Why books matter. In the library of americas literary anthology. He is the book critic and former book editor of the los angeles times. Ladies and gentlemen, david yulen listen. [applause] thank you. Its a real honor and a pleasure to be here tonight and a real honor to be part of the National Book awards. Let me start by saying what an exceptional year its been for fiction, which means our work which made our work as a jury in this category especially rewarding and especially difficult. Long books, short books, short stories, novels, this list of finalists could have been a hundred books long. Why . Because what fiction offers is the interior plunge, a sense to experience the inner be life of another person which which makes it a mechanism of empathy. Thats what fiction has always been, thats what fiction remains, and it offers a vivid challenge to questions about the health of fiction. Trust me, my fellow jurors and i can assure you, it is healthy. We know this firsthand. In the course of this process, we accounted for something over 400 books. When youre on a prize jury, what you really want to be doing is having a collegial conversation about what matters in literature. You want to kind of come to a con consensus about what we as a jury, what we as a jury think. Thats what happened in, over the last several months as the five of us went through all of these books and honed this list, and i want to just thank my fellow jurors for what have been some of the most rewarding and intelligent and thoughtful conversations about literature that i have ever had. I want to briefly introduce the jurors or mention the jurors by name, and then well move along to the finalists and the presentation. My fellow jurors were danielle alacone. [applause] jeff, Jeffrey Renard allen [applause] sara bagby and laura litman. [applause] and i want to say that im humbled to have had the opportunity to work with all of you on this prize. The finalists for the 2015 National Book award in fiction are refund, by karen e. Bender [cheers and applause] published by counterpoint. The turner house, by angela flournoy. [cheers and applause] published by Houghton Mifflin harcourt. Faiths and furies, published by river held. Fortune smiles, by adam johnson. [cheers and applause] published by random house. And a little life by hania yanagahara, published by doubleday. [applause] and the 2015 National Book award in fiction goes to fortune smiles by adam johnson. [cheers and applause] [applause] i was having the most wonderful, calm, relaxed [laughter] at peace evening because i honestly knew with so many kind of fine, fantastic other finalists that this was the one thing that wasnt going to happen. And i told my wife and my kids, dont come across america, because this is not going to happen. But i was really excited about coming here tonight. But i should just say thank you, thank you to my agent, Warren Frazier [applause] thank you to everyone at random house, gina, susan [cheers and applause] my publicist, maria breckel. [applause] theres no finer place to be, im certain of that. My editor, david couldnt be here tonight, he is in california going hollywood with the movie adaptation of his novel, the danish girl. David is someone i love very, very deeply, and he has decided to move on from random house to pursue his own career as a novelist, and i celebrate, and i champion that, and im going to miss him a great, great deal. Hes just for people who knew david as an editor, hes a wonderful, wonderful person. But well get to keep reading him for years. When i put on my tux, i discovered my reading notes when i was a juror on the Fiction Panel last year. [laughter] and i really enjoyed remembering that experience of engaging all of these books that i wouldnt have read and having been on the panel last year, i got to read of books that i might never have picked up from presses i didnt normally grab, from writers i might not normally turn to. And i just remembered robbie el ma deans unnecessary woman, emily st. John mendels station 11. All the light we cannot see, and the redeployment. I still read that way, and i still take notes. I have my notes from the books ive been reading this year [laughter] and the books im really, really excited about. A refund, the turner house, states and furies and a little life. [applause] and im not joking, my notes here are necessary, sweeping, important, transcendent, funny, sering, essential, human. These are books that i love a great deal, and i hope we all, all get to read them. I have to just say thanks to my wife stephanie and to my children, james, geronimo and jupiter. And ill just stop there, thank you. [applause] ladies and gentlemen, lets have a big round of applause for all the winners, but all the nominees. [cheers and applause] and everybody who realize a book this year, come on [cheers and applause] this was such a cool night. I have hosted a lot of these, but i thought tonight was a really cool night, and im so honored to be a part of it. And i want to thank everybody who helped put it together, and i now want to welcome everybody to the afterparty [cheers and applause] because in addition to writing, there is drinking, and thats a very important part of this process. [laughter] its going to be upstairs on the balcony, it is sponsored by book span and book of the month club. So once again, thank you and good night. [applause] is there a nonfiction hour or book youd like to see featured on booktv . Send us an email, booktv cspan. Org, tweet us, booktv, or post a comment on our wall, facebook. Com booktv. [inaudible conversations] all right. Good evening, everyone. My name is ted hammond, im the chair of journalism here at st. Josephs college. I want to welcome you to the college. This next year will be our 100th anniversary, so give it up, please. [applause] [laughter] and this is clearly one of the most anticipated, Exciting Events that weve had in that century [laughter] and i just want to say very quickly that one of the great things about brooklyn is one day you can be a delivery man in park slope, and before you know it you are, you can become a world famous author, and thats who we have here tonight. And its my pleasure to bring up jessica, the coowner of green light bookstore, whos going to introduce tonights event. Jessica. [applause] good evening, everyone. Im jessica, as ted said, and we are so pleased tonight to be hosting tanehisi coats in brooklyn to present be his new book, between the world and me. [applause] hes going to be speaking with James Bennett of of the atlantic. We are so grateful to st. Josephs college in this beautiful space that has a lot more Seating Capacity than we do in our bookstore on fulton street. Weve had a great fall season already this year, and were looking forward to some more great events this fall. We have Kristin Hersh to talk about her memoir on october 21st and the creditors of the podcast creators of the podcast. Before i turn the stage over to the speakers, just a few housekeeping things. Silence your cell phone and note theres no photography during the event. If you purchased a ticket, you should already have received your copy of between the world and me. Additional copies are available at the green light table throughout the evening. Theres no book signing tonight, but all copies have been presigned. Please also note that some index cards were passed around before we started. If you have a question that youd like to have coats answer, were going to be collecting those, and James Bennett will select some questions to be answered toward the end of event. If youd like one, just wave your hand, and someone will bring you a card. Please also note this event is being recorded by cspan and brick tv as well as live streamed to st. Joseph students here on campus. Now let me introduce tonights speaker. I had this whole great introduction written, and tanehisi said, no, youre not allowed to say that. Giles bennett is the president and editorinchief of the atlantic. Hell be speaking can tanehisi coats who is a National Correspondent for the atlantic. He is the author of between the world and me which hes recently reffed a mcarthur fellowship, the book has been awarded for a national nominated for a National Book award, and we just found out this evening the book just con the circus prize tonight. [applause] so the rest of the evening im going to let tanehisi speak for himself. Please join me in welcoming to the stage James Bennett and tanehisi coates. [applause] hello, everybody. Thank you, jessica, thank you, ted, thank you, st. Josephs and green light, and thanks to all of you for being here, for your interest in tanehisis work. I think you wanted to make a statement, as you put it. Statement. At the outset. [laughter] this is my manifesto. I wanted to talk a little bit about why i wrote between the world and me, and today before i signed those 900 books [laughter] between 800 and 900 books, i stopped at book court, and i signed merely 100 books. That was awesome. [laughter] but one of the things that happened, there was a young lady there whos a book buyer there now who i remembered from 20 years ago as a 5yearold girl and she worked at a bookstore near d. C. , and i worked there for the summer of 1995. I was a horrible bookseller. [laughter] just, you know, an awful, awful bookseller. You can only love books so much and be a great bookseller, right . Because if you love books and youre deeply interested in books, you tend not to Pay Attention to things like shoplifters. [laughter] so, you know, i wasnt very good. I did it that summer. But, you know, i had a 30 discount at the store, and i probably spent about 30 of my check on books, you know . Just buying, buying books. So it was so good to see sofie, thats the young ladys name. I went upstairs and i was looking through some, you know, just the books that they had there, and i saw this book which is so important to me, and its a book of poetry called the country between us. And its a book of poetry that i read, jesus, i might have been 18 years old, you know . I had just gotten to howard, and id been surrounded by this great community. And shes such a beautiful writer, and she wrote in such a way that i didnt understand everything that she was saying, but the pain, the angst, and i have to say the violence now reminded me of something that i just so deeply, deeply identified with. And she wrote in such a way that i would read her poetry, and i would walk away. And as i said, i would not understand what she was saying, but i would think about, you know . And i would go to bed thinking about it. This was what i was saying the other night, and i would wake up thinking about it. And itd be weeks later and even if i didnt understand what she was writing about, i would think about it. Im going to read a quick poem, and i tell you, this is all going to make sense in one minute, i promise you. And also ive got to take any chance i can to advocate for poetry, by the way, which i think is not [applause] does not have enough friends in the world. I was joking if i could run a j school, i would make everybody write poetry for the first year just to master the art of writing decent seasons sentences decent sentences. She spent as a young person time in Central America and Eastern Europe at a period in time when the world was being turned upside down, and this is just when i was teaching at mit and writing, i would assign this to my essay class just so they could understand sentences. This is called the colonel. Its about her encounter with an unnamed military official in an unnamed Central American country. What you have heard is true. I was in his house. His wife carried a tray of coffee and sugar. His daughter filed her nails. His son went out for the night. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol on the cushion beside him. The moon swung bare on its black cord over the house. On the television was a cop show. It was in english. Broken bottles were embedded in the walls around the house to scoop the kneecaps from a mans legs or to cut his hands to lace. On the window there were gratings like those in liquor stores. We had dinner; rack of lamb, good wine. A gold bell was on the table for calling the maid. The maid brought green mangos, salt, a type of bread. I was asked how i enjoyed the country. There was a brief commercial in spanish. His wife took everything away. There was some talk then of how difficult it had become to govern. The parrot said hello on the terrace, the colonel told it to shut up and pushed himself from the table. My friend said to me with his eyes, say nothing. The colonel returned with a sack used to bring groceries home. He spilled many human ears on the table. They were like dry canned peach halves dried peach halves, there is no other way to say this. He took one of them in his hands, shook it in our faces, dropped it into a water glass. It came alive then. I am tired of fooling around, he said. As for the rights of anyone, tell your people they can go fuck themselves. He swept the ears to the floor with his arm and held the last of his wine in the air. Something for your poetry, no, he said. Some of the ears were on the ground and caught this scrap of his voice. Some of the ears on the floor were pressed to the ground. So i read this, and i always thought about, like, the brutality of that poem. And the line that always stuck with me among all of the imagery was there is no other way to say this. There is no kind way, there is no hopeful way, there is no way to make people feel good about themselves at the end of the story to say this. And when i got what i got out of that poem and carlas poetry many general and what i got out of my entire study of poetry is it is the job of the writer to say things in truthful and direct ways. And in ways that maybe leaf us in puzzling places, in ways that maybe, you know, leave us despairing sometimes, in ways that make us sad sometimes. One of the most, you know, probably, you know, pointed questions i get about the book and one of the things that people raise about the book all the time is that, you know, it is not hopeful enough, that it does not inspire black people, that et it does not leave black people with a way forward. And maybe it doesnt. You know, i think i would have an argument about that, but lets just leave it at that, maybe it doesnt. But, you know, i wanted to talk to you guys about it because i wanted to talk about the defense be of writing and the defense of literature and the defense of art. And the right to create an act, the right to create a piece of art strictly out of a desire to reflect reality. Strictly out of a desire to show something, to portray ones experience in the most beautiful way, you know, you possibly can. And i just think, you know, the desire to write something that makes people feel good at the end of the day, the desire to write something that is a bedtime story, the desire to give you something that allows you to tuck your children in at night, even the desire to write something that, you know, inspires people to be better people, that as a strict motivation is so far away from why i wrote book. You know, i wrote this book to create, you know, a beautiful work of art that says something, that represented, you know, a particular time that i was in, that represented something about my relationship to my son and, ultimately, that represented something about my relationship to my country. I dont know why i felt moved to tell you that tonight, but i did. So we can proceed with the program now. [applause] sort of feel like you covered everything. [laughter] so were, im going to ask you a few questions, and then, as jessica said, ask some of your questions once the cards come up. I thought wed explore a couple of the themes from the book and maybe ask you to start about yourself a little bit more. The theme i thought we ought to start with is the one you just evoked in par with that which is the theme of violence. Yeah. And if you wouldnt mind reading a bit of your own work to the start us off. Okay. Pick up with that passage . Sure. This is the beginning of, i guess, my political consciousness, and i about 12 or 13 years old. And i am becoming aware that some of the troubles that i experience in my neighborhood are somehow tied to, you know, greater conflicts and greater problems in the country i live in. And ive been told that all my life, but im beginning to feel it, and im beginning to see it for myself and not just see it as something my parents tell me. Now the questions began burning in me. The materials for research were all around me in the form of books assembled by your grandfather. Im addressing my son here. He was then working at Howard University as a Research Librarian in the research center, one of the largest collections of africana in the world. Your grandfather loved books and loves them to this day, and they were all over the house; books about black people, by black people, for black people. Spilling off shelves and out of the living room, boxed up in the basement. Dad had been a local captain in the black panther party. I read through all of dads books about the panthers and his stash of old party newspapers. I was attracted to their guns was the guns seemed honest because the guns seemed honest. The guns seemed to address this country which invented the streets that secured them. And i compared the panthers to the heroes given to me by schools, men and women who struck me as ridiculous and contrary to everything i knew. Every february my classmates and i were herded into assemblies for ritual review of the Civil Rights Movement. Our teachers urged us toward the example of freedom marches, freedom riders and freedom summers, and it seemed that the month could not pass without a series of films dedicated to the glories of being beaten on camera. The black people in these films seemed to love the worst things in life; loved the dogs that ripped their children apart, the tear gas that clawed at their lungs, the fire hoses that tore off their clothes and tumbled them into the street thes. They seemed to love the men who raped them, the women who cursed them, love the children who spat on them, the terrorists who bombed them. Why are they showing this to us . Why or were only our heros nonviolent . I speak not of the morality of nonviolence, but of this sense that blacks are in a special need of this moral toty. Morality. Back then all i could do was imagine these freedom lovers by what i knew, which is to say i measured them against children pulling out in 7 eleven parking lots a