to at this point in history to say who can use it and who cant is exhausting. It is tiring. Here white person i want to say it why do you want to say it why are you asking . Why is it an issue . And then youre wondering why you cant use the nword . It is used in different ways just the same way that bitch can be used either a brassy personality or misogynist way of a female personality or female power. If you wonder if you can say it, dont. [laughter] otherwise you are probably racist. [laughter] host an email from marsha how important were your teachers impacting your current literary success . What is there a special teacher or a mentor . The answer is no. No one singled me out for special treatment. I think of mr. Johnson introducing me to Ralph Ellison the teacher who is racist but as a senior in high school that nobody said you are special. [laughter] but with the development as a writer and what i read in Elementary School reading the lottery for the first time and what does that teach us about 19 fifties america . And james joyce as a freshman in college and the explosive dynamic talent they introduced me to very important books that i still draw upon today. Caller hello i love your hair do it is really cool. And i think your father mustve gone to my high school because we all went the same way we all got along we laugh together and sat together we didnt call each other names and a lot of people that graduated with me of color went on to great things. In fact two of the officers from the graduating class for people of color. Nobody called me a dirty jew or i didnt call them another name. We got along great. This new racism is ugly and i dont like the groups getting together and government to fight each other. Host what do you mean by the new racism . You have all of these subgroups in the government that they get to gather groups five or six fighting for certain cause when it should be one person one vote they should be speaking for their constituents not for themselves wearing colors to represent the differences that is crazy. Sadly its not new racism. It is the manifestation of what goes back centuries. When obama was elected i dont know a lot about people and savior living in a post Racial Society because that happened. And obviously the people who vote for obama as they did vote for tunnel on donald trump talking about hate crimes on the rise were people marching with neonazi flags and unashamed to show their faces or where the kkk mask or the return of something that has always been there. And will continue to be with us for a very long time unfortunately. Host taking all of the references to race that could have written by anybody. Its about becoming a teenager and entering a new identity. Is not about a black kid figuring himself out but what we all go through in our teens where does that and . Its about town in the midwest they want to rebrand themselves so they hire the protagonist of the book he names antidepressants and bandaid that comes in different skin tones you can find your own skin color and not be ashamed if you have dark skin to have a flesh tone bandaid so they want to change the name of the town because of branding the same way neonazis and supremacist rebrand themselves as the altar white and then to project a new identity for yourself start with that name. So what names are considered. We wont give away the endin ending. The main character is faced what is the essence of the town or the history how to can it capture where it is going and where it has been do they have a duty to tell the truth or sell the new identity . And comes with a solution not necessarily will look great on tshirts but a solution to the towns problem. Host collingwood tennessee you are on book tv. Caller you got my name correct. I think what i have been listening to you have some humor in your written work but have you thought about writing something purely humorous like a farce or a satire on a serious subject like slavery or lynching or the civil rights. With jim crow possibly . Sure. I think we do have different moments of black history. Apex hides the hurt and also it is just a tool is at the right to will for this job or not . So my most purely i spent a lot of time writing it. I have a good poker face because im half dead inside you find that funny or you dont. But that sums up. Host madison wisconsin. Caller thanks for taking my call. Ime librarian that is retired but the books that were important to you in middle school and high school. Thank you. As a High School Senior and then to have that platform so then writing on progress which is the old and those outgoing adventures and and South Carolina is selfcontained and the odyssey. And then my introduction to realism. But earlier and is a very interesting structure. And then interspersed with that narrative and it is foreshadowing and the text and then you can actually play whatever seventhgrade phrasing it is. Aid are nine or ten gold medals in the seventies for swimming. But he cannot swim in my book. Barbara Virginia Beach virginia. Thank you for taking my call. I am enjoying so much. Does he admire or like the work of Walter Mosley . Writer who is versatile like himself in terms of genre. Someone else who can talk about being a black man in modern america thank you for taking my call. He is great. As i said earlier trying to find the model and worried about structure and detector books and with that suspense and politics and james and Walter Mosley and when the intuition is was finished and those endorsements from the back of the book and mosley was kind and then to endorse the book and i met him since then. When the book came out they said we bought it because he is on the back. Thats sweet of him to take the time. Host he will be sitting in a chair in april for the special year of fiction authors in two months. Last call from georgia. Go ahead. Good afternoon. You are a refreshing breath of fresh air. Do you know the work of Charles Chestnut who was an africanamerican attorney in chicago. But do you know about his fiction . I do, indeed. My English Department is very conservative thats why first came across the slave narratives and the conjure woman where if they lacks southern slaying for magic or if you are bewitched then crazy words as a writer im trying to use and then i was could use that word in underground railroad. There was a slave master which is to make a hex around their plantation to keep the slaves from running away is a binding spell and then they would cross the magical line and then be sickened by the bad magic. I assume that didnt work but maybe thats my cynical 21st century view. Host Pulitzer Prize winner. [laughter] grant and genius Colson Whitehead he has been our guest on indepth here is a list of his books. New book end of this year or next year. Host thank you for spending three hours and thank you for tuning in america he spent his entire career on the wrong side of history spent the president has failed in the most basic duty of the nation has failed to protect us in america and my fellow americans, that is unforgivable. Our program thi