 Hi everyone. Thank you for coming tonight. I'm Marilyn Greenberg. I'm the chair of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art Council. I'm very proud of that and I'm very proud tonight to welcome Mary Morris, Brooklyn-based author, who's going to do a reading for us tonight. Mary is a prolific writer. She has written travel memoirs, short story collections, novels, and she even writes a travel blog called The Writer in the Wander. It's wonderful. It's complete with photos and fabulous, fabulous watercolors. I think she's a neo-fovist at heart and they reveal her to be a fabulous painter as well as a brilliant writer. Mary has won numerous awards for her writing. The New York Foundation for the Arts, Artists Fellowship Program, the American Council for the Arts First Prize in Literature, Princeton University, George W. Perkins Jr. Fellowship, the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Rome Prize for Literature, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She also has an illustrious teaching career. She taught at the Creative Writing Program at Princeton University where she was a colleague of such writers as Joyce Carol Oates, a longtime mentor and friend, Russell Banks, Paul Oster, Haruki Murakami, who mentions Mary briefly in his memoir about running, and Mary also has taught a number of students. She's a cherished mentor, and these students have gone on to be illustrious writers. Jonathan Ames, Alyssa Chappelle, Danny Shapiro, and Jody Pickalt, who attributes all her success to Mary's mentorship. She went on to teach at New York University and the University of California at Irvine before becoming a tenured member of the writing faculty at Sarah Lawrence, where she is a very, very popular professor. Today she's here to talk about her new novel, Her Eighth. It's called The Jazz Palace. It's a sweeping novel about the prohibition era in Chicago. We're transported to a time of Rudolf Valentino, Louis Armstrong, Leopold and Loeb, and Al Capone. It begins in 1915 as the USS Eastland sinks in the Chicago River, killing 844 people. Let me read from Publishers Weekly. Mary Morris puts her many gifts to use in a story of creativity, music, resilience, and love in prohibition era Chicago. In 1915, Benny Lerman and Pearl Chimbrova encounter each other as teenagers as the SS Eastlands sinks before their eyes with three of Pearl's brothers aboard. In the years that follow, Benny, who feels dogged by tragedy, grows up fascinated, not by the factory he is expected to run someday, but by the new musical genre called jazz, J-A-S-S. Recognizing Benny's talents as a pianist and composer, black trumpeter Napoleon Hill takes Benny to play beside him at the Jazz Palace. The speakeasy Pearl has created to help take care of her siblings. Music helps all three prosper, but it cannot protect them from the privations of depression, the violence of the mob, or the barriers of discrimination. And I'm going to go on to read from Christina Baker Klein. And I quote, As the Jazz Palace moves cinematically from tenements to saloons to speakeasies, Mary Morris weaves true events into the fabric of her riveting story of three people linked by tragedy and catapulted into a world beyond their wildest imaginings. As the tale unfolds, we know that we're in the hands of a master. I have long admired Mary's work. In this particular book, she manages to create a panorama and the story that's so intimate that it is just totally engrossing. I want to talk to her about that afterwards. One of the things that I love about Mary's work is that it's economical, it's poetic, and it just seems effortless. Of course, any writing that's effortless, you know, took a tremendous amount of effort. I'm just going to read one small paragraph. When I was reading the book, I knew I was going to be speaking with Mary, and so I would underline things. I realized that I just kept underlining everything, so I had to pick a paragraph. And this is the one. Benny, one of the three main characters in the book, is in love with jazz. He likes to hear it, he likes to watch it, he likes to play it. He becomes obsessed. Any of us who are writers, artists, musicians understand. The world disappears when he's in that world. He's supposed to be somewhere else, but he's at this jazz club. And here is the paragraph. Even though Benny was jostled from side to side, he stared up at the bandstand as if nailed to the spot. Everything he'd ever known about the world, that gravity holds you down, and mothers are there when you get home. That baseball has nine innings, and sleep awaits you at the end of the day was turned upside down. He forgot about his brother lost in the snow, and the dead girl he danced with when the Eastland went down. He forgot about Marta's child, home alone and sick. He even forgot that he was a person in a crowd, not a very old person at that, just a boy. His arms and legs all melted into one. He wasn't anywhere, but inside the music he was hearing. It took him to where he wanted to be, on a train heading out of town, away. That's where it took him. He went away. Mary's going to read for us right now. We'll have a Q&A afterwards, and I'll ask her lots of questions, and I'm sure you'll have some too. Mary? The person should get up here now. I don't feel like it's me, but thank you. First of all, it's an incredible honor to be here at the Sackler Center. The dinner party was an amazingly important piece of art to me when I was starting out as a young writer, and I thought to myself, how do I write? How do I become a writer? One of the things that I love about the dinner party is that it's individual pieces. One of the things that I've done as a writer I've tried to do is to write in the moments and in the scenes. I have a friend who years ago at Columbia University said to me, I'm going to write like William Faulkner, and I said to him, well, if I could just write a scene a day, I'll feel okay. So I have tried to do that, and I guess I'm here, so I feel good about that. There's a story to the cover of the book that I will maybe share with you later, but Romar Bearden, who is an artist I deeply admire, once said, I don't know how I got so much work done. I just did a little bit every day. And I feel like as writer, as an artist, that that for me is basically what I've tried to do, is I've tried to do a little bit every day. When I began this book, Bill Clinton was president. There was no social media, and there were no endless wars. So that's about 20 years ago. My daughter was 10 years old, and she's now mixing cocktails. Actually, she's designed all the cocktails at the New Frannies. Do you guys know Frannies? Okay, so there's a New Frannies called Roses. It's in the Marco space. I suggest that after this you go down and have some frontier medicine, because that's what they're serving tonight. Or you might not maybe get the Wonder Wheel, maybe wait for the frontier medicine. But anyway, you know, I've lived with this book for a long time. My family's lived with it for a long time. A lot of the things that people ask me is, why did you stick with it? And the way I sort of answered is, why did it stick with me? I'm not really 100% sure, but it's something, again, I'd like to talk about, because it was the one that wouldn't go away. I like to joke that when I was a girl, I woke up one morning, and the world was brown and buzzing, and I went downstairs, and there were insects everywhere. And I said to my mother, what is this? And she was very... My mother knew I was a very curious child, and she wasn't afraid of introducing me to the world and to travel and to all of that. And she said, oh, they're locusts, honey. Don't worry about it. They're just going to be here for three days, and then they won't come back for 17 years. And as I was finishing the novel, I was thinking, well, it's taken me 17 years. So I guess I'd been sort of burrowing for all these years and trying to work on this book. When Marilyn asked me to speak here, I thought to myself, well, it's not really a feminist book per se, because, in fact, the main characters are male. But I feel as if the process of writing it, I mean, the content is not exactly feminist, but the process for me has been so much about being a woman, a teacher, a mother, and also feeling the pulls of all of those things. And getting here early and looking at the Judy Chicago, I remember thinking to myself, well, I can't do it all at once, but maybe I could just do this one dinner plate today and sort of get it done like that. Two decades ago, my head was full of a bunch of stories. I had a great-grandmother, Anna, who's named Anna in the book. She was a saloon keeper in Gangland, Chicago, a Jewish saloon keeper, which my cousin swears was impossible, but she was. And a midwife, and she raised 22 children, only nine of whom were her own. She kept marrying men who were widowed, and then they would die, and she acquired 22 children. So her story really was important to me. The initial drafts of this book were 850 pages long. I was going to write my own multi-generational 100 Years of Solitude family story, and it had 22 children in it and all of that, and nobody could keep the children straight, and it kept getting rejected over and over again. And in fact, it got rejected 37 times over the last 17 years. So my agent and I sent it out on three separate occasions. And then I'll just tell you this briefly, and then I'll read. I sent it out on three separate occasions. My agent is a goddess, as far as I can tell. I mean, she's amazing. We sent it out three times. It was rejected over and over again. And then in 2009, I said, that's it. I'm finished. I'm never going to look at this book again, and I put it away. But then one morning in 2012, I woke up and I knew what was wrong with the book. I just saw it. It was five in the morning. I went down to my office. I found the manuscript. I brought it upstairs. I brought it at my desk. And I realized that the last 275 pages just didn't belong in this book, and I shrank it down to pretty much what it is right now. And then I called my agent and I said, I don't know what you're going to think of this, but I want to go out with this book again. And she said, well, I always love the story, Mary. So anyway, here I am, still standing, the poster child for perseverance, I think. I was going to read from the beginning, but I think I won't, because I think Marilyn set it up really well. The book opens with the sinking of the SS Eastland. This happens to be the centennial of the sinking of the Eastland. It was really one of the worst boating tragedies in U.S. history. More passengers died on the Eastland than in the Titanic. But the Eastland, well, this is what happened. The Eastland was going on a, there were five boats going on a picnic for the workers from Western Electric. And because of the Titanic two years before, the Siemens Act required that the ships have life-preserving equipment for every man, woman, and child on every boat. And the Eastland was 14 tons top heavy. And they put all these people on board, and it was raining, and they went below, and they unmoored it, and it tipped over in 20 feet of water. And it's the forgotten tragedy. Why is it a forgotten tragedy? Why do we know about the Titanic and not the Eastland? Because they were factory workers. They weren't famous people. It wasn't a great big deal. It was a picnic, and these people had made wires and cables. So my dad was there that day. He witnessed it. My dad was born in 1902, and he died in 2005, which is if you can do the math. I know most of the people in the room can do that math. He lived so long that when we would get his medicine later in his life, the computers would default and say they couldn't give this heart medicine to a three-year-old child. And we'd have to say it was 103, and that they needed to give him this medicine. Anyway, my dad pretty much lived through the whole 20th century, and he witnessed the sinking of the Eastland, and it was one thing that he actually would never really talk about. But I'm not going to read that. I'm going to read from a little bit in the book. The book begins. Benny and Pearl, who were two of my main characters, meet on a bridge, their children, and they witnessed this tragedy. Pearl has three brothers boarding the boat, and her brothers all die in the tragedy. I think that's all you need to know. Oh, you need to know one other thing. Anna, who is the mother of Pearl and Opal and Ruby, well, she tries to drown them after the... She takes them to the lake, and Pearl has to bring her away because she's sort of lost her mind. The gem sisters slept in the order in which they were born. Pearl lay in the middle with Opal and Ruby on either side. Ruby slept against the wall while Opal teetered on the edge. Though this should have been reversed, Ruby, who was almost 10 years older when her youngest sister was born, refused to give up her place against the wall, and as a toddler Opal seemed to prefer the outside. It was Pearl's task to keep her from falling. Anna wanted her children named after tangible things. In the old country she had spoken only Mamalotian, the mother tongue. In Yiddish of the Shtetl, there were only two words for flowers, violet and rose. No words existed for the varieties of wild birds or trees, but in English, Anna learned everything had a name. Before all trees were simply tree. Now there was oak, maple, elm. She found hawk, peacock, and cockatoo. Lily of the Valley, Rose of Sharon, Jack in the Pulpit. In the end she named her oldest boys Robin, Ren and Jay after birds. Except for Jonah, her firstborn because she liked the story of the whale. She called her middle children moss and firm after woodland plants, and her final three girls became precious stones. While the others came from air or soil, the gem sisters emerged from the depths. Anna told Pearl that she came from water, from the grain of sand that disturbs the oyster. And that her gem sisters came from the deepest mines. In Burma in Australia, dark men dug into the earth to find them. But you Pearl, you're lucky you come from the sea. And Pearl trembled thinking how her mother had tried to return her there. Of all the children, Opal and Pearl looked the most alike. They bore no resemblance to Ruby with her fire engine red hair and tiny pinched features who looked like an Irish girl. Opal and Pearl shared the round Slavic cheeks and broad smiles. They were identical except that Opal had piercing blue eyes and hair, the color and texture of corn silk. And Pearl was opaque, a chocolate brown. When they stood together it seemed as if Pearl was her sister's shadow. Since Opal was born, Pearl had taken care of her little sister. In winter she made sure she ate hot broths. In summer she bathed her every evening. As an infant Opal had wheezy breath. She shivered when it wasn't cold and burrowed deep into her sister's arms. On the hottest nights Pearl swaddled her in an extra blanket. At times confused about whom her mother was, Opal tried to nurse on Pearl's tiny breasts, which made Pearl laugh even as she pushed the baby away. But now as Opal slept, Pearl tasted the sand between her teeth and felt a hunger she could not name. As she tried to sleep she saw a darkening sky and felt that she could not breathe. The night sounds came together like water rising over her head. Though it was a warm breeze this night Pearl lay awake, there was a chill locked in her bones. She listened to the noises of the house as an animal does for danger. She could hear a creak on the stairs and the clang of trash cans in the alley. A sob reached her ears. No one else could have heard it except Pearl. Downstairs in the saloon someone wept. Since the Eastland went down Pearl had been afraid to close her eyes. She was wedged as always between Ruby's bony hip and Opal's warm breath. She nudged Ruby. Ruby she whispered, wake up, someone's crying. Her sister groaned and pressed her closer to the wall. Pearl turned and wrapped her arms around Opal's waist and even Opal pushed her away. Her mind raced as she remembered Ren and his lonely dance. She missed her brothers who drowned. Rob and the oldest used to pick her up at school and carry her home on his shoulders. Jay played tunes on the harmonica before she went to bed while Ren mined stories that made her laugh. Opal was too young to remember such things and Ruby had begun drawing in a notebook every spare moment when she wasn't at school or busy with chores. Besides Ruby hadn't been there that day and Pearl would never forget. Even when she wasn't thinking of her brothers she saw the boy on the bridge in the package she swung by a thread. In her half-sleeved Pearl watched as the parcel slipped from his fingers into the water below. It left a hole on the surface of the river as it sank. His tapping fingers and sad dark eyes stuck in her head like a song that wouldn't leave. Then she arrived at a blank space. It came as if in a dream only she'd been awake. It felt as if something happened to someone else like a story you tell and think it is your own. At the water's edge Anna had pressed her hand against the small of Pearl's back. Cold water soaked Pearl's skirts and seeped into her shoes. Her feet disappeared on the sandy bottom. Children born inside their calls never drowned. Anna told Pearl when Opal was born encircled in blue slime like a baby chick. But since the day when the Eastland settled into the river's mud Pearl wasn't so sure. Clasping Opal's tiny fist, Pearl had persuaded her mother to get away from the shore. There was somewhere they had to be. It took three streetcars to bring them home. Our mother tried to drown us too. Pearl wanted to tell her siblings when they asked what was wrong. But who would believe her? You just want the attention Ruby would say. Instead Pearl grew hard and silent as a stone. By day she roamed looking for a secluded place. Sometimes her oldest sister Fern found her dosing in the back of the cedar closet. The fresh scent of woods in her hair. She carried the girl to her proper bed. In the house she walked around with her hands pressed over her ears. She complained that she couldn't stand the jammering, the footsteps, the size, the bathroom noises, the farts and belches and guffaws and laughter, the bronchial coughs and fog and horn sneezes, the whisperings that came through the thin walls, the shouts from the room to room. But her father was dead and her brothers drowned and her mother had tried to return her to the water from where she'd come. And Pearl didn't know what that the sound she could not stop hearing was a scream inside of her head. But the crying seemed to be coming from below. Pearl eased her way out of the bed to the top of the stairs then made her way down. The wood was rough under her feet. Often she got splinters but tonight she didn't care. At the landing she gazed into the bar. In the dim light she saw her mother slumped across a chair. Anna draped in black heaving like a despondent beast. Pearl wanted to go to her but she didn't dare. The impression of her mother's fingers was etched on her wrist. Pearl had always kept her from harm. She left a honey pot... I'm sorry, Anna had always kept her from harm. She left a honey pot open in the kitchen to trap bad spirits floating by. If someone told Pearl she was pretty her mother retorted like a pig then spit in the air to drive the evil eye away. When Anna sewed Pearl's dresses right on her back she made her whole thread in her teeth for good luck. Now Pearl's skin burned from the sun. Small blisters covered her nose and the freckles emblazoned on her cheeks would remain. Her birthday was a sad memory of a July day that she'd never celebrate again. She'd never taste strawberry ice cream and not feel her throat constrict. Pearl had pulled her mother from the water's edge onto a streetcar going the wrong direction. For hours they'd been lost in the city. When they got home they found Jonah sobbing. They were all dead. Turning away Pearl tiptoed back up the stairs her heart beat as if someone had jumped out from a dark corner to frighten her. She thought she would die if she went to bed. She could not bear to lie awake and tomb between her sisters in the hallway she paused before the photograph of her mother trim and smiling standing in front of the ferris wheel. In 1993 Anna had strolled the Chicago World's Fair on her father's arm and thought this would be what her life would be. With gondolas sailing in man-made lakes women in elegant gowns walking by music coming from wooden boxes the classical white buildings, pillars everything before Anna was shimmering in white. No wonder they called it the white city. Chicago had risen from its ashes a carpenter who worked on the court of honor named Elias Disney would tell of its wonders to his son Walt. A Chicago writer, L. Frank Baum reinvented it as Oz. Through the pavilions Anna had caught glimpses of herself in windows and mirrors her russet hair piled on her head her body trimmed in its green dress as she shopped for Turkish delights on a Cairo street viewed a Bavarian castle in paws before a Hindu snake charmer. Anna had ogled little Egypt the belly dancer and laughed at what scandalized the fair most the first zipper. Already newspaper editorials bemoaned how easy carnal knowledge would become. She ate handfuls of nutty snack called crackerjack. In the palace of electricity she shrieked as sparks flew from the fingertips of a man named Tesla and swayed at the Haitian pavilion as a young piano player played his maple leaf rag. Two years before her family had come to the city where pigs could not walk on Michigan Avenue on a Sunday they had crossed a roiling sea where Anna had lain across her father's lap the sea having entered her as well her father stroked her hair and promised her dresses of silk indoor plumbing and a pony in the new world he had made good on most of these on the midway men turned their heads a photographer snapped her picture her father took it home it would be the only image of Anna as a girl she was aware of her small waist and plump breasts her fleshy thighs there was a sweetness in the air like spun sugar Anna did not know then nor would she have cared as she passed were shreds of tin and lumber coated in mixtures of plaster, jute and cement that they would burn in a fire which along with the assassination of the mayor would bring the fair to an end or even that even Scott Joplin played as he played his maple leaf rag Frederick Douglass was complaining that the white city was just that white Anna had been oblivious to all she was 16 years old and secretly in love she had no idea that this was the last time her father would enjoy a stroll that everything was about to change she begged him for a ride on that first ferris wheel as they rose in the glass cage she clung to her father's arm people were small as aunts carriages and buildings look like toys individual lives seemed insignificant from her vantage point she wondered not how but when she would tell her father that she intended to marry for love as Pearl listened to her mother's sobs it was hard for her to believe that the girl in the picture had become the woman crying downstairs Anna's father disowned her when she married Samuel even after Samuel's death her father refused to forgive and now her sons were gone and it seemed to Pearl that her mother was no longer right in her head Pearl snuck into the kitchen and opened the door that led to the back porch she did this often when she couldn't sleep she stepped outside and knelt down the wooden slats pressed against her flesh tucking her nightgown under her thighs Pearl gazed into the smoky sky there were no stars no moon just the humid still air she leaned against the brick wall and listened to the distant sound of water pounding the shore so that's Pearl's first chapter I'm going to have a sip of water let me check the time and then I'm going to read you one more very short chapter as Marilyn said one of the real pleasures I had writing this book was research I learned so many things incredible things about music about jazz about black migration one of the things that preoccupied me for years and still does was that black and white musicians couldn't play together professionally until 1935 when Benny Goodman hired Teddy Wilson and he only hired Teddy Wilson because he was the best piano player Benny Goodman didn't care if he was black or white but until then during the whole era of my novel blacks and whites couldn't play together professionally so Benny is going to meet a character named Napoleon and they're going to forge a friendship but that let me see I might read a little bit of that actually if I may I'm going to read a short section of this so Pearl and Benny have met on that bridge and this is Pearl's piece and Benny meanwhile he's older than Pearl and he's hanging around on the south side of Chicago another thing about Chicago was that pretty much when the blacks came up to Chicago they got off the train and they built their houses where they got off and that is what formed the south side of Chicago from Union Station south they just began to build their homes and then of course the politicians came in and they arranged it so that they actually stayed in the south side of Chicago which is why Chicago is such a racially divided city but a lot of I mean there were a lot of white musicians there were a lot of black musicians black musicians could not play in white clubs but white musicians did go downtown and whites hung out it was called slumming so this is Benny after the Eastland has gone down and he's going down to the south side of Chicago it was called the stroll that part of South State Street where the music lived the Dahomey stroll to some a strip of flashing bulbs all blue and red and yellow where midnight was like noon the music was coming from there 24 hours a day from the elite and the Vondam from the grand and the deluxe it was said that if you held a trumpet in the air it would play by itself they called it the bohemie of the colored folks in Athens, Jerusalem and South State those were the epicenters of the world postal workers and delivery boys hotel maids who cleaned toilets men who hosed down the stockyard floor they went home, took a shower dressed to the nines and headed out again they put on their fur coats and shark skin suits and felt fedoras and boas and flapper dresses and moved to the music dancing till dawn they paused at the dance halls and the cabarets the thousand bars that filled one square mile lining on hot chili and chop suey and ice cream Benny ambled on blacks in their shiny green and purple suits women in long white gloves and cigarette holders sauntered by he paused at the dreamland ballroom beneath the flashing lights bouncers in red capes swung open doors from inside the sounds of horns and laughter rose at the firefly Senator Sam's rhythm band from New Orleans was featured even from the street fast dance tempo made him move his feet and it was almost too fast he wanted something slower that suited his mood he walked around to the corner of 35th street where he stood beneath the flickering red light of a cox comb the rooster wasn't much of a spot nothing fancy like dreamland or the firefly it was more of a sawdust joint that served ribs but the music caught Benny's ear as he gazed down the corridor into the smoky room with a few bare bulbs on the floor a scribbled note read Napoleon Hill on trumpet and from the street he heard the melody of the piano set the rhythm of the drums the soft smooth rise of the trumpet quiet as a secret Benny had to lean in to listen he went around into the urine soaked alleyway where a window was ajar and rested his back against the brick wall there were no bar room distractions no drinks being poured no voices shouting there was something sad in that trumpet he'd only heard in the winter wind he went home to an empty house a boy who'd lost his rabbit's foot or a china blue marble maybe he'd dropped it in the street and someone picked it up and didn't know it was his or maybe they just wanted to keep it for themselves sad as an orphan boy searching for his true father but that sound wasn't only sad it was something else he couldn't name it went through him so he didn't know where the music stopped and his body began and as the tune picked up and grew warmer it radiated through his bones the French brought perfume to New Orleans and with it scent of oil known as jasmine in the brothels the whores dabbed the oil of jasmine behind their ears on the backs of their knees and their wrists hey baby their customers chanted give me some of that jazz in Storyville when Napoleon Hill went to look for his mother he'd heard the music they were starting to call jazz once he'd heard it he was done with rag time with jazz he could make it up and he didn't have to write it down nothing with jazz was set in stone one change led to the next a change was what Napoleon was good at like a chameleon he thought as he stood admiring himself in front of the mirror his trumpet lay polished and shiny in its case he was getting ready to go where he'd never been and he wanted to be sure he looked right a large man he was squeezed between the narrow bed and the dresser straightening his tie and talking to himself he shared this room with Mandy Winslow though he never actually slept with her and he knew for years that he was crawling into bed as she was getting out he wished Mandy was home so he could tell her if he was doing the right thing she was good for that telling him if something was right or wrong she waited carefully and then she shook her head and nodded over all the years they'd lived together he'd listened to whatever she said but today was her double shift and she wouldn't be home until late Napoleon played the trumpet at the Red Rooster six nights a week but he could do whatever he wanted on the 7th last Monday night so Napoleon was going to cross the river and play his horn at a white establishment on the north side he'd take Jonah up on his offer and stop by Chimbrova Saloon all summer until that ship toppled over in the river the boy with the black eyes and hair like coal had been coming to the shoestring diner for his morning coffee which he drank black Jonah didn't sleep well he was often late for work at western electric where he assembled telephones to make ends meet Napoleon did an early morning shift at the shoestring, busing tables and pouring coffee a few days a week those mornings he didn't even bother going back to Matty's to sleep he just went straight from his gig by 9 he was done one morning he was pouring steaming cups of coffee Napoleon noticed the dark circles under the boy's eyes when he asked if he had trouble sleeping Jonah told him about his drowning dreams I keep seeing water rising over my head maybe it's your name Napoleon said Napoleon also had dreams of water I won't go near the stuff he told the boy and he believed in them in his dreams he wasn't in the water but on it he was in a boat and around him the sea roared and waves rose as he struggled to sleep ropes burned his wrists and irons cut his ankles and Napoleon recognized this as an ancestor dream it had happened to someone he didn't know but who knew him and knew who he was someone who wanted to warn him he told Matty when she held his trembling body against hers only for warmth and never for anything more that was the way he was with everything he had to be free no matter what no one, nothing, not even his horn could hold him down so those are my three main characters that um those are my three main characters so it's Napoleon and Benny and Pearl and I'm going to have a sip of water and then I'm just going to read one more very short passage that I'm going to read for fun fun for me actually it's all fun for me there was a moment in 2012 when I realized that that okay the book began in 1915 not in my life that was the year that the book began chronologically and it went until the Chicago Democratic Convention in 1968 originally and the morning I woke up and had the eureka moment I realized that actually it had to end in 1933 with the repeal of prohibition and everything else that came after it as much as I was attached to it nobody else was so um but one of the really fun things that I got to do then was I decided if I was going to make it that era I was going to put the characters from that era into the book as characters so um I got to put Louis Armstrong in and Valentino and Al Capone so I'm going to read a short Al Capone chapter what's happening in this chapter a few years later Benny has in fact fallen for Opal the youngest sister in a shall we say inappropriate relationship Opal is quite young and they are on their way to hear Bixby Beterback play the trumpet on the Indiana dunes Benny thinks that Pearl has given Opal permission to leave but in fact Opal has snuck out all the clothes she's wearing she's stolen from Marshall Fields and she's a bad girl she's a very bad girl but I'm just going to read a tiny bit of this so we can have a conversation the flickering lights of the golden door appeared ahead the club rose up from the horizon and illumined the coast it was an old resort like a fairy tale like a fairy castle beaming on the shore Husk O'Hare's Wolverines were playing word was spreading about the young cornet player they'd hired recently already a drunk, rarely sober Bix was said to play like a black man some people claimed he had to be black some said he'd made a pact with the devil to blow his horn the Indiana dunes were farther than Benny liked to go for music but he wanted to hear Bix and Opal had begged him to take her along the valet took the keys to Benny's car against a dark facade the gold door shimmered the sign read no Jews or dogs allowed Benny chose to ignore it and Opal didn't notice inside everything was glistening and yellow and milky white including Opal in her flapper dress that set off her blonde hair Benny took her by the arm as the door opened the music seemed to spill out as they made their way to the bar Benny smelled her lavender perfume and smoke I'm going to celebrate he said and he ordered two whiskey sours but you don't drink well I do tonight Benny rested his elbow so he could see the band stand as a dark haired slightly chubby Bix stood up to take a solo Benny's age his tux rode up in his ankles and he was wearing white socks Opal laughed pointing I don't know what the fuss is about you can't even hear him he played a soft horn that was hard to hear but Benny cupped his ear to listen you're wrong he said he's quiet but he's good there was more to that horn and Benny recognized it cornfields and flatlands and a father's contempt and a defiant son his parents had sent him to Lake Forest Academy that was known for turning disorderly boys into men but every chance he could Bix took the Chicago Northwestern and then the L until he found himself on the south side outside of the Lincoln Gardens when Bix was a boy in Davenport he wandered down to the river he lay on the banks listening to the riverboat bands that came up from the south that New Orleans rhythm got into his veins as the Mississippi flowed he heard a high pitched horn it pierced the night and went straight to his heart he'd go wherever it went despite his parents' efforts he'd been following it ever since here was another white boy who could play who had a father who hated him Benny wanted to shake his hand Benny wanted to shake his hand as Bix sat down after his solo he dropped his head as if he'd just exposed the most private part of himself and the band came back at a feverish pitch Opal clasped her drink as her legs were pumping and she couldn't sit still come on she shouted downing her whiskey Opal forgot about her tight slippers and her pinched toes as she pulled Benny to the dance floor her supple body caught the beat while he fumbled like an aquatic bird that glides and skims on water but is graceless on land at the piano he could make two different rhythms happen with his right hand and his left hand but he was lost when it came to his feet Opal laughed at his arms that flailed like a drowning man's as she shimmied and turned Benny got caught in his own legs and he thought he'd topple over she was trying to teach him a new dance called the Charleston they were huge all dressed in brown and black suits two stood blocking the door two more followed one wore an electric blue suit and a scarlet shirt shiny blue socks and a pearl grey fedora with a black band and a diamond stick pen machine gun McGurn who is a real person was a real person machine gun McGurn as he would soon be known dressed like Capone the same tailor made his custom made suits yellow and electric blue he liked his accessories his fedoras and stick pins and spats and cane with its silver knob he was tall and wide as a vault he weighed 250 pounds but he could move like an alligator at lethal speed he was known for his big tips his dashing good looks and the blade he carried in his inside breast pocket Benny recognized him as the man who attacked Napoleon that's earlier he wondered if McGurn would remember him as well his real name was Vicenzo Gerbaldi he became a psychopath when his father was murdered he'd been cheating the mob to save money for his family a nickel was found in his father's right fist whenever McGurn killed someone he left a nickel in the palm in memory of his father McGurn was a high ranking associate of the Capone brothers a silent partner he orchestrated events behind the scenes it was his expertise with a knife that made him famous McGurn knew how to peel back the skin on a man's face not to kill him but to teach him a lesson once he'd sliced the vocal cords of a singer who tried to move to a new club the band came to a halt dancers stopped dancing as if frozen in place McGurn cleared away a table at the front but not before he took care of the bill the golden doors swung open again two men carrying Tommy guns stood sentinel on either side of the room suddenly a short stocky man wearing a green silk suit sauntered in a cigar in his mouth and a scar carved across his left cheek everyone gasped some looked away the man motioned to the band keep playing he said Al Capone lived on Prairie Avenue he shared his house with his wife May and their only child Sonny but he worked out of his office at the metropole hotel it wasn't unusual for him to show up at one of his clubs when he did the doors were locked no one left till dawn whenever he went Napoleon Capone was a celebrity musicians raised to shake his hand band struck up songs he loved to hear he was affable and generous when he wanted to be he wore cashmere coats and the finest silks he loved handkerchiefs, fedoras and pig skin gloves he required six bodyguards including two machine guns he was often seen at the opera and the symphony he had rhythm in his stubby fingers and his feet he loved jazz musicians when musicians played for him he stuffed sea notes into their pockets and once he made a trembling surgeon sew back on a bass player's thumb that's true Capone took his seat at the table in the front he waved his arms in the air the band played faster a bottle of whiskey was placed on his table Capone didn't look at it but he picked up his glass when it was filled he could make a bigger profit on milk but he enjoyed the clubs people needed to have fun music and booze that's all it took he kept his gaze fixed on the dance floor the girls were being dipped and spun overhead they slid between men's legs twirled in their hands then his eyes came to rest on a girl with golden hair she was dancing like a crazy person with a partner who could barely keep up her hair flew her arms and legs went everywhere but she followed the beat Capone was a family man every night he dined with Sonny in May he called his mother once a week still he had his girls on the side he had them whenever he wanted them in the same way he had whiskey and cigars and automobiles in front-road seats when he wanted them they were his for the taking to be paid for and delivered usually it wasn't that difficult girls waited for him inside clubs they slipped him their numbers as they sold him cigarettes everyone knew who Al Capone was nobody refused him on the dance floor Opal spun she flung her legs back and forth her blonde dresses shook free she didn't want to hang of it but it seemed as if McGurn's eyes were on him perhaps McGurn did remember him Benny tried to dance faster as if that would make the evening over sooner Benny didn't know that McGurn had never seen his face that night in the alley it was Opal he was watching and Capone was watching her too suddenly Capone stood up and his men did as well but he told them to sit down he motioned to the band to keep playing as he walked across the dance floor tapping Benny on the shoulder he danced with the girl Opal looked at Benny with watery eyes Benny couldn't say no Capone took her in his arms and planted his hand on the small of her back when the first chord struck he started to move despite his bulk he was graceful and light on his feet he tilted back and forth like a metronome until he caught the beat then he was twirling he swung to the music he threw Opal out and brought her back to the beat then swung her out again the whole club was watching Opal wondered if this would be what it would be like when she was famous for a moment she was frightened but then she went with the beat his hand was firm and moist on her back sweat seeped through the yellow silk of her dress his moves were smooth and even and he never missed a beat his steps grew more complicated she twirled around and around as they sashayed across the floor when he dipped her she relaxed in his arms if she had never danced before she would have been able to dance with this man thank you that was fun okay the component was a great dancer I love that part of the research hello can you hear me that was wonderful thank you so I had lots of questions and I'm sure you all do too but I'm going to start off talking about um this long writing rejection writing editing rejection that Mary went through and one of the reasons I wanted to do it is because I think it's a very interesting feminist issue in fact recently on Facebook I came across an article called submit like a man and I thought what is this about and I knew I was going to be talking with Mary and I would just want to read this and then talk with Mary about rejection rejection is one of my favorite subjects I'm an expert this is written by by the name of Kelly Russell Agadon and she is editor in chief of a small literary magazine and she talks about the fact that women and men submit differently she says we need to magazines right Marilyn to magazines right to magazines yes ok I just wanted to be clear about that this is not a general statement this is a literary submission discussion she says if I had to make one general statement about what I most learned at the press as an editor the big revelation was that men and women submit their work differently here is what I noticed if an editor of our press rejected a work from a mail writer but wrote something like this came close we'd like to see more of your work please send us more poems we would usually receive another submission from the mail writer within the same month and sometimes even within a few days of his received rejection when we sent this exact same note to a woman writer she might resubmit her work in three to six months but more likely we would not hear from her until over six months to a year sometimes she would not resubmit at all so I found that very interesting it's as if the man hears the positive part of the message and the woman hears the rejecting part of the message in a way so I'm very interested in the fact that you started this book how many years ago 17 17 years ago and I don't know 97 what is that now that's 18 yeah I'm past the locus I'm in my next locus the next stage of the locus now what was it that took you so long and what were the issues for you there were many many issues let me put it this way the first you know it's funny because I still have a fantasy of publishing the first version of this novel one day down the road I put all the stories I wanted to tell into the first version I put all the characters I wanted into the first version but I think the thing that took us me the longest really was jazz because for whatever reason I decided to make characters who were jazz musicians I feel like I could have picked people who were jazz physicists it would have probably been easier for me to do the research I mean jazz was like this enormous black hole and I felt like the more I learned about it the more complicated it became and I got more and more it like it eluded me like a horizon you know I think I would approach it and understand it and it you know and I actually took jazz piano lessons for four years I learned absolutely nothing but I had a very patient teacher who tried to explain to me and teach me what jazz took a really really long time to try to understand that and at one point a friend of mine who is a jazz musician he says well you're not writing about musicians are you and I was like well he actually I am he goes oh you know so I mean the music took a long time but I think I think you know I feel like stories have to render like good stews you know that it's not just you can't just put it all in it takes it takes time and it took a lot of time for the pieces of this to sort of render down to what I think the book is today you know so I wonder when you kept re-submitting it and you kept getting these rejections how did you handle that well let me just say the first thing is that I was completely flabbergasted that this book was not taken in 2002 when I began it in 1997 I gave it to my agent in 2002 she's a brilliant agent she's incredible and she sent it to the 17 top publishers who she really believed in including my own publisher and everybody turned it down and she said to me that this was the worst thing that has ever happened to her as an agent and I'm sort of take her at her word for it I mean I was flabbergasted you know I just was flabbergasted because I'm a masochist was I printed out every I asked for every rejection letter and I printed them out and with a marker I marked all the things that the editors were saying that were similar you know what the problems were that they were having the places where the story wasn't holding up for them so I worked on it and worked on it again and in 2005 it shrunk it kept shrinking like something you put in the wash really hot dryer over and over again got smaller and in 2005 it went out with it again and it was rejected again 10 or 12 times and each time I said to my agent I don't want to keep going with it I want to stop there's something wrong and again I would print it all out so by the end I had this big folder of rejections that I still have but in fact it was very instructive because I figured well if one person said something maybe I don't have to believe them but if five people say it I probably have to pay you know pay attention to that and so it was very helpful in a sense to get to this final version to go through the process but I mean I was a very unhappy camper I was very it was very difficult very difficult well what made you continue with it it wouldn't go away the story didn't go away I mean the characters wouldn't go away what I wondered is how did this I know you're from Chicago your father as you said was there at the at the east sinking right so those those were sort of stories that you grew up with but what about the jazz what was it about the jazz that my dad my dad played so my dad my dad was he was a very good musician he fiddled but he played what were called rent parties where you go and you pay something and people could pay their rent because they had a musician there and he played Bart mitzvah as he played friends party so he was he was actually not bad and so I you know I grew up with that I mean I think this I think you know I went to college in the east as my oldest and dearest friend Mark knows because we went to college together I'm going to tell you for me a sort of touching story about my dad my parents were die hard Chicagoans and they were older when they had me and my mom wanted me to go east she wanted me to travel so I went I went east to college my father would never travel anywhere he would go to his club the golf course and a bridge game that was that was it that was all he would ever do and many many years later I was visiting them and I was looking for a pen and I opened up my dad's bed stand looking for a pen and I found it was full of maps now my father was not someone who would have maps and I took them out and I started looking at them and I realized that they were the triple A maps that he had used to drive me to college and that they were routed so that I he could bring me home it was a circle and I never completed the circle because I stayed in the east you know and I feel that in a way with this book it was my way to go home I mean it literally has been my way to go home I mean I know to your father oh very much so I mean I I love Chicago and I think it was Proust who said the only the only paradises are the ones that we've lost right there we can't be in paradise it it has to be something that we're remembering from a distance I remember reading that Chagall was invited was it Vitibesque Minsk anyone Chagall we're in a museum somebody okay I'm gonna say Vitibesque Vitibesque okay Chagall at a certain point in his life was invited to return to the village the stable where he came from and he said he turned it down because he didn't he wanted everything to still come from his memory and his imagination he didn't he didn't want to have to see the real the real place and I I guess I felt that way about Chicago the Chicago was my childhood and this was sort of a way of returning and maybe a way of saying goodbye you know Sandra Cisneros writes about this in house on mango street which is a wonderful Chicago book she writes about how she can leave mango street but she can never really leave mango street and the witches say to her you're gonna come back to mango street and whenever I teach the book I ask the students how did she come back to mango street and you know they're holding it so you know it's the book so well but it's very interesting to me because Mary is an inveterate traveler who traveled the world on her own and afterwards with her family and and she was very well known for her travel memoirs and so it's very fascinating to me to see this book about her hometown she loves and reveres after all of these books of travels all around the world so it really is coming closer it's always been a tug in my life between a way and home it's it's always it's always been you know and and I think it's not like I've lived in exile but you know I actually was going to do my doctoral dissertation that I never did on the migratory patterns of Midwestern writers because because all the really great Midwestern writers didn't write their best work in the Midwest Twain, Willa Cather, Hemingway Fitzgerald I could just go on and on I mean they wrote their great works from the way where southern writers stay put that was going to be my doctoral dissertation if anyone's looking for a topic I'm happy to share that with you and they all stayed in Mississippi they all stayed in Mississippi and they all wrote from their front porches as Alice Monroe does also but there was something about Midwestern writers that made the migratory and I had never really figured out exactly what it was except I had to get out so someone else will write the book someone else will you know it's a you know we all have that in us I think between something and something but for me it was always between home and away and like I mean I am supposedly I mean I'm known to be a traveler but I'm always homesick I'm always lonely I always want to call somebody you know it's it's pathetic really so yeah so I want to start talking about the actual writing of the book because one of the things that I thought was really fascinating was that the book itself had the feel of a jazz composition with the historical narrative being the main linear structure and each of the characters coming alive through their individual stories almost like jazz riffs right and so that the whole book really felt like a piece of jazz and that really fascinated me is that something that was something that you started with no it fascinated me too no you know that just evolved or happened or were you I was completely you know I think what happened was when I was writing the book I listened to jazz night and day in fact my husband knew when I was depressed or when I'd given up on it because I stopped listening to jazz and then when I put the jazz back he would go okay it's good so I listened to it all the time it alluded me I couldn't understand it I kept trying to understand it I had a physicist boyfriend once he said the thing he loved about physics was that every time you solve one problem 10 more presented themselves and that was how I kept feeling about jazz to me was very much like that but at some point I think the elements of jazz and jazz composition entered the book unconsciously and so there was a certain point when I gave it to a friend to write and she said wow there's ensemble pieces there's solos there's riffs there's improv there's you know the whole way the themes interweave and blah blah blah and I thought you know actually that is how it came out to be but it wasn't the master plan no I had no no which is extraordinary right because it's so much part of the structure of the book that's fascinating that that was not sort of no a conscious effort no I wish I could take credit for it someone has I mean I can't take conscious credit for it I can take you take unconscious a credit can you take unconscious credit reasons I want to throw it open to questions from them too I said that I admired your writing for its economy poetry and seeming effortless right but I'm always interested in talking to writers about their particular individual process can you just talk a little bit about how you began this is a different book because this required a great deal of research right if that got in the way if that you know how that worked within your writing style and your process tell us a little bit about exactly what you do how you start how you edit yourself how you begin how you see it through oh let me think well I'm going to use this the cliche is a cliche of the oyster in the pearl you know but I mean what really happens for me is a little something starts to bother me and I start to kind of work with it and I don't write in a linear way I never I don't know where things are going I write in individual scenes as moments come into my head I write that moment I have no particular organization when I'm writing I write everything first by hand in a journal and the thing that I do with my journals that's actually brilliant is I have a table of contents at the front of the journal so that I so let's say I'm working on the jazz palace and let's say that I have a they can come in no it's okay so for example let's say I'll have an idea that appears in my journal on page 44 and page 82 on page 103 and page whatever so I'll index it in the beginning and I'll stick post-its there and then I'll just go out and just sort of pull them together like a patchwork but it's not a linear process for me I don't remember what the first moment of writing this book was I don't remember I don't really know what to say I don't remember but there were lots of different moments that came to me in terms of the research I read and then things won't click for me but then all of a sudden I'll start reading about what a great dancer Al Capone is and I think oh he has to dance with someone so who's he going to dance with? he's going to dance with crazy opal because she's a crazy dancer so then that's that'll happen was this book very different in terms of process than your other books because of the amount of research involved? yeah definitely well also I was really worried about getting the music wrong because it was a huge huge part of it and I had many wonderful jazz musician friends read it and vetted and say it was okay so in fact next Saturday I'm being interviewed by the jazz critic of the Chicago Tribune and I told him that I absolutely know nothing about jazz and he said it's alright because he knows everything so I don't know how that conversation is going to go but um I just don't write in order order isn't important to me what I say to my students is it's perfect to talk about Sydney Museum you wouldn't begin a painting in the upper left hand corner and paint across the top in like a linear fashion you rough out forms and shapes so why should a writer write from the top why should a writer write like that I mean the physical act of writing is of course linear but why should the ideas have to be linear so that to me it's more like painting so and coming with forms rather than you know like the writers I mean like I know how Paul Oster works and Paul Oster writes a sentence and then he makes it perfect and then he writes the next sentence and he makes it perfect and he doesn't know what the next sentence is coming after that and I totally admire him as a writer I think he's incredible his sentences are beautiful I would go nuts doing that I couldn't possibly work like that so I would like to throw it open for questions is there anybody who has a question Kathy yes to use those discarded pages as a separate project or you're working well people have been asking about the sequel I mean I do have a whole other book if anyone would like to publish it you know from 1933 to 1968 you know I might go back to it there I'm going to share this one story with you there was one story actually I'm going to share this because I'm in the mood to do that right now so I have a very interesting bed and this is how I got my bed when my father was 20 years old his father came into the room and said I'm going to the train to pick up your sister and my father said I don't have a sister and his father said yes you do and tell your brothers to get dressed too and we're going to go get her at the train so my father learned that his father had had another family and that he had this sister and my grandmother had had a dream that one of her boys accidentally met the sister and fell in love and they committed incest and made her husband find her in New York and bring her to Chicago so her sons could meet the sister and they would not commit incest as preposterous as this seems this happened in my family anyway the sister came to Chicago long long story many things happened there was a huge falling out many many years later my aunt walked into this little tiny antique shop in a basement and looked at the antique dealer and said you look like my husband and he said well I think I know who you are and he was the son of the sister who then became a strange blah blah blah blah anyway he borrowed money from my family he became a big antique dealer when I got married he gave me this beautiful bed so end of the bed story I wrote it as a 15 page essay called the story of my bed I gave it to a wonderful writer named Stuart Dibeck to read and I said Stuart what do you think of this essay and he said well it's not a story it's a saga and you need to write it and that was almost 20 years ago and so I wrote it and wrote it and wrote it but in the writing of it well okay this is what I wrote what if you make the sister come to New York Chicago because you had this dream and you make your worst nightmare happen because one of the boys does in fact fall in love with her and he never would have met her otherwise so that was a pretty good novel to write and I began writing that novel but none of that is in this book so to answer the question I might still go back and write that story that fell out of this book second question yes you were going to tell something about the Bearden the Bearden this is a good story this is about the current state of publishing well no it's more than that so in 2004 I was in a doctor's office and I was reading a copy of Smithsonian and I had been working on the jazz palace it had already been rejected many times and you know you know the sad story already and I saw this image in an article in Smithsonian and I thought to myself if the book is ever published this is its cover it's a black trumpeter and a woman coming out of the out of the trumpet purple woman black trumpet I'm sure none of you have ever done but I did tear it out of the magazine from the doctor's office and I brought it home and I put it on my bulletin board where it languished for 10 years nothing happening to it finally the book was sold I was thrilled, I did all the edits I did everything and I wrote a letter to my editor I wrote a note to my editor and I said and I have an image for the cover that I'd like you to consider and she said oh we'll have the art department get in touch with you and I said okay fine so about a week later I got an email from the art director and she said we understand that you have an image that you would like to be on the cover of your book as you know we have our own process and we prefer that the basically writer doesn't get involved in it however if you show us the image you have maybe we can come up with an idea around it or maybe it'll spark an idea in our heads whatever so I said okay I sent it to them 10 days later I got an email do you have a higher resolution of that image because they couldn't do any better they knew they couldn't do any better and it was perfect they had to get permission from Winton Marsalis whose album cover it is Romar Bearden did it for J Mood which is a Winton Marsalis so we had to get permission from Winton I do not know what they paid for it but I do know that I got the most beautiful cover and again you know as the poster child for perseverance that's just another example of just sticking with it and you know I mean you don't always get what you want I just got an email that my publicist is leaving the company tomorrow but you know things don't always work out exactly but you know the important things kind of do so anyway any other questions from you guys yes Lily a wonderful writer and recent graduate from Sarah Lawrence oh congratulations so did other publishers pick this one up as well as the one that you did I did in publishing it or was it just this do you like so you got rejected by a million places other people accept this version well what happened was my former editor who had been my editor many years ago Nan rejected the novel three times and I couldn't believe that she actually agreed to look at it at the fourth time and when she made an offer then my agent started calling around and all of a sudden people were like oh we're interested or we could be interested and we're suddenly interested but we basically went with what we had because it was yeah so has writing this book inspired you to write more novels in the search genre of jazz maybe I'm not going to do jazz again or music again but I am doing another book that has some historical elements to it that I'm very excited about but it involves spices and it's much easier to write about spices than it is to write about music so I'm interested in the travels of well I'm not going to get into what that's all about but anyway it has to do with Columbus and conquistadors and things like that and New Mexico well that's true and cryptojuice it is but it's not as heavy as you know it's about cryptojuice do you know what cryptojuice are do you want to know what cryptojuice crypto yes when you write yes can you kind of image of something or do you follow words are you more focused on language or is there I'm pretty visual so I'll tend to get a scene in my head like in the new novel I have a kid who for reasons I don't really know why is an amateur astronomer so I sort of I see him on a hill in an old cemetery looking at the sky so I'll see it like that and then I'll start to write that scene so I think it's visual I see things in scenes like for example I love trains movies anything that has frames that move I don't know if I know how to look at a painting but I know how to look at a movie or like Mad Man for whatever we think of it in the end we're always perfectly carved out but I see things in scenes I suppose does that make sense so would you talk about what about cryptojuice you plan to I mean cryptojuice were Jews who were forced to convert during the Inquisition who didn't really convert they kept up their practices in a hidden way and what is interesting to me is that the years in 1492 coincidentally happened the same year that Columbus sailed and doing research I found that actually a number of cryptojuice sailed with Columbus and they went to Mexico where the hand of the Inquisition was very long and they made their way north into the hills of New Mexico where they formed small communities and they kept Jewish traditions but they were Catholics what happened over centuries is this getting boring what happened over centuries was they forgot they were Jews but they lit candles on Friday night or they didn't need pork or they kept these traditions but they were Catholic I mean they did everything Catholic but they would keep these things and they lived very isolated lives because they had gone to escape the Inquisition and mainly in New Mexico and what happened in the Korean War was a lot of them were drafted and they'd wind up at tables with like a Jewish dentist and they would need a ham sandwich and the guy would go why aren't you eating ham we don't eat pork why aren't you eating pork and why are you lighting candles and why are you doing what you're doing and they didn't know why it's like Halloween why do we dress up in costumes we don't know why we do it anymore but I we lived in New Mexico briefly and we had a babysitter who believed he was a crypto Jew and I got very interested in them anyway it has to with my family and migratory patterns and DNA testing I guess it's research but it's a story I'm a storyteller I love stories so I'm always looking for a story I think you answered my next question I would be looking into current day crypto Jews because that's my understanding of the last couple of decades people have I read about a priest who discovered who was Jewish oh yeah they're all Stuart Dibek went to Krakow do you know the writer Stuart Dibek he's an amazing writer raised Polish Catholic in Chicago he went to Krakow and he was in a bar and he said his name was Stuart Dibek and they said no your name's Dibek he said no my name's Dibek and you're Jewish and he was like no I'm not and they said if you don't think you're Jewish go to the synagogue in the morning and check out the guy who sweeps the front of the synagogue and it looked exactly like Stuart and he learned that his father had converted and never told the family and that Stuart had been totally raised and now he calls himself Dibek instead of Dibek so anyway those kinds of stories thank you thank you no it's not going to or my husband will leave me Dana any other questions yeah Dana when I'm writing my rule of thumb is that if I forget where I am and I forget to have lunch or time just I'm in a completely altered world it's probably right and if I'm struggling with it you know I can't tell you how many times and I know this with my students also you struggle with a chapter, you struggle with a chapter and in the end you probably didn't need that chapter I feel that it's the things that come from the deep well that are the most honest and intuitive so yeah I don't like to work very hard well sometimes with the beginnings of struggle maybe you shouldn't be at the beginning maybe you should be somewhere else in it do you know what I mean maybe maybe you don't need that beginning but I mean you're an academic I think so it's probably a different you probably do have to write in an orderly fashion that's why I found your description of the process I mean my thing is that you kind of write the things or as an artist you do the things that really interest you and then see if you don't kind of build pillars that will support what you're trying to do do you close your eyes? do I close my eyes? yeah I'm serious but the book was so visual to me yeah I don't close my eyes but what I do do is I print out I never okay every day or whatever period I'm in hard copy so I'll print out at the end of the day and the best days for me in my life are I take a manuscript I go to a cafe that actually might even be quiet and I forget who wrote the thing I'm reading and I just read it like it's somebody else's book and I just put you know put myself in that place and that's the best you know like I mean Marilyn was saying supposedly I'm a good traveler I'm trying to travel with me because for the first four hours of every day I'm writing so but in cafes yeah yes sir when you laid out the cafe and you're writing then you continue like you're reading it a lot and you just take your pain and just continue from there does that kind of like you laid out the trail oh this is where you are and then you just kind of continue on that trail I'm not sure I'm not sure exactly what you I mean if I how do you mean if I continue it like if I have a scene in mind do I keep going with that or you've got it laid out there basically where you work and where you left off and then you just kind of take your pain and keep on traveling I usually go back to the beginning and kind of turn pages and then sort of fill in things and then kind of work my way along editing sort of well I try to generate as much material as I can I love Graham Greene because he went to Capri three months of the year and he wrote in Capri and then he went back to London and went to his club and he had lunch and didn't do any writing but I mean I like to be somewhere where I can just sort of sit and write for a long period of time you know I'm interested in this idea of your writing in different parts of the book of weaving it together did you do that in your memoirs as well oh yeah completely completely because that was self generated and that didn't require research but that's still the way that's your normal way of putting these together and you know there's a wonderful memoir it's got the worst title in the world but it's a beautiful book Nick Flynn's Another Bullshit Night in Suck City any of you read it Nick Flynn oh it's an incredible Lily I know you've read it it's another bullshit night in Suck City like I said it's a bad title it's a terrific book Nick Flynn worked in a homeless shelter and his father became homeless and so it's a beautiful memoir but it's written in these little vignettes and chunks and I said to him once how did you write it and he said I just wrote it in pieces and then I went to Paris for two weeks and I checked into a hotel and I came around you know I write like a patchwork quilt not everybody just but it works for me so any other questions are we good I think we're good thank you guys thank you so much