Transcripts For CSPAN2 Interview With Jonathan Yardley 20150

CSPAN2 Interview With Jonathan Yardley January 11, 2015

And it just happened to Editorial Department which has three people, control of the weekly book page and there is a change in the administration and i moved one step up in the person youve been running the book page moved from one step up and asked if i take over the book page and i said sure because demand for ebooks. It really was purely accidental. I started editing the page with reviews by other people the people who couldnt pay anything but the book itself. In North Carolina come a very good novelist wrote me a note and said why dont you write something for the page yourself, not just a book news thing, but a review. I thought thats a good idea. So i started writing down the lefthand corner of the page, a book review. It was just a case of wanting meeting to another. I was lucky enough to get a fellowship at harvard in 196869 for the Academic Year and i thought i would be studied magical issues but ended up studying american nurture. Youre supposed to go up and expand your mind and not im brownie points. So i discovered that what i really wanted to do and it turned out to be book reviewing. I had my back to greensboro and i wrote a letter to the editor at the new republic as i was very upset about a review that they had run in a think 1971 or 72 about peter taylor. As you know the magazine is going right now, but it was a very good magazine back in the early 70s then we went more said he liked my letter and i said i would write some reviews for them. I was in florida. I thought wow, this is the best magazine in the country and i was really deeply honored to be asked to write it for them. Tonight it for about five years i wrote 50 or 60 pieces for them. As you know from interviewing authors in the people and covering book related events, the world of books is a small place and word gets around the world got around that i was reasonably competent in places like the New York Times book review started calling me up in inviting me to do things. Eventually, in the summer of 1972, the editor of book world of Washington Post invited me to start contributing. I did that intranet lay until 1978 when i joined the washington star is this book editor and i stayed there until it told that in august of 81. You know i have been a pretty lucky boy. It was a ticket to walk across town and i was there for 33 years in four months exactly a third of a century. How many votes . Welcome i calculated that i reviewed about 3000 bucks for the post and if you add the monthly the weekly column i used to write for the first time in five years i was there close to 4000 pieces. How many nonfiction, fiction . Thats an interesting question. When i was the outcome i build my reputation and fiction, particularly southern fiction which interests me a great deal. I have no tolerance about the schools of creative writing, which have taken over the fiction writing establishment. There are very few writers American Writers of fiction now who dont go through the Riding School metal which teaches people to write about what you know and what they know because they are gone as themselves. Too much fiction is coming back and coming out that his family autobiographical, rather than narcissistic. That doesnt interest me. In the last 10 years its been 95 nonfiction here before that it was about 50 50. Host Jonathan Yardley what are some of those schools . The one that comes to mind is iowa. Weve got them d. C. George mason, Johns Hopkins is one of the most notorious. My alma mater umc chapel hill is a good one. They all have something that students expect that you can go and take a course in writing which seems to be projecting yourself on the paper. Host if you were going to teach a course on writing what would be two of your goals . Guest ive done that. Two semesters at the university of North Carolina greensboro back in the late 60s i gasped. In two semesters at Johns Hopkins and what they call the writing seminars back in the early 80s. Those cases i taught at opinion writing. Attack editorials writing book reviews, writing columns expressing opinions in intelligible and coherent way. So that is what i would do. My plans for retirement to not include teaching. I didnt like it very much. If you are teaching a class, where students hand in papers, its that you have good students. The truth of the matter, if you teach a seminar at 15 kids and you have to good students, you are very lucky. They may be bright, but theyre not interested, more preoccupied. And the place at Johns Hopkins where it abraded fenner is fall down, but its not a major part of curriculum those students are majoring in something else. So my writing class was something that took it as they were sort of interested in it. They mightve thought it was an easya, which it probably was. They were all nice kids but only in the four semesters i did at the universities i was hired a total of two really good students, only one of what i would call went into journalism and how to victory in the New York Times. Host in your last column for the Washington Post come the Washington Post come you write your approach book reviewing is a journalist, not a litterateur and ive remained one to this day. What does that mean . Guest at cherie blair newspaper boy and i majored in english at usc but to be honest, what i really majored in was the Student Newspaper where i spent all day long here that eventually was an extraordinarily come a wonderful happy, happy experience. As far as literature the rest of my life has been a catch. On my own. I think i am a pretty good reader. I think that i have learned what to look for in a book. As i sat in the paragraph that you referred to im approaching a book as if i were a reporter. What is this book about . What is the story. What in it is notable in what is not . Wouldve the singular things i need to tell the reader about . What are the things i dont need to get into . What do i think of the book . The leader expects an opinion. What does the book feel like which means i give them quotations from attacks that they can see how this person writes, the style. In some cases the person writes very badly and frankly its always a lot of fun. When youre dealing like ian mcewan or peter taylor or in tyler, you till with someone who you want to get that across to the reader. Host okay here is that a billion dollars question. What is the importance of a book . Guest books generally . That is a big question. Books are the repositories of essentially the millennia of human culture. That is where we put it. Everything goes into the pages of books eventually. Even science goes into the books. People this is not a leading nation in the sense of the book reading nation. Im sorry to say we are not a book reading nation in the way france. We do have many readers as ive known from the wonderful response i have to my farewell column, but books are not a big part of American Culture at the way they are saying british culture, but they are still there. If youre in business, your reading Business Books overwriting them. Certainly if you want to write your autobiography, the guitarist for the Rolling Stones cant remember his name but he wrote a fantastic memoir called life wonderful wonderful book. Book survey of not more than book people. They serve the general culture in all sorts of ways. My wife works at the library of congress. Just started doing that in the last couple of years. There is no greater repository of Human Knowledge in this country than the library of congress. Host did you get to choose which books . Guest eventually. When i was first starting monty haro in the greensboro daily news in the washington star, i was the book editor and chose what i did. But when i was a freelancer, writing for various publications as being a person ive gotten to know when i was freelancing for the post in the 70s, i would look at the regular issues of Publishers Weekly and send them books that might interest them. The bill made the choices or you would call up and say are you interested . I found my way into a lot of good looks that were the peoples suggestions. When i first joined the post in august of 81 brigitte weeks was running both world, an old friend of mine. Fortunately, we got along very well. First it was sort of a collaborative process. We would go into a book room and look through them and decide, does this interests you . And gradually, bridget went on to work on the book of the month club another people succeeded her, putting my wife. I would say by 1995 i would always clear whoever was running the book section at the time. Host keith moon. That is the Rolling Stones. Guest keith moon has written a book. Its mick jagger sidekick. Im feeling very because i do remember his name and its a terrific book. Host did you ever pick up a book reluctantly that is conversely a book he was looking forward to that really disappointed you . Guest that happens more often i would say. Books are like everything else. They are not black and white. They are shades of gray. Most have been taken recommended dings you wish were better. I have been at used to be a too positive with a reviewer. I dont take thats true. The negative reviews would not keep the leadership interested for very long. People are looking not so much for things they might want to create. I have always felt that there is an important advice function. This is in restaurant reviewing or movie reviewing. People like you to see what they might be interested in reading. Seaward rising consumers. Every less that its not my job in an elevated way but its one of the functions of service. And so i remember it years and years ago, for the first 25 years i was at the post a sunday book review in book world, a weekday book of style and my monday Opinion Column in the style section. Sometimes filling out and say what her state or whatever day it was was a problem. I remember one day going to pull down a book called a good man in africa a first novel by a quite young british writer named william boy. I said sure and i took it back to baltimore where he lived in when upstairs and read it in bed and almost literally fell off the bat i was laughing so hard. They have since become one of my absolute writers. Everything since is different surprised. He wrote the most recent james bond novel. I am told it is good, very witty. So the surprise like that doesnt happen very often. So its very gratifying. Because you can tell people about a good but also because you found one. I think that i dont usually go into a book review with any particular expectations. I go into it hoping that when i pick up max hastings inferno 650 pages a couple years ago about the entire world were to come i thought is going to be a lot of work. It really wasnt. Was a fantastic book that i couldnt put down. Sometimes you get into a book and you think ive got 475 pages ahead of me. There were a few books that surprised me and disappointed me. Lie down in darkness which was sort of a monument in my growth as a reader this one of the very much. It was very programmatic. Host on the fourth reading. Guest one of the things and going to do was going down to peru, and i will be reading accountthe account of microscope probably for the fifth time. Ive read the great gatsby god only knows how many times. Im going to read henry james book only for the second time. I just read for the first time a few years ago. All these books you havent read and the are also books you want to go back to. Host well get to the. There are viewers screaming right now teeth richards. Guest keith richards. Host what is it about a count of monte crisco that brings you back . Guest eyed rita. I dont know who the translator is. Its about this it 1200 pages maybe more. Its an amazing story. Its a book, its not a literary novel in the sense ian mcewan is a literary writer. You dont hold you high literary standards but as a piece of entertainment it is out of this world. Somebody else was really good series entertainment and thats john grisham. Isits easy to turn up your nose at somebody who sold 250 million books. But the fact he is a very good writer, very smart. His most recent novel something mountain is about the coal business in kentucky or west virginia. He has really powerful feelings about things. He mostly house powerful things about the law and people who abuse it. Lawyers i mean. I whispery reluctant to read it and i finally thought about my views like this guy, ive got to do. I said enforceable with the firm. I couldnt live a good it was. I read it twice. Love it. Michael connelly, mr. Ryder, fantastic. Karl down in florida dennis lane. Have you read mystic river . Incredible book. It will break your heart. Clint eastwood made a beautiful movie out of it. I think sean penn and kevin bacon. Yeah, its a wonderful, wonderful movie. Host mr. Gardner to youve mentioned a couple of perdition office max hastings, ian mcewan but is there a difference between british and American Writers country well its their language and they did coined it, and i have to tell you in all candor i think they write it better than we do. But on the other hand our english has more energy than tears. We are more willing to coined phrases, to coined words. An awful lot of the slime that a script into the British English is american slang, and the british writers who are not snobby about americans, and max hastings comes to mind and william boyd comes to mind and the in the queue and comes to mind but they understand that weve made contributions to light which as well as they have. British writing tends to be a little more formal. Sometimes a little bit stuffy, but i think the present generation of british, i say my generation people in their 70s or older people like Penelope Lively and anita bruckner, they are really wonderful writers. The closest we come, i mentioned women but theres nothing deliberate about it, but the closest we the people like and tyler and gail godwin, both of whom are very good writers. But american novelists under 50 i had a hard time naming any that i would want to go back and read. That probably has something to do with being how old i am. Host you do right in your final column again, im an oldfashioned guy in a new fashion world. Guest i think ive been pretty good at adapting to change. Back in the miami herald, i was a very early computer user. And when i was working for the post, i first started there, i had, people would laugh. You could see the computer that the post getting to take him to baltimore, it was in the cities. It had a tiny little printer that looked like it tickertape. The printer was this wide. But i wrote on that and the printed on that end of file copies electronically. I can do all that sitting out in your greenroom is my iphone six plus. Im always interested in new things but i also there is trying believe in the promise of good, old things. Host speaking of all things, book reviews are going away across the country. They have been. Guest certainly book review sections are going away. I mean, i remember when my first book came out it was evocative of provided was published in 1977 and i got a full page in Time Magazine with the big picture. Ive never been much event of time that could thats a kick you know . 4 Million People or something reading that magazine. Times book review section is a joke. They might review one book a month, and as usual a pop star autobiography us like that. The post is probably reviewing about as many books a week as he used to in book world but they are scattered through out the paper come in the outlook section on sundays the style section on sundays, on wednesdays in the art section on sunday in the business section. They are there but theyre not there in an organized, coherent way. Look, i was very sad when book world was killed. I think it was in 2010 and my wife was the last editor of book world as a full freestanding section to it was a good section but it was the best in the country. No doubt about that. It didnt have the advertising support that the New York Times book review did but it was a better section. The reviews were livelier and more readable, and does less of an in crowd sort of thing. But yes and a number of readers wrote to me after my farewell piece said whats happening to book reviewing . Is it now reader comments at amazon. Com a . Well, some of those are pretty smart. I dont pay an awful lot of attention to them but my wife and one of my sons and i have all published books, so can they keep an eye on how theyre doing on amazon sometimes the comments and some of them are pretty intelligent. Most recent book is a biography come has got some very smart comments at amazon and im sure at other places as well. Maybe book reviewing is being democratized a little bit, which is not a bad thing. I didnt go to school to study to be a book review. I get into because i love books, and it turned out i could review them pretty well. But there was no plan there. I occasionally over the years have gotten letters from bright young people how do i get to where you are . Theres no real answer. Could i try to you know offer your services to the local paper or try to get some book reviews published, did some experience. It doesnt all happen at once. Its a very different world now, and i the National Book critic circle i havent been a number of it for years but it still exists. Ive looked at the list of the membership at a dont recognize a single name. They are all writing summer but i dont know where. Host we have a couple of different awards here in the trendy. Weve got the nbcc, the National Book awards. Are they important . To the people who write and publish books that are very important to to the people who read them, i dont think particularly. We were talking before we are on the air about these awards and agreeing that when people see a little seal on the dust jacket of the book x prize oh that won a prize. But its not the same here as the booker prize is in england at the booker prize really sells books, which is why theres so much rivalry and why the Selection Process is so

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