Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book Discussion 20150111 : vimarsana.

Baker, Francine Prose and Walter Mosley. [applause] ms. Paul is the editor of the New York Times book review and the popular interview of by the book. Her new book on literature and the literary life by the New York Times book review brings together 65 of the most intriguing and fascinating exchanges over time. Shes joined this morning by the author of six novels as well as the coowner of a bookstore. [applause] her newest book is this is the story of a happy marriage a memoir and before the publication of her first novel she was in the trenches of 17 magazine. Nicholson baker is the author of ten novels including human smoke. His latest is in the chronicles where the puppet protagonist appears again. He is joined by francine is the author of the 20 works of fiction. Her latest book is lovers at the 10 million club 1932 in novel set in the 1920s. Also on the panel this morning is Walter Mosley who is the author of more than 40 books most notably there are fans in the audience of the mystery series. The later role is the mystery that takes place during the era of the radical black nationalism and political abduction. Ladies and gentlemen our panel. [applause] in 2012 when i started by the book i had a few motivations. While i would like to believe as the editor the only reason people ever buy books is based on the book reviews especially those in the New York Times. I know that occasionally there are other reasons people pick up a book and one of the ones commonly cited cited is that everyone is talking about in the audience that your best friend recommends is the current controversy. So how do i get at that word of the mouth book review and i came up with this idea that i think of as cheaper red carpet question what are you wearing and we ask the people what are you reading and by and what are the books that matter to you and i thought of this while at the theater in harlem. Its not always a funny funny but thats what are the funniest books that we ever read. Now booked through 2015. Its become popular with authors and also other writers who sometimes like to show that they like to read. I feel like one of the times i was working at it and the fact people wanted to be in the column was on three separate occasions the bookstore owners told me that they had come into the store with pages torn out and the titles they said i want everything that and recommends. So i have four great authors all of whom have done by the book. I feel there is a spectrum of authors where there are those on the one hand that can talk endlessly about their book if you ask them to come to a reading of a well talk about the book while they are in the bathroom stall when ever given an opportunity and on the other and there are people like thomas who will never talk about their books and in the middle and they also get sick of talking about their book. So this is an occasion for the letters to talk not about their book about about other peoples books. We should open up by saying they have a lot of time to come up with the exact answer of what the book was the most important on the spot and nobody had to cheat sheets in front of them. And in case they dont answer the exact question here is an easy one but i will start with which is what did you read on your way to the Miami Book Fair . Stomach because my own bookstore as i read books that wont be out until march but im reading a new book that will be out in march. Its medieval and its got dragons in it. I would never have wanted to read this book and i cant put it down. I got up at 5 00 this minute so i could read for a couple of hours. This is how you know because within two minutes she was leaving the back alley asked me. I still use this application. Its nice to have a machine its not abandoned and we were reading about criticism thats the 19th century as with every single thing thing thing in the mail and has written in french or english or greek or latin and he had a wonderful kind of flowing style that helps me think. So when i want to say things fluently which i was worried about today, that helps me. For reasons that are too dark and personal to go into, i have been on a huge kick so i was reading on the way down i was reading in a strange way because i realized when i woke up early in the morning to catch a flight i had a little tiny bar i was afraid it was going to run out. So i would read a few pages and then do a puzzle in the magazine and read a few more pages. I thought thomas would love it if he loves anything. Its hard for me to remember the title. I started reading when i was 16 on the American Institute for the foreign study trip to england, and i just realized when i started reading him that i love his language and this was one of his books. Hes written like a hundred but this is one of them i had read. And i love it because of his Science Fiction mystery writer but what he does is ask these questions i always found interesting like in this one does a soldier who didnt want to be a soldier but became an evil so sure that somehow became under the purview of satan but they decided he wants to go back to heaven and he needs this guy to go out and find a way for him and given the problems i live with but id like to think of it in a larger way. The answers all came out long ago but im curious because walter consulted a gadget and that is an actual book. Do you still read oldfashioned books, do you write in your book i get up in the morning and i go into drive somewhere and have a stack of books in the backseat and i read out loud from them and somehow reading out loud in an empty car to myself from the book on paper helps me. In the middle of the night it is all Different Things because you dont want to wake up your spouse so i read in the hours between three, four and five. I read on and i fell in. Its that little book life. Im sorry for the Itty Bitty Book light. I used to travel because god forbid i would get stuck in an airport so now i dont have to do that but actually what i did in the column by favorite place to read is the passenger seat of a car going up the freeway. The question is like loving cell phones but being against killing people in congo. You cant like both. If you are on your cell phone, and we are all on cell phones. What are you talking about . [laughter] the main chemical into the reason that it doesnt work is because people are making a profit off of them and they dont want a demo technicians drawing them from getting the cheapest possible. Reading books on paper and i do because children who cant afford books can download thousands onto their little devices and read them and not have to pay for them or murder millions of trees, so it goes both ways. Spec theres many other issues that come up. I live in maine and there are so many trees [laughter] and really when you stop cutting down the trees and making paper with them. When you stop cutting down the trees and making paper what happens. Those are the engines that have stalled. So youve got to keep things to save the forest. [laughter] who else reads in the bath who else reads in the bathtub . I think it is almost a lifethreatening situation. Someone stopped and asked in my own Book Club Just two weeks ago such a basic question yet it stopped all of us in the middle of a heated conversation and she said why do you read why do people read and i think it is an interesting question so i want to post it to all of you in any order. I read it because my parents read. Sometimes when i was in my 20s i was reading because who is out there, who are my competitors. Now its that i want to find out anything and its much more fun to have a pursuit so you are led to books that you never would have looked at other ways that you need to find out some tiny piece of the buildup to world war ii or whatever it was. So it helps order this and possibly in our ms. Universe of books. I love to read and as i get older its really the most important thing. Its the thing i plan my day around and that i always want to be doing. Its the thing i love the most. I dont want to go anywhere anymore. I dont want to go out to dinner i just want to read. There was a Party Last Night pinnick even when i was a kid it seemed unfair to me that he will make off one life. So reading takes away the sting of that. One of the things that came out is that is can change depending where you are in your own life and that at a certain point maybe after a tragedy you find that you only want to read a scape or you want to read it to be transported. Other times you want to read about people going through similar things and i wonder if you have found your reading needs or desires have shifted over the course of your life. Im not sure that im going to answer that question with something you said my sisters husband died in january and he was one of my best friends. It was a horrible loss and i started reading the saddest books i could find. They were so helpful. Doesnt sink in with other peoples sadness and loss . The suicide index which is such a fantastic book and i cannot recommend it enough. It was like going to see your friends. Does anybody else read about people more trouble but then you are . [laughter] im going to go back to the question. Its depending on where you were in your life. I really liked reading. I like to dip into things. And there was one for the new yorker was the longwinded lady. She would write a long paragraph in the talk of the town session and she would just go into a restaurant and describe who walked into the restaurant. She wouldnt actually talk to them she would just have speculations or would be riding the subway. Its really thrilling to see. So its just to imagine myself back in new york city in the 60s writing the subway. The motive has escaped. I find myself drawn to the outrageous envelope. Are we going to name names . There is pressure on everybody to do something that is forming to the conventional model. To say i didnt know you could do that is extremely helpful. My rating may change because of my situation but im not keeping track of it. How do you decide what to read next . The big thing is about re rating. When they are reading it if i happen to be about about and he starts talking about the book as if he just read it for the first time. Usually you see where i can go with that with another panel. What other books do you usually like to read . Some that are wonderful art from his short stories. I just go over them again and again. I still havent understood it but i really liked reading that. I miss understanding changes. Do you really read . I just read a piece for you. Actually im trying to write something now. We have a russian issue of the buck coming next weekend for the counterprogramming and francine wrote an essay about answering the question of what is so great about the literature and why do you keep returning to the russian novelist . I read green eggs and ham all the time. [laughter] actually a mother taught me to read. I was a late reader. She gave me green eggs and ham to read and i had a horrible time with words like look and i remember crying. When i got there she meets me green eggs and ham with food coloring and it tasted good but it looked very strange. [laughter] know i like to read. I truly like to read. But speak memory is the look i book i always go back to and it is a its actually a supernatural book i have to say. It is an accordion book because i have read the book sort of true i through i guess i read every page but not in order. Theres always some teams of it that im reading for the first signs of it time said it is a miraculous about in that way. Do you have time to read . I dont come i used to read james all the time and its gone now. I read not only things that were written a long time ago but things that havent been published yet. Do you do reading for pleasure or doesnt overlap and meld together . It is all the same because all books are a pleasure for me and if they arent, i stopped reading them. At the bookstore we have the First Editions Club so we are always thinking about what book we will be picking into three or four months and everyone is fiercely reading and its trying to hold back the wave all the time. And okay we have february picked but what about march and april. It cant be putting things down that you want to love. What is the last book that you picked up because you didnt finish wouldnt want to . I dont even know that it looked at the cover but it happens about five times a day. No joke. Every single day of my life people are sending books to my house, people send books to me to the bookstore. It is never ending. People want me to read their books and if something doesnt catch me really fast unless it is a friend or with a personal recommendation i dont give it much of a chance at old. Do you need to get to the end of every book or do you put things down . I love that when you are in a bookstore and you open a book and read the first five lines no. Weve read about. That. Its done. Forget it. I hate saying bad things about other books in any specific way. So thats why i stopped writing book reviews. Ive gone through phases where illustrative books that i now dont love as much and ive also discovered books in my 50s i thought i would never ever read but you never know what phase someone is going to be in. One of the things that the negative book reviews. Its more than i like the book and actually wanting to read the book because it is like that review i have to say you do not write negative reviews and recently returned to that. That is something young people today just to trash everything and have no conscience about it. Taken seriously and i just feel i cannot say it. I want to go back theres a book written on the socalled Nonfiction Book does all this stuff but if you catch it from the air it is about destroying america it was a real fear mongering book and a lot of the things that were said were not a true return by somebody that had to change his name at least once a. I kind of applauded that review. I think there are certain times certain books say certain things that maybe wants to Say Something against but that is never about technique or stories but its things that deserve to be counter i think. I want to Say Something that brings up a topic that will give solace to many parents and grandparents out there about with their little ones are reading. You you started off reading Chronicle Books as a child. What is it that appealed to you about the comics . It seemed like they understood my life. You were a superhero. I wanted to be a superhero. And like spiderman especially he was like a black kid. All this power, all this money coming cant make any money and when he does does a display making fun of himself. The police are after him the public fear him. But it does have wonderful things in life. But thats me. The stories were living out in the physical desires and fantasies and so i thought that they were beautiful and i still do. I love them. What did you read growing up . I read comics also. I loved mad magazine when i was a kid. I thought finally someone has a same sense of humor as me unlike my family. And then i just read everything. I dont think that anyone told the ordering of the difference between a socalled good book and a socalled bad book. I just didnt care. You have all of these novels and i didnt know the difference. Then i read it again in third grade, and it was really the most incredible reading experience. I remember lying on the couch, this crushed velvet couch that we had and just trying to find different positions and counting the number of pages and the excitement of being in the midst of something so enormous. I loved that. And then i got into Science Fiction. A friend of my fathers had, was a Science Fiction guy. He just delivered in this massive stack of very wellthumb ed yearly anthologies, that kind of things and just stacked them up i remember they were on the ironing board. And i just kind of i took them away and read them all and loved them. And i thought well, i want to be a writer and write Science Fiction. So i started that was before, i actually wrote a couple of stories based on Science Fiction. One was called gasp. Gasp. That was when the worlds atmosphere went away. Who were your favorite Science Fiction authors . Well, i dont remember now. The guys name, i loved the guys name, his name was robert she cannily. Saturdays of space, i loved that one. [laughter] app, what were you reading ann, what were you reading at the time this. I read whatever my sister had finished reading. I read charlottes web which was hugely important to me and changed my wife. Still to this day i am living in the world of charlottes webb. I read the nancy drew books nothing interesting just what everybody was supposed to read. And then when i was 13, i read humboldts gift, and i just went directly from little house on the prairie to humboldts gift which was laying around. And i reread that book this last year, and it was fascinating because i remembered every word of it. It was completely imprinted on my brain. And also when my grandmother was dying ten years ago, i ended up reading her all of the little house on the prairie books again which are really have a lot of problems. [laughter] difficult man. He was really difficult. But, again, i could almost close the book and recite the next page. Your brain is such a sponge when youre young, and all of those things really stick. One of the great things ill recommend is actually listening to charlottes web theres an audio recording that e. Be. White does himself and its so amazing to hear how he imagines the goose and her little idiosyncratic speech patterns. When i asked you who your literary hero was and you said wilbur why . I lived on a farm in tennessee when i was a kid, and i got a pig for my ninth birthday. Not one of those potbellied pigs but the way pigs used to be. It was small for a couple of weeks [laughter] it was my dog and it grew up to be 350 pounds. And i became a vegetarian three days after my ninth birthday because i wouldnt eat my dog, and i wouldnt eat my pig, and that was it. That book had a huge impact on me. Did you have a literary hero either as a child or now . Well, i suppose as a child it was strider in the lord of the rings and captain haddock, some mixture of the two. Francine . Well, i liked all those, excuse me very basic empowered girls, you know pip by longstocking and jo. Jo. It was so, so to speak, textbook, but they really meant a lot to me. Walter . Other than spiderman . It has to be [laughter] no. My i always have like a problem with talking about writing to readers or because readers think a lot about reading. And i dont know what writers think, but i dont think a lot about reading. I rarely think that reading has anything to do with writing. I dont, i dont equate them. Theyre two Different Things. I like them both. But, and so the guy who i like the most is homer, you know . Because not only was he illiterate, he was also blind, so all he could do was tell stories about things that he had picked up. And thats kind of the way i think of writing the that youre telling this kind of large, big stories, and theyre in your head. And it doesnt have to do with other people telling stories or writing books. The books are something different, and they do connect, and you tell the story and it gets published. Id like to believe everyone is readers but as we know from polls, only about 50 percent of americans have read at least one book for pleasure in the last year, and that statistic kind of remains static. So i do think that the world divides into people who are readers and those who arent. Do you remember, was there a time when you became a reader or someone who inspired you . Walter . The same thing as my parents. My parents would sit there and they would read. I mean, they would watch television, they would tell stories, they would do all kinds of oh things other things but they there were books everywhere, and i just said, well, this must be important. Frap seen was it preorr ordained with your name . Well, i was a very early reader. I was just 4 and i learned the way i think a lot of kids do, just my them memorizing and pretending, but it was kind of a party trick for me because my parents would say, you know, look at her, she can read, and then i would read for their guests. [laughter] so it was just this weird little performance. [laughter] and then i discovered i liked it, also in private. So thats how it happened. Well theres nothing wrong with you if you dont like reading, i dont think. Honestly, i think there are lots of people who have very complicated, interesting thoughts who might only read a couple of books a year. My father wasnt a reader he liked to read i mean, he was a reader but he wasnt a book reader. And i was amazed by how much he knew by reading the kinds of things he read; art catalogs and the New York Times and just more ephemeral things. I dont think people necessarily have to read books. I, im not a very bad reader good reader, honestly. I read a lot, but i look at the way my wife reads books, shes read all of trollop, and she just reads it and theres a kind of joy, and it sorts out her life as shes reading the book in a way that doesnt happen for me. Im very jealous of it, in fact. Im not that kind of reader, and yet ive managed to survive. [laughter] so i think its okay, its okay if you you know, but what ive been hit with recently is the flashman series. George mcdonald frazier, a terribly objectionable British Empire sort of chap, and he goes around doing terrible things all over the world, and he sort of, its a p. G. Woodhouse combined with the sharp novels, bernard cornwall. And hes funny and objectionable, and i actually felt some of that feeling of wanting to go from book to book, was there are a lot of books that i think real readers feel in reading these flashman series. And youre a Doris Kerns Goodwin completist, you said. I am. There other writers that you feel like you just have to read every single thing they write . Oh, ask somebody else, and let me think on that. [laughter] did you grow up surrounded by books . Did you come from a reading family . How did you become a reader . You know, my parents were great readers. I have no memory of either of my parents ever reading to us, but they always were saying go away were reading. [laughter] and i can remember there thats the thats the way to do it. I think that is the way to do it, to show your child that youre in an important relationship with a book. My parents were divorced when i was very young, and we only saw our father a week a year long, sad story, but it had to do with the price of plane tickets. I remember when i was very very young going to visit my father, and he was reading the first godfather, and he couldnt even look up. [laughter] i mean he really loved us, he was really happy we were there but he was so stuck with it. And i remember so well, i mean, i was 8 or something him saying he cut the head off the horse [laughter] and he put the head in the guys bed my father was a cop in los angeles [laughter] and we were, like no, they cut the head off the horse . And somehow i think that was better than him reading green eggs and ham [laughter] i have to say, do you feel thats one of the beautiful points you reach in childhood where your child is independently reading so at night you can say would you like me to read to you, or should we read our own books side by side . Oh, yeah, thats a sad moment. Its bittersweet. Do you have a favorite author i mean, everyones going to probably name someone dead [laughter] you can answer with five names. As soon as you said favorite authors, it was like the old 8 ball toy, something comes up, and it has to be nabakov. He is not a idiomatic writer of english, and yet he had this desire to match up words with things in a way that still when i read him, i think oh, my god. When i was 15, i read this description that he made of riding in a train looking at telegraph wires, and the telegraph wires before beaten down every so often by the poles, and i thought oh, my god, ivorieden in the back of a ive ridden in the back of a car and they do the exact same thing. The exciting feeling that somebody is able to look at the world, pull it down and put it into words and then it goes into my mind and the same thing happens. So he has to be my, still my favorite writer. Francine . Oh, i couldnt possibly. I mean, first of all, that question i cant every time im asked every book i ever read, i just feel them circling the drain and going down i know. Its like when someone comes up to you and says what should i read next . Read any good books lately . There are hundreds of them. There are hundreds of them. Walter . That means they want to have sex with you, right . [laughter] you know for me its never authors, its always books. I love the four quartets but not t. S. Eliot. I think the [inaudible] are just incredible books, but everything that was written i dont want love. I really like, you know david cop orfield, but that copperfield, but that doesnt mean im reading everything dickens wrote. Writers are uneven, they have different interests so there are books that i like and then i have, you know, nice feelings toward the writers because they wrote them but its not like its everything that somebody wrote is going to be my i love asking questions, which is one of the reasons i started a q a, and i have about five other index cards here, each with five questions on them, but given the constraints of time, i want to invite everyone to ask your question. So if you want to go up to the microphone if you have any questions and while theyre doing that, can i answer that last question . Ah good. Because with the writers that i read when i was growing up who were the people that my mother and stepfather read who i read through high school and college and graduate school, this is so weird, but its bellow, updike and roth for me. And even though there are good books and bad books, my very Favorite Books are really those three. The human stain and rabbit at rest and humboldts gift. Thats like a literary showdown kind of question where you go, okay, bellow, roth or updike . Its such a cliche though. These are my guys . I dont know. All right. We will turn to your questions. Okay. I need recommendations from as many as will give them. Having exhausted anthony trollop and jane austen, who would be in that world that i could read . Were going back to 19th century england. With some wit. It doesnt have to be england, but some story, plot character with some wit like them. Um, read nancy mittford, love in a cold climate and in pursuit ofover love. Youre nodding because youve already read them, yes . Oh, you havent, okay. Also a book i just finished reading a couple days ago brother to the more famous jack i loved. I cant explain to you why that connects but it does. These are new books. [inaudible] barbara tripedio. If you go go to par nas us books. Net, i write everything down. Also you should read the signature of all things because she goes back and reimagines those hair wents heir wents in a meaningful way. What happened to jerry kaczynski, is he still with us . Oh no, he killed himself. Yeah. Oh, my. Yeah. He was somebody said that he had had help with one of his books, translational help that maybe verged into other kinds of help. He seemed to be depressed and i think he felt his would recollect was done his work was done so he just checked out. Thank you. Please tell us about your book club. Ive been in one almost 40 years. Oh, gosh. Okay, this is something i was going to bring up earlier should books read one for children if one is not a child . [laughter] i belong actually to a Childrens Book club for several reasons, one because the books are short [laughter] and i, therefore am never asked to read, you know, volume three by next month. I have a lot of work to read, books to read for work. The second reason is because the people in it, this is a book club that had been in existence it formed under the author Gretchen Reuben who wrote the happiness project and several other books. And the book club has become so popular, and there are now three branches. Next week we have the trikidlet holiday book party and the people in it are authors and literary critics people who work within publishing many of whom dont have children but like childrens literature. And for me one of the things that i love about childrens literature is that these are the books that made us readers. These are the books that hooked us. There is an emphasis on story and on the sort of themes that touch the human heart in childrens literature that will always speak to me and also enable me to stay in that world. I have three children, and i used to be the Childrens Book editor at the times before i was, as my children say demoted. So [laughter] thats my book club. Question for ann patchett. Has owning a bookstore changed you as a writer and if so, how . It probably has because i dont have as much time to write. My new book is a book of essays and i know that i wrote that book because i had a bookstore and i couldnt just disappear in the same way that i do when i write a novel. But im trying to get hold of my life, and i am writing a novel now because not only when i opened this week store bookstore, it became such a big part of my community in nashville, and i started spooking at schools and at rotary clubs and at moose lodges and hosting the homeless shelter fundraiser in the library gala you know . Thats how it changed my life. This shows how much a bookstore really serves a function in the community. Yeah. You know, its true. Especially now. So i came a smidgen late, and i apologize if youve already answered this question but youve thrown around the term good book, bad book. What makes a good book for each of you i suppose . Shall we start with walter . Um, the first thing that makes a book good for me is the language itself. If i, im enjoying the language, the descriptions, the dialogue. And then, you know, after that comes character and story and, you know, im really political so at some point or another if something can go awry politically for me, that might turn me away. But i if that doesnt happen, its, its not just craft but not always craft, its how, its the language and how well it flows forward for me. Yeah, i agree with walter. Its all about sentences for me. Uhhuh. I have to i like when somebodys funny and when i like the person. If i like the guy or gal whos writing the book, i think, okay, im willing to spend some time with this person. And im i often have a sort of subversive streak where i want to read things that are genre books that are things that are not considered high literary books because ive heard those names so often, and i want to find out what people are doing who are less celebrated, you know . Nick Nicholson Baker or reads romance novels too. Yeah i love reading romance novels. I mean, theyre dirty now so [laughter] for me, its when i forget that im reading. Its when i stop hooking at a book and thinking oh, thats amazing, that was so clever, that was a really smart idea. When that part of my brain shuts off and i stop analyzing the book and figuring out how they did it and i just fully enter into it then it becomes a truly great book. I just finished reading roz chastes book cant we talk about something more pleasant, so to be reading a graphic novel and have that part of my brain click off, i was just with her every second. Thats great. For me its about being transported. I dont want to read about, you know other neurotic people my age in new york, you know, dealing with family and work. [laughter] i want to be, you know, off in the congo. Can i recommend an ishagura novel called the buried giants . Yes. [laughter] yesterday we heard a wonderful presentation from Walter Isaacson on his new book the innovators, and i was curious if any of you spend much time reading Nonfiction Books. I probably read more nonfiction than fiction. I no, go ahead please. Well, i mean, i write nonfiction, so i have to read up, i have to read a lot of Nonfiction Books in order to sift through what other people have said. And its also its kind of nice to alternate, i think. You know, to be in an imagined world is kind of enveloping in a different way. But when you write concern when youre reading a Nonfiction Book, the person gets all sorts of points for telling the truth. And i like the truth. So im all, i read probably as much or more nonfiction than fiction. Yeah. I read a lot of non i mean, when youve been out of school for a million years youre, by necessity, an autodie direct, so if youre going to read anything, you have to keep up your reading. Recently i bought in the thing that was published in the 30s called the educator library. Its a the its an 11 volume College Education for soldiers who went to war and couldnt you know because you could only go to school when you were 18 and so at 25 youre an old guy so you cant go. But it was like, a whole College Education. And because its before computers and before jet engines, they explain almost everything that you can do how to build a plane, kind of wonderful and i love stuff like that. I like history too i like reading the story of civilization by will and ariel durant, you know, its kind of wonderful. I read a lot of nonfiction i also listen to a lot of nonfiction. Im not so good listening to fiction, and my Favorite Book this year is deep, down dark. Brilliant, brilliant book. Thank you. We have to bring this session to a close. I didnt know if you wanted to wrap it up with closing remarks. You can corner us for questions after except for Nicholson Baker who has to go to his next session. Lets have a round of applause for our panelists. [applause] booktv is on facebook. Like us to get publishing news scheduling updates behind the scenes pictures and videos, author information and to talk directly with authors during our live programs. Facebook. Com booktv. Host a familiar face to cspan and booktv viewers, ted olson, the former solicitor general and coauthor of this book redeeming the dream the case for marriage equality, along with david boies. Mr. Olson, dud you surprise a did you surprise a lot of people with your position on