 Good evening, and thank you for joining us here at the Mechanics Institute here at 57 Post Street, San Francisco I'm Laura Shepherd director of events, and I'm very pleased to welcome you to our program with Joyce Carol Oates for her new book Beautiful Days Stories Now for those of you who are new to the Mechanics Institute We'd like to invite you to come on Wednesday at noon for a free tour of the library and our beautiful Bozart's building Also become a member and attend most of our programs for free The Mechanics Institute continues to be one of the most vital cultural and literary centers in the Bay Area with ongoing author events such as this panels Cinema at film series book clubs computer classes writers groups and chess classes and tournaments and much more Seven days a week all through the year So please visit our website and also pick up our event schedule With over 40 books to her name She hardly needs introduction the breadth of her writing Ranges and themes from popular culture to the most probing issues of our times From her first novel about of a fraught relationship of lovers in with shuttering fall To her 700 page novel Blonde devoted to the life of Marilyn Monroe To her recent politically charged family drama a book of American martyrs and her many collections of masterful short stories Joyce Carol Oates never fails to bring her fearless passions and astounding insights to the page in her new collection Beautiful Days She features 13 stories including the 2017 push cart prize winning Undocumented alien and explores the most secret intimate and unacknowledged interior lives of characters These stories will shock inspire and get under your skin Please note that Joyce's first book now reprinted with shuttering fall and her most recent novel a book of American martyrs plus Beautiful Days will be on sale and signing after our program and Now an introduction Joyce Carol Oates is the recipient of the National Medal of Humanities The National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandroff Lifetime Achievement Award The National Book Award and the Penn Malamut Award for excellence in short fiction She has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time Including the national bestsellers. We were the Mulvaney's Blonde, which I just mentioned which was nominated for the National Book Award and The New York Times bestseller the Falls which won the 2005 pre-femina She is the Roger S. Berlin Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Princeton University and Has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978 She is wintering in the Bay Area with her husband Professor Charles Gross and teaching at UC Berkeley's English Department. So we are so lucky to welcome Joyce Carol Oates. Thank you for the gracious introduction. Can you all hear me and I didn't we didn't really realize we were wintering in Berkeley Though we would much rather be there than back home where there's a blizzard and it's like a foot of snow But it's not it's not actually very warm in Berkeley. It's been dreary and wet and and rainy for quite a while, but we were not complaining because we're not back home So I'm really happy to be here. It's such an elegant and such a unique and interesting library Just wonderful windows and just the very look of it So luxurious and sort of magisterial plus we were taken to the chess club area upstairs Which is so amazing. I've never I've never seen a library with a chess club in it In fact, I don't think I've ever seen a chess club before It make a really wonderful setting for a story I'll come Just the idea of the chess club and the people who come and meet one another who have such disparate lives and come from great Different parts of the city and different ages would be very fascinating Well this evening I'll talk a little bit about my book But I'm going to read a new story because I'd like I'd like to read new work Which I'm more emotionally engaged with I'll talk about the book a little bit Probably the nicest thing about the book is the Edward Harper cover I was so thrilled to be able to use this cover I've had two or three hopper covers before on my books and there is just that somewhat iconic mystical dream-like Exemplary sort of humanity without anyone being too specific Though it doesn't seem to be a particular history or particular time. It seems maybe it's back in the 1930s or sometime like that But it's not specific and that dream-like quality and allegorical quality are what we look for. I think in art most of my books of stories, maybe all of my books of stories have a strategy of organization Often I have three sections. There are only two in this But I often have three and I begin with with a rear I strike a certain thematic tone with the very first story or even the first line It's a love story that takes people to places that they had not anticipated And I think the reader may be surprised also since the writer was surprised that where the people ended up But it's a realistic story. It's extremely realistic with a sense of place Fleur blue the Blue River and it's set in an area that is is Very vividly realized Then the next story is called Big Burnt for those of you who know what Lake where Lake, Georgia's That's another very beautiful extremely beautiful lake and they add around next upstate, New York Big Burnt. I love the name of that and my husband spent his summers on Big Burnt Island So it has that kind of connection Then the story called our eyes, which is about a young boy. He's 15 years old and he's a prodigy Sometimes I write about teenage boys and Maybe a few girls and they turn out to be somewhat precocious Except you bless me is a story about racial misunderstanding and the reader I think will know more maybe than the than the character in In the story then there's a story called the quiet car Which is based on the quiet car in the New Jersey transit this is a car in the train where people don't talk and For many of us it's like the happiest time Every I was teaching at NYU last fall and every Tuesday went in the quiet car It was sort of a sacred time The same people would come in every week and they would quickly go to their seats and not look at you don't you don't look at One another you just sort of don't make any contact at all. Everybody's sitting in and there are little seats and so forth one the bereaved is Set in the Galapagos Maybe some of you know what the Galapagos is my husband Charlie and I went to the Galapagos about two years ago And had all sorts of interesting adventures though nothing quite like in the story here Then the second and then the the story start to shift a little They become maybe more interior They start to acquire a kind of surrealist tone and the bell is your label jour Which is the beautiful days is based on a notorious Baltus painting? and I I didn't want that Baltus painting on the cover of my book because then it would be it would be censored or people would Be really angry about it, but it just turned out that that particular Baltus painting drew a lot of ire at the Metropolitan Museum and some people have a Titian to have it taken down But I don't I don't think that's going to happen I'm not sure what I think about art because John Vareman said is wickedness soluble in art Meaning can you have wicked subjects, but if the art is is brilliant enough it sort of? Elivates and I'm not sure how I feel about that then I have a story called fractal Which I think is my favorite story in the volume. It's about a mother who takes her quite precocious son to a fractal museum in in New England and That was a story that was unexpected to me and documented alien was based upon special issues of issue of conjunctions magazine in which the editor Brad Marrow invited everyone to people to write about aliens in Undocumented so-called illegal immigrants or the idea of of somebody who's been alienated and who's estranged Who's looked upon is different and so my story is based upon that that I that theme It's also about a sort of nerve Lurid north Neurological experiment then a story called Donald Barthamy saved from oblivion If anyone remembers and likes Donald Barthamy the story is really like a Valentine or homage to Donald Barthamy Whom I knew a bit I I was in a kind of a friend of his though I think not a close friend of his So much of the story or at least some of the story is taken from Don's Writing and there are lines and weird metaphors and things and then there are other things that I that I Invented that our Donald Bartham only like which I wouldn't have done by myself and my own writing but here it seemed to Make sense Like Don believed in art for art's sake So I have a little scene in here where art Shows up and he's a person This is why I'm the person that you're doing all this for I'm art for art I'm art of art's sake and I think Don would have appreciated that wit he would have had a kind of a Crooked smile Then the last story is called the memorial field that has in Minnesota, and it's more like an incantant incantatory prose poem which is about it has a political Dimension to it, but I wrote it before the current Debacle in Washington actually wrote it about two back and the story has the best of gestating since then About how in a democracy We elect people and they feel because they've been elected that maybe the Responsibility is is absolved and they're not that that responsible in a democracy people have elected the leader At the same time in the democracy people themselves sometimes don't feel responsible for the people they've elected Because they have so little actual control over the mechanism So tonight I'm going to read a New story that I wrote not too long ago I like to read something that I have an emotional engagement with and I've never read this before It's been accepted at some magazine, but it hasn't been published yet It's it's called the bloody head a love story Well, you're laughing already how does your how'd you know it's gonna be funny in the secluded inner courtyard of the Hotel Davi on the Rue de la Cassette Paris the American woman sat alone at a small wrought iron table at breakfast She was skimming the European edition of the New York Times Which was scarcely recognizable here a thin of lavish full-page advertisements She was making up postcards for family and friends back home though She understood that postcards had become passé quaint justice from a pre-digital age at which her young grandchildren and Thralled by texting would only glance quizzically It was early not yet 7 15 a.m Fewer than half the tables in the courtyard were occupied a fountain at the center of the courtyard made comforting sounds as of a slow Pumping heart soothing and restful and yet suggesting promise The American woman was the only individual in the courtyard at this time without a companion Which gave her a sense of expansion and exhilaration Maybe some of you know this hotel It's a lovely little hotel on the Rue de la Cassette That morning she intended to visit the Musee d'Orsay She would not be hurried Through the elegant high ceiling rooms that would not press herself to see every work of art on display She might return the next day to the door say or she might go to another smaller museum There are many small museums listed in the guidebook including the Musee Picasso of much interest Later she would stroll along the sun with no particular destination Rejoicing in her freedom amid the languid beauty of Paris and autumn and here, too. She would feel no pressure to hurry She was an attractive woman of late middle age with faded fair hair and a smile that came easily in formal settings like this She was unfailing the gracious with service people indeed with everyone she encountered She wore a white linen jacket and perfectly creased white linen trousers with ropes of pearls around Around her neck on her head a fashionably wide brim straw hat on her feet her most comfortable low-heeled shoes The American woman's name was not Isabel Archer But closely enough resembled that classic name that the woman had come to think of herself in secret as a descendant of Henry James's Naively noble mind and heroine one who'd avoided the tragedy of Isabel Archer's constricted life Sure chance it was for most women an accident of time and generations if they if they lived freely or not Isabel Archer whom Henry James had adored had been a lady in escape a lay But no woman was required to be a lady in the 21st century The American woman was making annotations in her Paris guide book when she became aware of Guests at other tables glancing upward at a third floor window of the hotel and then shifting their eyes away She heard a chilling strangulated cry and Turned in astonishment to see how in an open window a man was calling help help me Unmistakably in English the man appeared to be only partly closed At least what the American woman could glimpse of his chest and part of his belly appeared to be bare Clumsily the man had wound himself in something white or a sheet or towel But there was also something white run around around his head help help me Oh, what was wrong with the poor man? Why did no one seem to care? The American woman tried to signal the eloquently black-haired Hostess hostess who had been hovering at the periphery of the courtyard But the hostess was now nowhere to be seen a waiter who had been pouring coffee had vanished as well The American woman did not want to become involved desperately. She did not want to become involved The fleeting thought came to her. I can't give up the promise of my beautiful morning. I will not If only she slipped away from the courtyard a few minutes before But still the man in the third-floor window was calling for help desperately Indeed, he seemed to be calling now to her since the others were looking stonely away Why was it always thus? She was responsible. She could not ignore the man as others were doing. He spoke English No doubt he was an American like herself and must have had no one to take care of him Instinctively the American woman reached for her handbag which contained her passport credit cards currency and enough tissues for an entire day and Heard from the courtyard which is bounded on three sides by hotel walls and on the fourth open to the hotel lobby At the front desk there was no one though. She rang the brass bell several times. No one appeared from the office Oh, where were they all hiding? Why would no one help though? She knew that the quaintly small lift that could not hold more than three adults at a time Would be slow to arrive yet. She wasted pressure seconds waiting for it Then gave up and ran up the carpeted steps to the second floor and to the third now breathless and crying Softly to herself my morning my beautiful morning In a third-floor corridor the American woman tried to calculate where the man's room was Obviously had to be overlooking the courtyard at the center hotel And so made her blundering way in what she believed to be that direction seek at the far end of the corridor a door That was a jar though a sign was looped Over the doorknob do not stir The stricken man had had enough sense to leave a door open at least if he wanted someone to come help him The American woman entered the room hesitantly with an anticipation of Something terrible and was astonished to see a naked man of late middle-aged somewhat heavy his chest and belly Covered in glinting silver hairs Seated slouched on the bed Badly bleeding and stunned He had wound a white towel around his head But blood was seeping through the towel Streaming down his neck onto his fleshy shoulders and back and onto the glittering chest hairs His face was a lurid mask of red through which his wide and eyes a glassy white with alarm shown Thank God help me see if you can stop this bleeding The voice was both desperate and reproachful as if he had been waiting unconsciously long time For the American woman to ascend to him and was reaching the end of his patience No choice. I have no choice the American woman thought despite the white linen jacket and the white linen trousers She had no choice but to come to the assistance of the stricken man who seemed to have no one else to help him And was trying to explain to her in a rush of words like a vehicle creeding downhill He had an accident in the bathroom slipped on the tile floor fell hard and struck his head Against the porcelain toilet and could hardly move for some minutes Maybe he'd lost consciousness. It happens too quickly for him to comprehend Then when much difficulty he'd managed to get to his feet maneuvering himself to his feet By first turning over and kneeling and then grabbing hold of the sink and lifting himself grunting in a delirium of shock and pain And he'd seen himself in the mirror bleeding from a cow in his head at the crown of his head and grab the towel And I hope to stop the bleeding but the bleeding hadn't stopped or anyway He wasn't sure if it had stopped he couldn't see the actual wound so maybe She could look she could help determine if the bleeding had stopped Of course the American woman came to the pleading man as he bade her Gingerly she removed the blood soaked towel from his head and saw with a sensation of faintness What appeared to be a deep wound in the scalp or in any case a wound that was badly bleeding that turned his silvery hair a Savage hue of red and was even now Leading on to his shoulders here use this Thrusting into her hands the thick white towel he'd wound clumsy about his body. There was only partly soaked with blood But this towel was really too big and brisk brisk as a nurse the American woman fetched from the bathroom another smaller towel To be wound like a turban around the bloody head with care But the towel must not work loose and fall off and this she managed though without much help from the agitated man Who continued to describe in the voice of incredulity how the accident had happened? How would it happen to him and nothing like this had ever happened to him before? It was a damn bathroom the slippery tub the two small bath mat how quickly it had happened He'd found himself on the floor and his head was oozing blood and it was no one to call to no one to help He'd been left alone in a damn room and when he staggered into the bedroom to call the front desk Damn phone did not work or he had no idea how to operate it And so he had no choice but to stagger to the damn window and call down to the courtyard making a spectacle himself And no one had come for the longest time though. He'd seen her looking at him Obviously she'd heard him but had not seemed to react at once that he's as he'd have expected But thank God you're here The American woman was still upset her heart was racing dangerously for the sight of the badly bleeding naked man slouched on bed Had been in the first instant terrifying But it did seem that the stricken man might not be in great danger so far as the woman could determine the bleeding was beginning to slow His skull had surely not been fractured The scalp wound was probably less severe than it appeared for excess of bleeding was common from even shallow scalps Scalp wounds as the stricken man was Assuring her for he seemed to know all about such matters using the term vascular eyes There being many more small veins in the scalp than elsewhere in the body and all close to the surface of the skin Which was why the man said he wouldn't need to see a doctor no need to go to hospital in a few minutes He was all right. He would be all right. He was sure All this while as the man spoke the American woman was trying to breathe calmly and deeply and not to be caught up in the Man's rush words and his hint of reproach For there was something about the man's forceful head-on manner like that of her vehicle creating downhill Might draw another in its weight like a scrap of paper in an updraft Once you could interrupt the flow of his speech you managed to tell him that she'd come as quickly as she could It was true She'd lost precious time waiting for the elevator before deciding to run up the steps and the man cursed the elevator Why do they make elevators so small in Europe that everybody used to be dwarfs? And when the Arab reproach changed with some humor for this was an exaggeration surely if you'd waited for the damn thing I'd be dead by now By the grease the American woman was feeling less faint She was not by nature an excitable person an Approximity of others who were excitable or overwrought had the disorienting effect upon her at a distance She imagined she could control such persons or at least guide them but closer to them within the gravitational orbit She soon lost the threat of her own concentration and succumbed to theirs But it seemed clear that the stricken man was calm or two unless agitated Since his bloody head had been waned by the woman tightly Comfortingly in a proper-sized towel like a tourniquet He was aggrieved yet managed to speak cogently and not incoherently like a man who has gained control of an emergency situation And he could be good could begin to assess it with an expression of incredulity disbelief and annoyance But amusement to a man accustomed to giving orders and to being obeyed But also a man who's unaccustomed to be so incapacitated So bereft of control at the mercy of another in such a dramatic visual display of masculine helplessness By this time the American woman had determined that he was probably all right She could leave him for a minute sitting on the bed and went to fetch from the bathroom washcloth soaked in hot water More towels she would wash the blood from his neck, which was a thick muscular neck Alarmingly crimson in the morning sunlight standing through the window She would wash the blood from his back his chest is up her arms For she did not trust the man in his condition to return to the shower as with a half-hearted sort of bravado He was suggesting He would need to see a doctor. She told him she would arrange for an ambulance to take them to a hospital But no no doctor. No no hospital the man insisted. He would be all right in 10 minutes He had no intention of going to hospital. No The woman object that of course he must go the wound in his scalp we start required stitches. No absolutely not no hospital here They're all be speaking French He was being ridiculous the woman cried he'd seriously hurt himself. He might have died She would notify the front desk that he needed medical treatment. They would call an ambulance or at least a taxi At the nearest emergency room he could be examined the next way taken of his skull For what if there had been a fracture and the wound must be cleaned more thoroughly Disinfected was needed to prevent infection The wound would have to be stitched up properly so that would heal and not continue to ooze blood Now still the man objected there was not a chance. He would go to a hospital in Paris It was just a shock of it the accident a little blood wouldn't hurt him He has worse head wounds as a kid. It's well known that head wounds bleed like hell, but he'll quickly so vascularized What he needed urgently was to get dressed to get out of his hell hole all this mess look at the bedclothes Look at the towels. He needed to go downstairs to the courtyard that great place with a fountain and have breakfast croissants and jam Why he'd slip was partly he was damn hungry The woman could not bring herself to argue with the man since it only excite in him And it was not likely that his wishes would be overcome regarding doctor hospital stitches He would never consent to go now. He'd begun to feel stronger and the shock of the fall was fading So the woman pleaded with the man at least come into the bathroom So she would wash him more thoroughly he couldn't get dressed Otherwise he would get his clean clothes blood stain and it was blood in his hair They have to be rinsed out before it dried and they would never be able to get it out With a nervous sort of exasperation a woman spoke yet vast relief as well her heart was pounding so rapidly She feared she'd made faint after all. Oh, she was looking white-faced the man said with sudden concern Maybe she better sit down No, no, she'd sit down later. She'd finish her breakfast with him Now she needed to wash away the rest of the blood so that no one would see it a Shocking amount of blood in the bedclothes the woman saw a call the front desk would have to be alerted If a housemaid entered the room unaware the poor woman would be horrifying thinking that someone had been murdered The man was concentrating on heaving himself to his feet which took some effort It was clear that this was a man who'd once been stronger more certain of his body and better coordinated Difficult for him to realize now that he no longer inhabited that body though. He was Was he exactly the same person? Indeed he could probably not have managed to stand without the woman slipping an arm around his waist and gripping him tight He was panting though also laughing Making a sound of a certain sort of incredulous laughter that signaled. Well, how could this happen? How to me? Nothing like this ever happened in my life, but it's nothing really ridiculous to make such a fuss In the bathroom the woman went hot watering to the sink He was the excellent fragrant self to wash the man's neck as he stood stood submissively before her with an air of patience From time to time he stole side-long glances at himself in the mirror Swallowing roofily wincing allowing the woman to wash him as if humoring her Acquiescing to another's overzealous solicitude out of consideration for the woman Though he stooped to help her when required and took his hairbrush from her hands To make swipes at his silvery white hair that was disheveled and wild And marveled at what he could glimpse of the wound in the mirror Whistling thinly as if the wound were quite an achievement Though wincing when the woman dobbed gently at the wound warning her not to start the damn bleeding again, please The woman saw that the interior of the bathroom looked like what was the french bird and abattoir Smeared blood on the impractically white tile floor but also the edge of the bathtub Which was made of old yellow and marble and on the shower curtain Which is a double curtain with a practical plastic inside and outside of impractical white lacy fabric And onto the sink and counter for his flailing about the stricken man had gotten blood everywhere The woman could not bear leaving the bathroom quite so shocking For a poor chambermaid took lead and swiped out the blood stains with tissues and toilet paper While the stricken man continued to peer at himself in the mirror Tried to see the wound at the crown of his head with a kind of pride now And finished brushing his wavy syrupy white hair that was thin at the crown was said but thicker elsewhere He was a sturdy bodied man of something beyond late middle age in fact A former athlete perhaps or anybody a man who kept himself fit longer than most out of determination and vanity The woman found herself admiring the man's body so much more solid than her own so much more Solid that resembled the greek warrior statues. She'd seen she'd been seeing in the museums Broad shouldered men with curly beards broad chests covered in a sort of pelt Muscular arms and shoulders legs wrought in the most exquisite antique marble What gratitude the woman felt what a flutter relief that the man she discovered in the hotel room had not been seriously hurt Had not been mortally injured I'll never forget this moment when things might have gone so differently Feeling better now decidedly stronger the man scarcely took note of the woman's mood Naked and confident he returned to the bedroom to seek out underwear in a bureau drawer Step into shorts needing the woman to study him as he balanced on one leg Navy blue shorts That fitted his drum like belly almost too tightly On his torso a thin white much-laundered undershirt through which short crinkly chest hairs poked like the quills of a small beast Will pick out a shirt for me dear the man asked with a curious sort of submissiveness Please As if after the devil call of the accident the man so foolish could not dare to select a shirt for himself The woman peered into the closet and selected a long sleeve cotton shirt with a small geometric pattern Dark blue on white not the sort of shirt an american tourist might wear on the balmy september day in paris But a shirt that suggested a measure of dignity and authority A shirt that might have been worn by a professional man a parisian attorney physician professor The selection of this particular shirt the man appreciated For the shirt was one of his favorites and fitted his image of himself as essentially dignified And possessing authority as well as a certain degree of achievement reputation and affluence though in fact He was the very man who slipped egominiously on a bathroom floor less than an hour ago Stuck his head on the toilet stunned himself and might easily have died In which case he would be dead at this very moment not buttoning up his favorite shirt An american woman downstairs in the courtyard making annotations in the Paris guidebook would not yet have known what awaited upstairs in room 340 of the hotel diving As he dressed and tied to shoelaces the man could not resist recounting to the woman another time What had happened to him? Who was quite a remarkable episode An accident a freak accident nothing ever happened to him like this before it would ever happen again His voice was so expansive be mused the woman understood that soon the incident that had occurred in the bathroom Would become an anecdote one of the man's travel anecdotes to impress others to startle others To entertain others to make them feel concerned for the man Even as this affable man a deflected concern and to make them smile for there had been no sort of accident involving There had no tragedy no crack skull nor abrupt Reptile of death only a comical sort of accident involving a slippery floor a mere pratfall the man would call it So relieved was the woman to see the man in good spirits So relatively quickly after the accident she came to him to kiss him and to give him a hug As a mother might give a difficult child a hug a reassurance yet Childingly with a sort of warning and a gesture that the child might have might not acknowledge And a man thanked her again for saving his life as he said extravagantly Helping him when he was helpless Abandoning her breakfast to come to his aid and he kissed her and returned though distractedly For there are other things on his mind and he was very hungry right now And looking for the to the new york times downstairs in the courtyard And the basket of croissants and those jams and miniature jars By this time the man was ready to leave the hotel room The woman had discovered belatedly that she was looking to shovel herself It would have to comb her hair again To a horror she saw there were blood smears on both the white linen jacket and the perfectly creased trousers And so she would have to change her clothes The man was leaping through the guidebook which the woman had brought to the room Telling her he wanted to see that morning wasn't the musee dorsay, but the musee picasso He'd never seen the musee picasso. He said every time he'd come to Paris. He'd wanted to see it. He never had The woman objected she thought they had agreed on the musee dorsay and the woman said no No, they agreed on the process Looking at the guidebook the previous day that was what they decided The woman protested faintly, but it was no use It was never any use Even if she were correct and she could not now absolutely recall if she were correct As the man adamantly recalled that he was correct if he were obliged to give in to her He would be sulky and sullen and not enjoy the museum despite its great art and its setting Better if they visited the picasso museum, which was much smaller It would not tax the man's strength so much as the mob dorsay And no doubt the picasso museum would be excellent, too The woman would purchase postcards and the gift shop to send back home and these would be perfectly adequate It really didn't matter what the postcards pictured at which the the young grandchildren would do no more than glance and perhaps not even glance Had last making their way along the dimly lighted corridor to the carpeted steps The woman slipped her arm through the man's arm not to steady him or even to guide him Or rather not obviously to perform these functions Put out of great relief a vast swell of relief Which would be turned to her through the day in waves Long after the man had more or less forgotten what the reason for such relief might have been In a hotel d'habbe on the rue de casse Paris The full title of that is the bloody head of love story so you can sort of see But i'm happy to try to answer any questions that you might have we can talk for 15 20 minutes or so This is always the best part of the Evening for me instead of a conversation Could people please wait for the uh microphone? I'll bring it around to you Is there anybody who has a question It's really lovely that you're here Here um you've mentioned a couple of times about being surprised at your own stories. Can you talk a little bit more about that? Well, it's it's sort of an interesting phenomenon and many people who are Who writers are artists? I think we start off with a very A very powerful sense like a dream like sense of an emotion or tone Almost like a musical tone and I need to have my setting I'll have a setting like that this hotel room Is very real and the bathroom I make shut my eyes and see it is very vivid to me So and then you have people who come into this Setting and they seem to in some way related to it and then a story Is stimulated by the Relating of the of the people could be two or three people actually And then that sets something in motion And I'm whenever I start a story. I always know the ending except I don't always Stay with that ending. So I have a destination that could be like over in that corner But then as I'm moving along the characters become maybe suddenly a little rebellious So they have a little impetuous or mischief They don't really want to do that. So it may swear to go in another direction And I think that's true of many people who are writers and artists Some of my students I'm teaching at UC Berkeley right now Some of my students claim that they don't know where their stories are headed And that's like I think like having a dream where you can't you don't really know where the dream will go But more conscious writing you do it. It's like a dream, but you have a control over it Are you a writer? Poetry is a little different because it's it's all about language and they're not usually characters It's not usually a plot or narrative and poetry though. There can be but not not usually Okay, we have a question over here I have a a craft question about the story already really two one is The first part is why did you use almost entirely indirect discourse in this story so that there's virtually no speech and the second is Fairly near the end of the story. We suddenly shift points of view From the woman to the man and we're for a moment Inside his consciousness and I wondered why you did that I'm not sure that we do I think she sees She's sort of is identifying with him, but I'm not sure that I I'm not sure I wanted to write it. So I wanted to write a story that was about a fantastic possibility um A woman without a name Is in paris and she's exactly at this and this table in this wonderful Hotel court erring and she has all this freedom Uh, which is about archer head, but threw away if you remember the henry james novel And so she's thinking how she'll go to the muse dorsey and she'll walk along and do all these things But then there's this person calling to her and she cannot look away and she can't say no and The fantasy sort of dissolves and she's drawn into this world Of pain and need and having to help people and having To assume that she does have a role in life that she's not really that free But it is a love story. So there's some compensations But I couldn't I couldn't make it a first person narrative because We would know immediately that the two were connected. It has to be something that Starts off with a camera back from the person So that we don't know that she's related to that man at all And it's as if a camera is recording it But many a woman in the audience I I'm sure can identify with this woman where Somebody needs you and they made a bad mess And that's just what you're going to do that evening You know that day so some men were nodding too. So it's not just women Yes I was wondering how you handle the time frame of the transition from The writing the focus and the very quiet intense creation of the world and then your Very public passion for public for the the swirl of politics and global events and I know you're very aware of this So how do you do that? Well, I don't I don't think of the our world or the political world or the ephemeral world is Having quite the gravitas of our reading And when I'm teaching I'm always teaching from an anthology So I keep in close contact with great writers like Faulkner and Hemingway the tomorrow I'm teaching flannery o'connor and you do a wealthy story Which I read many many times and they go very well together a laden counter with the enemy By flannery o'connor and then you do our wealthies wonderful story. Where is the voice coming from? So each time I go to those stories I feel I'm Getting back to some basic That's almost like a spiritual ontological essence whereas Those of us who've been around a while we can remember political crises that were very Serious and and very upsetting and we're in we're in a crisis now It seems but we were also in crisis in the past and If there's any advantage with being old is that you do remember other very bad things You remember really really bad things. I mean I'm old enough to remember when we had We had nuclear Atomic bomb drills in the school And how scary that that was it must have been scary, but maybe we're too silly and shallow We're probably just sort of giggling and didn't really know what it was all about I don't know if we had to duck and cover and get under our desks That must have been a terribly fraught time in our history, but We got through that so not that I wanted to sound Too optimistic because that might not That might not be appropriate But it's for me the writing and the books that I read have this inner Reality that's much deeper Whereas twitter or social media are immediately engaging sort of like Images that are flicked on a on a wall and they can be very entertaining and stimulating And we I think we should know about that, but it's probably not not going to be as permanent as the other Yeah, I read a short story of yours a very long time ago and I wanted to reread it, but I can't find it It's about small children who gang up on their parents Do you remember that and it has it's about they wear sun dresses or the parents do they can't It's one of the creepiest stories I'm not sure that I wrote That I don't remember that Well, it's maybe it's a little different from what you're saying I don't even I don't it's not Making me remember anything. I have lots of weird stories I have a story called family I'm not sure if that's a certain kind of in the future And Y'all the father something bad happens to the father and something bad happens to the mother, but I don't think they're wearing sun dresses That's your particular touch In the sign of the beast In the sign of the beast, how'd you do it adolescent males so well? Do you think that's an adolescent male? That's very believable. I mean that's You may be admitting more than you would really Well, I often write about adolescent men. I mean to write about any man you're sort of writing about adolescent Sorry Sorry, it's a love it's a love story You have to love them. You have to love them because Somebody's gotta take care of them No, I feel a real identification with adolescence I think adolescence is such a An exciting time and often an adolescent like the like the teenagers from parkland high school Those those young people are not hypocrites and they haven't made the compromises with the world that adults Have to make in order to keep going. So I just sort of identify With that kind of person and I also compound that background that sort of rural kind of rough rural background So I knew these people from From my childhood Question here Where are we? Oh, okay. You're you're writing is so wonderfully visual And it seems a lot of that comes from finding just the absolute perfect detail that illustrates that And I've always wondered whether that's a a whole process that you're you know Coming up with a detail and crossing it out and coming up with another one or whether it just comes to you Well, I have a fairly strong visual sense And as I said, I have to have the setting and I like to know what people are wearing So I described the the man's shirt and it's it's a very particular sort of tattersaw shirt If you know that the kind of shirt And it is all based upon a real I'll kind of a love and fascination with the actual world It's a difference between emerson and thorough But thorough is really really involved with the with the finite world of nature Whereas emerson though he talked about nature was very abstract And it's almost when emerson talks about a flower. It's almost like he never looked at a flower They're just sort of platonic ideas of flowers and I I wouldn't find that very rewarding I really have to have a sense of the actual Reality my my friend the late what late wonderful john uptight but also had a very strong visual sense So that one of the pleasures of reading john uptight is that you get a painterly view That's sort of impressionistic painterly view of the scene I feel that john uptack settings and his descriptions of the of the world Are really poetic and then his characters come out often Often they don't seem on that plane Like the rabbit books are beautifully written But rabid angstron himself is very vulgar And crude a little more than maybe he needs to be but the writing is so beautiful that one could just sort of ignore the actual people I try to make my characters inhabit the world And to be sensitive even even the people who are not nice people may have a poetic sensibility Are there any writers here? This is a question about one of your earlier stories I believe published in 2006 landfill. Oh landfill. Yes, and I just reread it today And it's just this incredibly powerful piece of writing Which I believe you were criticized for for using too much of the realistic details in a Case that happened in new jersey in your story said in michigan Yes, yes landfill For me was very exciting as a formalist experiment because a young man Fraternity he's pledging a fraternity in a michigan At a large university He's very drunk and something gasly happens to him and he sort of winds up in a dumpster and then he winds up taken away in a Trash truck and he winds up in a landfill And it is actually based on some horrible thing that happened in new jersey But I wanted to write a story that would have the sense of Us being in the landfill So it's all one Long Paragraph it has no indentations no paragraphing. It's like the first sentence pulls is supposed to pull you into The landfill and then you're just sort of stuck in the landfill to the very end with Some movement in time, but basically there's a a little narrative and then this sort of a A subtext of a different narrative Of the parents and the and the boy And what actually happens to him And we find out what happens to him. I think in real life in new jersey. I think it was the college of new jersey I don't know that they ever really found out how he got in there But in my story you find out Well, some people thought that I shouldn't write about that because it had really happened Or something like that had happened, but it didn't seem like a very I mean, I didn't have any names and everything was It was really relocated Also, I'd like to write about events and incidents in the world. I don't necessarily write about people I wrote my my short novel My short novel based on a chapter could could an incident Which is called black water is really about the event. It's not about actual people and I don't think that I really Have that much interest in this sort of historical Gossipy nature when I wrote about Marilyn Monroe. I wanted to to think of Marilyn Monroe as an iconic person Almost like an every every woman or every man almost like Moby Dick sort of the idea That she becomes the blonde actress and she plays this role And then she's trapped in the role and she can't get out of it So that there's norma gene baker But gradually the blonde actress overtakes her. So in the beginning of the novel, there's norma norma gene Who's a girl and then as the novel moves on the blonde actress sort of takes over her. So at the end she's lost her soul So if you were have you know on a professional Trajectory like that and you are going to become extremely famous and iconic to use this cliche There's some point at which you find yourself surrounded by people who never knew you when you were Your real self So there's a certain point in the novel when she looks around she realizes Nobody here knows her as norma gene now They all think of her as Marilyn and that was kind of like the beginning of the end losing one soul You may have answered this already But i'm wondering have you identified in yourself some quality of your mind That enables you to become to be the writer that you are Other than that strong visual sense that you mentioned I don't really understand the question exactly Um, I don't really know Do you want to rephrase it? You're asking how we how we all become the people we are No, i'm asking how you became the writer you are and what special quality of your mind you may have identified That enables you to be the Prolific and excellent writer that you are you mentioned for example your strong visual sense and uptikes For example, is that a common finding in good writers? No, I don't think so. I don't I don't see much visual Dimension for instance in becca becca has a very strong Sort of musical voice But I think there are a number Mcboarder boarder gaze there tend to be very philosophical and cerebral Rather than visual James salter has a very strong visual Imagination he's he's really quite powerful And thomas hardy He's describing things some writers. I think I write dickens dickens had a very almost Synesthesia is that the word? It's like everything was everything was buoyant and energetic and dickens So that the the energy of the writers communicated to the pros But I don't know it's a good question Some of my students have natural a natural aptitude for writing somewhat intellectual and analytical Concept stories because they may be majoring in science and others are more like Poets or artists. They're not concerned with philosophy or analysis, but just with impressions So I don't know I tend to be interested in form And it excited me to write a story that was all one Paragraph because it was landfill But having done that Once I can't do it again So that's the trouble with with being a formalist because you sort of you want an exciting form I felt the form for black water was exciting But I can't do that again So I look with a kind of nostalgia on the things that I have done once that were challenging And difficult, but I did it and I can't go back and do it again I have a question over here Hi So I think someone mentioned earlier about you writing well from a young boy's perspective And I really think throughout all your work you've written, you know From a range of perspectives and you do them all so well And so I wonder, you know when you're creating You know something How you decide what perspective you're going to tell it from what character has it ever happened where you're You know writing a story or something and you decide I think maybe this is a different character's story and try it a different way Well in the beginning of any project like the beginning of a novel for instance the first six weeks are extremely Blundering and frustrating and you're stumbling and staggering and you're you really don't Know What's going to happen? So there's that time maybe Semiconsciously one is trying out different things. You're trying different voices. I do so many so many Pages over and over again at the beginning of a novel. It's just it's ludicrous I mean people would laugh and pity and terror If they saw how many times I just type something over A kind of a talismanic way of typing something But then as it goes on and I get the page, you know 100 I more or less have that rhythm So I don't have to do quite that much And that's hard. It's hard to explain Why that happens now there are people Who work on a novel for 20 years or so and they have a manuscript that they don't want to admit has gone dead So they keep working on this and that it's sort of like trying to Reanimated the corpse and frankenstein or something, you know, like well, they did they did reanimate they did Give life to frankenstein, but it was sort of a mistake But I had one novel called the accursed that I had put away for a long time I started writing it in 1984 I think and was finished a long time ago And then I took it out about 2010 or 11 and worked on it again. That's most unusual Often something is so exciting at the time But then if you don't somehow put it into form It fades away It's like meeting somebody With whom you may fall in love or have an intense relationship Or friendship at just the right time in your life But by a couple weeks or months or years Missing that's not going to happen. Who knows why this is it's sort of like magic question here Hello, my question is on creative writing programs Do you and I recognize there's there's many Ways to be a writer Do you think that creative writing programs Are more successful than simply writing and submitting your work or equally successful or less successful? Do you have an opinion about that? There are they more successful than well So once upon a time, let's say take Faulkner, for example He wrote and he submitted his books He did not go through a creative writing program. No, I got a D in English And so the well the question I have really is simply is it better to write and submit your books or submit your writing Or do the creative writing programs Give the student a competitive edge when they submit their work Yes, I think the writing programs give the students definitely a competitive edge I think now my students are very solicitous of one another and very kind and sympathetic So they sit around our 15 students And they are very tenderly concerned with one another And so they give one another advice Sometimes it turns out that a student will turn a story in and nobody even realized what happened So the student Oh, you know like you forgot to put that in we tell them And so they they learned from that whereas if this person were all alone just writing by himself He'd send that work out to an editor it would just be rejected and he would never know So the student whose work is being critiqued is supposed to sit quietly and just listen And so the pretense is that editors are working and thinking and talking about the manuscript But the writer can listen but isn't supposed to talk though. Sometimes they put their hand up and say let me explain What I was trying to do And I have to be very very Consider a nice explain it doesn't matter what you were trying to do because it only matters what we think What the text show Yes, overall the the writers I've had a number of writers who came from my writing workshops in Princeton And um a lot of them are really really successful Mohsen Hamid He wrote exit west. He's very very successful. He's Suddenly I looked around and he would graduated from Princeton a couple years later. He was like the leading Pakistani Writer, I mean, how did that happen? and jonathan saffron four F o e r. He was my student also and jonathan had success at a relatively young age so there's something to be said just for the Community experience of being in a workshop and some of the writers Remain friends with one another through their whole lifetimes and they send one another their work It's much less lonely because writing is a very lonely occupation. So you have a nice workshop Group of people who are who care about you. That's very helpful Question here. Um, I've read like many people hear your stories over the years and um I always felt if I wanted to rotate between Poe and I wanted some other take on horror or The gothic I would read you and um And so I thought you know often writers and painters come from difficult childhoods and backgrounds but I've been reading your memoirs of your childhood and It's astounding how loved you were and how much you loved your parents and Um, it does lucky. There's a disconnect. Yes between and your memoirs are so lovely and you went to school in a one-room school house and Uh, just they supported you so much. So there's just this Disconnect between wow, where did all that come from? I don't know how you can answer that but but there is the story in your memoirs of your teenage friend your girlfriend who You drifted apart when you went away to college and that reads almost like horror that final moment in the word You mentioned Drano at the end. Oh, yes. The first person I ever knew about who committed suicide. Ah, yeah Yeah Well, I think that the childhood itself The family life was really good and my parents were very loving But we were really surrounded by what's now called dysfunctional people. I mean, that's just a word That's a cliche now, but very poor people And we I was just sort of lucky and one of the things that I was writing about in my memoir And maybe some of my writing my fiction Is how strange it was that we had this island of protectiveness in And love but then like just next door the family next door Because of alcoholism and maybe just plain ignorance The father was so mean and so vicious And I always thought what if what if I were in that family? And so one of the reasons I think that I'm motivated to write Is to telling the stories of these other girls Who had these terrible families? I'm still I still hear from that girl. We send each other the girl She's not a girl any longer, but we send each other letters like once a year or Birthday cards or birthdays are around the same time in June. So she got out of that environment and she She endured, you know But I think the if you have a family Who loves and supports you and protects you then you're basically sort of insulated through much in life For I'd said if someone has a mother who loves him, what was that? He will be successful and and love and work some remark like that But I'm just so sympathetic with people like Norma Jean Baker or Marilyn Monroe who didn't have a mother who loved her and she didn't have any father at all So I felt very sorry and very sympathetic for her There's a question over here. Um, I read a story that you wrote one time Whose name I can't recall, but it was a story of a young teenage man who was murdering people And I was or Someone zombie that was it. Yes, and I was drawn into the logic of his mind so that it was almost scary I could understand why he was doing that And I wonder if from an imaginative point of view you understand these men who are killing young boys who are killing people everywhere Do you have any understanding of that? Well, I don't know. I feel I could understand virtually anything I can if I think and meditate about it Any sort of human activity has its own dark logic he's the character quintin in Zombie is what we call a sociopath or a psychopath and it was interesting to write about that person because He had no feelings for anyone Some of us are overly emotional We would be terribly upset if we saw a kitten Injured or squirrel ran over in the street, you know, we would be really upset Whereas these people would run over them in the street, you know, they would just sort of drive on and they wouldn't even Notice or care about it. So I was writing about somebody also To whom women were somewhat contemptible Of no interest, but if if any interests are contemptible because he was he was Homicidal sort of possessive Homosexual Who had no tenderness or feeling for anyone, but particularly no interest in women So it was interesting for me to write about the women in his life who imagine that they could charm him Or you know flirt with him and how funny that is when it's just not working and they don't understand And so that was an interesting exercise for me as a writer to see that that kind of disconnect So you've written so much what what do you see as the biggest risk that you can take next as a writer? Well, I'd like to write another long novel. I just need to Have a subject I do have a long novel coming out in a couple of years But my novel Blonde though it was very taxing and frustrating and I was really quite exhausting Russell Banks and I my my dear friend Russell Banks. I both speaks me at Princeton He wrote his great novel cloud splitter, which is about John Brown John Brown's son and Russell's now was about this big and my now was about this big and Russell and I both said We commiserated we would never ever write another long novel But I think Russell's gone on to write another fairly long novel and I have also And so it's like that feeling people have where They're they're enlisting again for another tour of hell Got back from hell Well after a while you get sort of restless even but well things are just so easy and pleasant I think I'll go back to hell Because when I was working on a novel I was always sort of excited and it was like my heart was going a little faster So I would like to maybe think about that. I've had projects that come in and out of my head, but I haven't You somehow you know if it's not going to have traction Well that novel was 1400 pages of manuscript You know it got cut down and then when it's printed it's less But a certain kind of madness overcomes you like a red mist when you go from Three digits nine nine nine to four digits a thousand Very few people have that that experience and no poets no poets Everything like you're at 999 and then the next page is a thousand that is so Horrific That's only happened once Maybe it would never happen again I once thought I wanted to write a novel about joe lewis And it was going to be a very very deep immersion in that world And I got very excited about it, but somehow I never Maybe the time went by and I never really quite did that But that story is so fraught with irony and poignancy I'm drawn to these tragic americans Who embody so much more than their own lives, but they it's like they're almost charismatic figures And they almost suffer for other people Joe joe lewis He came to a kind of sad end At one time he was almost like a savior figure in america Also very very good I think you gave me my cue when you said no poets Because I wanted to raise the topic of of your poetry. You're a very good poetry I think the first poem I read of yours and this is not a quiz, but uh Was called night thoughts night thoughts was published by California Quarterly out of uc davis and There's certain things I do see in your poet. There'll be moments where you Just color the reader and say Aren't you convinced that and then you'll say something sharp and smart and The question would be night thoughts also like your Uh Story today deals with the morning the last ending of it is a dark Interpretation of the morning today. We heard somebody who initially clings to her precious morning So i'm asking two questions Uh, how you how you regard your poetry and uh, why this consistent theme of the morning Well, the poet the poetry that I write tends to be a poetry of voice Someone's voice. Sometimes it's a monologue A lot of my poetry is tend to be the human voice So it could be a monologue and it's like a little story a narration I have a long poem like five or six pages long To mylon brando and hell And that goes through mylon brando's life to some extent not every part of it But hitting hitting upon the major parts of his life And it's told in a certain voice like a pleading voice A person who's actually obviously in love with marlin brando, but is very angry at what he did to himself And so it's not my voice, but it's a voice of some character Emily dickinson spoke of the the voice of the I the I Narrator in her poetry is not herself. It could be a boy It could be an older person Sometimes it seems like Emily dickinson, but basically it's a fictitious person And then a morning I have a story called morning. That's one of my favorite stories, but I don't think I'm particularly drawn to writing about morning Probably night probably night time is more evocative. So are you a poet? Thank you so much