And by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. Thank you. Tavis imagine a narrative full of irreverent humor and packed with largerthanlife adventures thats also a thoughtprovoking commentary on our collective history, as i think about it, with colorful characters, both real and imagined. You have a sense of whats in store for you when you read James Mcbrides latest novel, the good lord bird. It takes place in 1856 kansas, when that region was a battleground between proslavery forces and abolitionists, and features both john brown and Frederick Douglass. Its hero is a runaway slave who hides his identity, pretending to be a girl. James mcbride, as always, good to have you on this program. Well thank you, good to be back. Tavis and you have done it once again. Well, i just happened to be standing in the room when god crossed and i had a handkerchief. [laughter] tavis i like that. Let me start with this i asked you when you walked on the set and sat down before these cameras came on, i was enquiring as to whether or not you read the New York Times review of your book, and you said to me i said i didnt read it because i cant take it. Tavis you cant take reviews. Yeah. Tavis what do you mean, you cant take it . Well, if youre a creative person, youd better not read what people write about you, because if its good itll blow your head up and itll force you not to take the subway and youll start taking cabs, and youd better stay around people, and if its bad, it just hurts your feelings so much it discourages you. So i just cant take it. My heart cant take it. Tavis i empathize with that, but let me press anyway. How then does James Mcbride get better . What is your benchmark for improving your own work if you avoid reading critiques that might even be healthy for you . Thats a difficult question. I always get those when im on the air with you. Well, you know what needs to be done when youre a writer. You know what the job is, particularly if youre an African American writer, or if you deal with people, or if your subjects are poor people or people who need voice. So you dont really need to know whether or not you are doing the right thing. What you have to be wary of if youre doing the right thing to the right level that will surpass your own life. Im hoping that my work will surpass my own life. Richard wright and James Baldwin and people like that, toni morrison, all the great writers. Just the great writers and the great artists, they just work, they have a kind of tunnel vision, and they work beyond the area, the time in which they live. So i just i dont feel that good about my work, really. I think i have to be i just dont think im that i dont really think im that good. So i just have a high wall to climb, and i dont really need to hear how much better i need to get in order to get where i want to be, and i dont need to hear that im not any good. I already kind of like know that. Tavis youve said two or three things i want to get to. I havent even gotten to the text yet, the novel. I promise well get to the novel in just a second, but as always, james, from the very beginning of the conversation, sets me off in a direction that i just want to keep pursuing. Thats all right. Tavis everything you say is so loaded, in a beautiful way. So there are two things youve said now i want to unpack and get you to unpack before i go inside the novel. In no particular order, number one, when you talked about the fact that you dont think youre as good yet as you can be, or youre not that good. First of all, with all due respect, youre wrong about that, and your work and the best seller status and the movies and everything else, and the songs that you write, it all speaks to that. So i appreciate the humility. But im trying to juxtapose these two things if you dont think youre that good yet, then how do you expect that your work will live beyond you . Thats my hope. I grew up in the church, and so i feel that god gave me certain things to do, and im lucky enough to kind of have figured those things out. I just dont want to die not having tried to help somebody else with what i know. I could have been, and may one day well be a High School English teacher, because ive been given so much i just feel like i have to give something back. The fact that some people consider my work to be good or strong, its nice, but i know in my heart that if its not coming oftentimes its probably not coming from the best place. Im trying to educate people about things that i believe are right, and some of the things that i believe are right might not be right, so i live in constant selfdoubt. I think that creates a kind of search that you have to have, and it prevents you from doing a lot of stuff that you would normally do. It forces you to take the subway instead of taking a cab. It forces you to be around young people or, quote, unquote, poor people who need voice, because theyre giving you their story for free, and then its your responsibility to turn it over to other and then someone pays you for it. Its like cheating. Youre taking something, youre robbing people of their history and then youre presenting it in the way that you want to present it. So if youre going to cheat and take peoples history and youre not writing the bible, you aint really so great. But if you try to do it in a way that doesnt hurt too many people, then you probably can get out of bed in the morning and look at yourself in the mirror. Tavis let me close the circle that i started with this first question about critics, and then well, again, go inside the new book, the new novel, the good lord bird. Ive often wondered heres where i thought you were going to go when i asked you about critics and you said you didnt read it. I thought you were going to say, in your own humble way, that its hard to critique the stuff youre doing if they dont know what youre trying to do. In other words, critics across the board oftentimes are critiquing peoples work and they have not even done work that rises to the level of the stuff theyre trying to critique. Put another way, how do you critique prince as an artist if you aint gifted in that way . How do you critique train, how do you critique monk . You dont what monk is even trying to do. You think monk is playing off key, you think train is playing too fast. How are you going to critique what theyre and they both famously were oftentimes dogged by critics who didnt even quite get what they were doing. Now we know that what they were doing now theyre iconic. So speak to me, i know you dont read the critics, but give me some sense of what you think of critics, particularly of African American novelists, who oftentimes, in the times and elsewhere, are given the assignment to critique your stuff, and if they dont have the tools oh, thats okay. Tavis you see what im getting at . Yeah, well thats a very, very difficult issue for African American personalities, artists, and people in the storytelling business, in which you and i are involved. First of all, youre not a black man. Youre a human being in gods eyes. So when you sit down to talk to someone and you talk to them in really intelligent terms, you ask difficult questions, theres a militancy thats assigned to you without you asking for it, because you are simply judged by what you look like. If youre a white person asking the same questions, youd be one of these cnn guys and say how brilliant he is. That doesnt work for you, because this is the world we live in. Now you accept that and you say, well, this is me, im tavis smiley, i do these things. So when you Say Something thats off or you ask a tough question and some critics or bloggers that start attacking you personally, youre Strong Enough to take it. You just say this is part of the job. The bullets bounce off and you move away. Me personally, i cant read that kind of stuff about myself and not take it personally, so i just cross it off. But i will say this as a journalist, i never critiqued anyone. I never review books. Ive never felt qualified as a musician to say whether someone is a good musician or a bad musician. What happens with black writers and black artists is that if youre critiqued, for example, by a black historian who wants to get his name on the cover of the New York Times, and he says something, like, wacky, well, hell get his name on the cover of the New York Times and he might get tenure, and your career suffers. So im one of the few black writers, or African American writers, who managed to work my way through the system so that it has allowed me to speak in a kind of free way. But most African American writers dont have that. They dont have that opportunity, they dont have that. Its not like they dont want it. They just dont get it. Theyre only still its just a few people who get through for a myriad of reasons. Im fully armed because i can play music, i can compose, i can write books, i can do a lot of stuff. But a lot of tavis produce movies. Yeah, that too. But im aware that there are many, many people, both ahead and behind me, who are equally, if not more, talented, who dont get the opportunity. The thing that i do is that when i fail, i just keep quiet about it. I just let it go. Its done. I just go to the next thing. I dont complain, i dont go to i pick my battles very, very judiciously, and i just assume that theres good in the heart of everybody. Ill just find the next person that will open the gate that will allow my story to pass through. I dont know that you have that opportunity, because you deal with a myriad of subjects that are really hot, politically, and you ask the questions that would get a lot of us fired. So that puts you in a different place. Tavis might work for me one day if i keep asking. I dont know how much longer i have around here, asking some of these questions, i suppose. Youve said two or three things now that i am dying not follow up on. Im going to have to husband myself, because your world view and your cosmopolitanism is so delicious to me that i want to keep following up on the stuff you say. But its so unfair to the good lord bird if i dont turn the corner, because you keep saying stuff i want to just keep following up on. But i digress. Ill let that go. Maybe offcamera somewhere well yeah, sure. Tavis ive got a few more things i want to ask you based on what youve just said now. That said, i recall many years ago being in a conversation, speaking of great black artists, with dick gregory. I was saying to dick gregory, as my audience has heard me say so many times, that i regard Martin Luther king jr. , me personally, i regard king as the greatest american this country has ever produced. I could debate you on a bunch of other people, but i regard king as the greatest american weve ever produced. Gregory let me get my thought out and he said, son, youre wrong about that. So this is dick gregory, so gregorys speaking, im listening. Gregory says, nah, not king. Im thinking but dick, you were martins friend. How are you going to push back on martin king . Dick says, it aint martin. I said, well, who is it . You know who he said . John brown. John brown . Wow. Tavis dick gregory said to me he thought john brown was the coldest cat, the coldest american this country has ever produced, and he went into this soliloquy about john brown. So obviously, that brings me to the good lord bird, because john brown is a major character here. Tell me, and for those whove never heard the name john brown, give us a little History Lesson about john brown. Well, john brown was a white man who in 1856 decided that slavery was wrong, and he conducted a oneman war against slavery. He went out to kansas, because kansas territory was where slavery they were trying to decide whether kansas, when it was being settled, whether there should be slavery slavery should be allowed or not. So the proslavers, people who were for slavery, came into kansas and they attacked the yankees, who were coming from boston and new york and philly and so forth. John brown went out there with a wagonload of guns, and he got busy. He started kicking the pro slavers around. When i say proslavers, im saying that a lot of these pro slavers became the jesse james and these mythic figures that were mytholocized, or made into great legends in mythology in american history. John brown went out there and he started wearing them out. Eventually, he came back east and he attacked americas biggest arsenal in what is now Harpers Ferry, west virginia, in an attempt to take over and get well, they made 100,000 guns there. He attempted to take it over. He wanted to start a war against slavery and expected the blacks to come and join him and bring america into slavery. What he did, really, was to start the civil war, because this attack just panicked america. It just brought only two things during slavery time really panicked america greatly about the slavery element, and that was nat turners rebellion and john browns takeover of Harpers Ferry. So people thought he was crazy, because he was a white man, he had 19 others with him, four of whom were black. Probably more blacks than four. They actually took over americas biggest arsenal, and he actually had it for, like, a day and a half. But they captured him because he was waiting for the black folks to show up. [laughter] thats like me waiting for the drummer in my band to show up. They didnt come. Well, theres some issue about that now, like the great ben quarles, the black historian, wrote about it. Several historians, not all of them black, have written that there were more blacks that were there than was written. Also, he had to move a week early. He had planned to attack Harpers Ferry october 23rd, but he had to move a week early because he was hiding out in the house nearby and a neighbor found him out and decided to bring the sheriff in. The sheriff was going to investigate the house where they were hiding, so he left early. Tavis what ultimately, so that the audience knows, what ultimately happened to john brown when they captured him . Oh, he was hanged. It doesnt happen in the book, though. Tavis i know. But he was hanged, and the 19 others, all of them, most of them were killed. One black guy got away, and three other whites got away. Then some of the blacks in the actual, who were actually because he made a last stand in the engine house where colonel lee and jeb stuart came in and kicked the door in and they tried to kill him, but they didnt. Theres several other blacks who climbed out the windows and got away. But before he was hung, there were six weeks before, when he was captured and when he was hung, and during that six weeks, john brown did more against american slavery than he ever did with a pistol or a sword. Because he wrote letters to editors and he became, really became a National Hero at that point, because he knew he was going to die. He said, im going to die, im going to die because im an abolitionist, and im proud of it. So he became, like, almost a mythic figure in that time. Tavis i think youve already answered this question, but let me ask it anyway because you may want to go in a different direction. So what makes all of that juicy enough for you to want to turn it into a novel . Well, i want people to when i was a kid, i thought jesse james was the coolest cat in the world. Only when i was an adult did i realize he was a slaveowner and he killed innocent people and he shot an 11yearold when he was robbing a bank. If he was living now, the dea and the atf and the xyz, theyd all be coming after him. So i would like young people and americans to know what kind of man john brown was, because i think if you understand what he was, youd feel a lot prouder to be an american. I wanted to put it in a form that people could accept, that it wasnt like a depressing kind of book. Tavis you did that, because the book is a lot more ill come back to the story in a second. An overarching comment, though. The book has a lot more humor in it than i expected. We circle now back to the very beginning to this conversation, when i asked you about the New York Times review, because they raised the issue of satire, they raised the issue of Quentin Tarantino in django and the drama that he got into, et cetera, et cetera. How far do you take that kind of narrative in novel form . What liberties do you take with the storyline, what liberties do you take with putting humor in it . Talk about the liberties you take. Oh, thats a difficult question. There are certain lines you kind of cross. I probably danced a little bit too far over it when i wrote the Frederick Douglass chapter. Tavis i was about to go there. [laughter] well get to Frederick Douglass, but go ahead. Since you raised it, go ahead. Well, let it be said that the good lord bird is not django. Im glad that djang brought the slavery issue up so that young people will understand a little bit about slavery, young people of all types. But django is a kind of one mans image and view of the fact is, django is filled with enormously wild fiction. Any time a black man pulled out a sixgun and dropped the hammer on it and a white man, during slavery time, hed be dead three minutes past breakfast. There would be no shootout. Thats what Harpers Ferry was all about. John brown, it was a white man attacked this arsenal, and they tore him up. The blacks, one of the blacks that got caught, this fellow, one of his men, dangerfield newby, when they got hold of dangerfield newby, they dragged him outside the armory, they cut parts of his body off, and then they let the pigs feed on them. So django was funny and it was good and im glad it happened, but its not like the john brown, and certainly not like my book. Now that said, my book is a book of caricature, so john brown is hes like this guy who preaches all the time, and he was very religious. When i got to the Frederick Douglass part, it just was too what happens so that the viewers will understand is that onion, the guy whos telling the story, who is an 111yearold black man looking back on his life, when he had to pretend to be a girl to survive, he had to pretend to be a young girl, he ends up in Frederick Douglasss house. Because john brown and Frederick