 I just want to talk to you a little bit about this book. This book is a very strange affair because this book was my first novel. Before writing fiction, I was foolish enough to start a theater company here in the Bay Area, which was an experimental company. We did original developmental work, which means we got together at the beginning of the season. We held auditions, I selected a company, and then we began to do improvisatory exercises, and after a sort of a yeasty cooking spell that could last anywhere from ten weeks to two years, we would produce a piece for public consumption. But it was all based on this process of collective creation, where everybody owned a piece of it, everybody helped to build it. So that's where I come from, and I have to say that it was a fabulous, fabulous apprenticeship for the writing of fiction. People ask me, well, how do you become a writer? Well, the way I did it is I started a theater company, but not everybody has to do that. I think the best key is reading. That's the way you become a writer is you read. You go to school, to the master's, you, well, this is of course hierarchical talk, but you go to school to those writers that speak to you. And eventually you learn how to color words, you learn how to put a sentence together, you learn the music of language. And I will say this about music before I share some of this with you. In my company, the best performers, the most sensitive, the most creative performers, were all trained in music in one way or another. So I think that music is the key to becoming a really good listener. So I'm going to start tonight by sharing with you the opening of this novel, which is called Face. It's published by Wings Press. For those of you who have a copy and want to follow, I'm on page six of the second edition. The second edition, by the way, was published in honor of the Newstatt Prize. This novel has been selected as a representative work. In other words, it's all the work, but this is the representative one. So that's kind of why we're here tonight. So I'm going to start with the opening, and then I'm going to talk to you a tiny bit about this opening. In the sky, a cloud is forming. The head, the shoulders appear. It is made. There is a lead and gray outline lifting the white of the clouds in relief. The blue of the sky is cold, wintery. There is a greenish cast to the light. The sun is absent. A wind forms across the bay. The expanse of water marks its restlessness in the apparently static crests and troughs. From this distance, the waves appear not to move. Curls are rested on a tightly quaffed head. They do not move at all. Looking, then looking away, then rapidly looking again. One can only seem to catch a movement more imperceptible than breath itself. Or perhaps the waves are the same, one trough closer to the shore, shifting slightly as if in a viewfinder. In the sky, the cloud has changed now. The head is lowered, or perhaps it has turned around, or the shoulders have risen toward off a blow. No more. The giant is gone. Other shapes are forming. On the stair at the top is etched with a crack now. The concrete in the vein has crumbled. Little pebbles, aggregates of dust perhaps, have settled in the interstices. A child worrying the crack could dislodge them with a grubby finger. A child gazing out to sea past the hook of land, letting his vacant eyes roam the shapes of giants left by the wind, by the clouds as they move. Vacant eyes puzzling the stillness of waves that move only when the gaze is averted. The man stands there not thinking of anything, fighting the stiff wind with each intake of air. The breath fought for, briefly denied, then won each time. Even with this wind, even at this height, the waves seem to hold their very breath. Still moving, they barely move at all. This is the sky he can see every morning. This is the bay which on calm days seems barely to breathe from this height. The man stands to the left, a little behind the child, watching him idly. The child squats on the landing, worrying the crack. Perhaps some small dirt clawed is wedged between his nail and finger cap. He studies it for a moment. The moment stretches, then snaps, as once again he bends to his examination. An insect, perhaps an ant, traces its path in the vein, now emerging from the crack, now disappearing. The man stands, watching. A handkerchief covers his face. It is white cotton, not linen. The corner which hangs below his chin flutters in the wind. The man stands there as if his hands are in his pockets. He does not move. This is the only pavement. This and the steps which stretch down the cliff face, reaching back below, disappearing from sight long before reaching the water. That is the opening. Just a word about opening. It is like a symphony. This is the overture. In my own process, every writer is somewhat different, but in my own process, the overture is very, very important because that is the thing more than any other that I know I have got something, I have got a tiger by the tail. That is what it is about. I know that there is enough energy there to carry me through. This was a four-year project. There has to be a kind of sustainability. We talk about sustainability of the planet. This is the sustainability of the work that I do. This story is the story of a man who has a catastrophic facial accident. In fact, those stairs are where he falls. His face is completely destroyed. As a result, he becomes a pariah, an outcast. He is essentially disowned by his friends, his lover, his boss. He is unable to make a living. In other words, his whole social context disappears. It is lost. The story itself on which this book is somewhat based has a very interesting conclusion because this man was denied any kind of help, any kind of surgical reconstruction. He made a decision at a certain point in his life that he would rebuild his own face. He performed 17 procedures in a Brazilian favela and a slum in the most primitive circumstances without a single instance of infection. That is the story that I read in 1977 in the San Francisco Chronicle. It was a different paper in those days. A little more substantive. But it was on the back page. It was filled. This is not news. This is filled. They needed to make space. I thought that is an extraordinary story that is completely memorable. Some great writer will find this story and make a fantastic novel. But I never lost track of where the clipping was in all of my disorder. My filing is a catastrophe, but I always knew where that clip was. I used my bulletin board and I fastened it there. I pin it on so it can't migrate. That was the first year. In the second year, I waited for the great novelist to write this novel. Of course, the great novelist did not appear. In the third year, I waited and the great novelist hadn't appeared. I said, oh, shit. So I began to write. The story I have just told you is the pretext. Because this novel addresses all kinds of different issues. It is what we call very layered. It has all kinds of meanings. What I really like about these readings that I do is that whenever I share my work, people have the most wonderful reactions because they comment about what this novel means to them. It is all very different. Everybody sees something very unique that belongs to them. It surprises me all the time. These are issues that I don't even think about. I didn't know were there. I like that very much. As a writer, my philosophy is that everybody shares in the writing process the reader as much as the writer. What if you gave a book and no readers came? The reader possesses this book too because when you read this, you bring the wisdom of your own life experience, not my life, but your life. You come to it with everything that you know, all of your cognitions, all of your experiences, all your loves, all your hates, and it belongs to you. So when I'm finished writing, this is yours now. And that's how I feel. I don't feel attached anymore to their eggs that I hatch. So I'm going to read to you now from the middle section. The door is closed now. On it the relics long dry of the undertaker's wreath. He stands poised on the raised threshold. He tries the doorknob. The door is fast. Someone has come up beside him, the neighbor woman. She stands by the door a little to the side of him. She called you. When you didn't come, she shrugs. By way of apology, he takes off his hat. Something clums in and he realizes too late the handkerchief falls away. He sees her hands fly to her mouth. She extends her hand without looking at him. He does not remember seeing the key ever before. The door now padlocked has always been open while she lived. She has not left very much behind to signal her passing. The iron cot is narrow. The husks burst through the mattress ticking. At its foot, a wooden packing crate on which the words now faded, Carvalho SA, can be faintly seen, contains some bedclothes, a set of threadbare blankets. There is a wire back hairpin chair whose provenance dates from a time before he can remember. On the warm-eaten floorboards is a faded rug of her making. The peripheral bands must have been added more recently. Their colors have not yet begun to fade. The dresser, however, is the PC best remembers. It is nearly neck high. Of pale oak, its relief ornaments applied with cabinet makers glue. Its condition, in comparison with the other furnishing, is fairly new. There is a series of six drawers which take up most of the height. Surmounting these are two narrow compartments placed horizontally, one next to the other, in all forming seven layers. On the surface, under the hurricane lamp, half filled with greenish oil is a wash basin of white enamel rimmed in dark blue and a still white hand towel with one narrow and one wide band of red scattered here and there. Traces of her sick room are still to be found. An old-fashioned hypodermic, the sternal burner and the ring, the dented pot, and on the dresser beside the clutter of stale and dusty medicine bottles a corroded spoon. In the end, someone had nursed her given her needles to still the pain, the neighbor woman perhaps. Perhaps it was she who watched to ensure her poor things were left undisturbed by thieves and strangers more poor than she to be carried out into the night. The room seemed larger then perhaps because he saw it from the blanket she used to spread for him in the corner on the ground. He sits there now, his back propped against the wall testing the truth of this. In the lazy afternoon he watches as the dust particles catch the light until the room is alive with them, hundreds of them, the silence pulses, the stillness swells with her presence until the room itself breathes as though the motes of dust floating might still be settling in the pregnant air, the momentum of her last breath even now propelling them. Thank you for your attention. So I thought what I would do is talk to you very briefly about the history of this novel because curiously it's won all these prizes. I wrote this novel completely in a vacuum. I had no friends who were writers. I had no idea that this would become a novel. In fact, I was just writing something. And I went up to Squall Valley to attend the community of writers one summer and they had workshops and I was encouraged by a woman who was conducting workshops there and I met with her towards the end of the season and I said to her, look, I have no guarantees that what I'm doing is going to see the light of day at all but if it should happen that it becomes some kind of a something would you possibly give me letters of introduction to editors and agents? So indeed, when the time was ripe she did so and I went to New York with my heart in my mouth and the manuscript, four copies which I Xeroxed where I delivered them in plain brown envelopes to two editors and two agents and within a week Viking this is improbable within a week Viking decided to buy this novel this is unheard of and I said, oh no, no, no, you can't have it it's not finished, not finished well, how much time do you need? I'll bring it back on December 31st and so I added material now that I know something about writing we would call this resolution where's the denouement? how do you resolve this novel? but I didn't know those words so I call it ending material so it's ending material and my agent said to me this book is going to win many prizes and I just couldn't imagine such a thing my editor said to me well, where did you come from? she saw that I was a person of a certain age where did you come from? so I said well, not the woodwork I had a life in a theater I had a theater company for 12 years oh, she said well, who's going to blurb this? where are your friends? I said well, I really don't have any friends I don't know other writers but I knew that J. M. Cotcia who's a Nobel Prize winner now I knew that he was a Viking writer and I adored his work particularly the early work I'm not so fond of the later work but to me, Waiting for the Barbarians is the novel of the 20th century and it's short I like short I write short and I like people that can say it short so I said well we could send it to J. M. Cotcia so she did but Cotcia was a very important very busy man already he was teaching linguistics in Cape Town in South Africa and he had a whole pile of packages from the post office that he had no and so faces went on so anyway it didn't get blurred by Cotcia the first edition has a blurb that says speaks of interesting things in interesting ways no one you just rush right out and buy a book that said that anyway so that's the story of the blurb and my editor was very pleased that she had bought this book and that they had gotten it so cheap and so she took me to a watering place for lunch to celebrate the publication and this is what she said to me she said you know I think it's just wonderful but writers are beginning to write about what they don't know so this know has had a very interesting history because by the time I wrote my third novel my agent was going to put that up for auction but nobody was interested except Little Brown so Little Brown got it but Little Brown got it because they were paying three times more than what Viking was lowballing for so Viking immediately took full of my Viking books out of print the I didn't know that would happen a good agent would have told me that so this book and all those prizes right this book has been out of print for approximately six or seven years during which time it has been on so many college reading lists all over the country and it was uneventful so I went to Kinko's and I gave them the master and every time somebody was interested in assigning this novel I would go to Kinko's and I'd have X number of copies printed and then I would take the cartons to the post office and I would mail them and I did that for six or seven years so I thought what I'd love to do tonight is just share briefly something to you about the American publishing industry it's corporate just like everything else it's not about the writer the writer is now a content provider and lowman on the totem and there are no royalties to speak of I was never told what my statements were like nor was I ever told how many books were published so I'm going to share with you some wonderful stuff here this is the July-August issue and I'm just going to share an article just a couple of selections from this wonderful article which is called 35 Theses on Advertising now Advertising because it's part of the book Biz okay it's part of popular culture and this is by Paul Barron and Paul Sweezy there are 35 Theses but I'm only going to read two of them this is number 27 I think you'll like this it is sometimes argued that advertising really does little harm because no one believes in it anymore anyway we consider this view to be erroneous the greatest damage done by advertising is precisely that it incessantly demonstrates the prostitution of men and women who lend their intellects their voices, their artistic skills to purposes in which they themselves do not believe which is the essential meaninglessness of all creations of the mind words, images and ideas the real danger from advertising and publishing is that it helps to shatter and ultimately destroy our most precious non-material possessions the confidence in the existence of meaningful purposes of human activity and the respect for the integrity of man now ain't that a mouthful yes let's all clap it's pretty beautiful yeah I think I'm just going to leave it at that because the other thesis is less stunning than the one I've just read so well I thought we should do now because we have a little time left I think do we yes we do we have plenty of time left so I would love to engage you and ask you if you would just make any comments or share questions and we'll have a really nice discussion so move on up for those of you who are back there so you can be part of this and anybody who wants to ask a question or throw a brick back please yes Kurt yes yes I apologize for this it was called theater of man I started in 1959 because I honestly believe we all belong to the same tribe but I have perhaps changed my ideas a little bit since then but that's what it was called and for those of you who are interested by the way my website is the seal penata.com and you can read all about my shepherd past can read about the theater there's some pictures there of the work we did I have to say that you know I had wonderful writers this was not a one-woman show no no no I worked with anywhere from 15 to 19 actors okay and I tried to keep all of them happy it's very hard to do with a lot of actors you're very sensitive people very touching other questions yes I do May 1977 I can't tell you the exact date May 1977 and it was section one the last page is section one of course I don't remember the number but 1977 yeah so you've written non-fiction and fiction do you find it very different as one of the most enjoyable videos you know well it depends on the times I feel that a writer needs to reflect the times and to answer your question in 25 words the fiction writer must be a very imaginative liar because ultimately you're going for the deep truth but you're not necessarily respecting the facts so for example the capital is Rio de Janeiro we know it's Brasilia and somebody somebody at my last reading said oh well he gets off the bus he's walking with the sun behind him so he's walking west right now he turns right so what direction is he going huh and you got it wrong right well what he didn't know is that in my imagination it was a very long walk and he went around the Socoló and then he made the right turn so he's going south but that's alright because this man was very literate so that's the short answer but a non-fiction writer and the two books now The Devil's Tango and by the way there are a couple of copies there for sale as well I brought Devil's Tango in for those of you who might like a copy a journalist needs to be absolutely truthful and as you know this has become a very rare commodity now in journalism so it's completely different the challenge is completely different now personally because our times are what they are I felt that writing fiction has become for me a self-indulgence I have no fiction bones left in my body I don't and so I've turned to non-fiction to address what I consider to be the greatest challenges of our time and the greatest one in my view is nuclear energy and nuclear weapons because that is where Armageddon is writ large in the history of human kind alright other question say again yes I have I've traveled quite a lot in the third world yes I have and I have stayed in what I suppose in this country people would call a flop house so I know what that's like and North Africa India, Thailand and Indonesia those countries yeah say again oh well I was born in Harlem yeah I have to tell you you know you're born in a place and your mother wheels you around in a baby carriage you never forget it ever because that color is in your eyes it's very deep well