 Good evening. I'm Elizabeth Christian and I'm president of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation. It's really my honor to welcome you here tonight for another stellar installment in the Harry Middleton Lectureship series. Lady Bird Johnson established the Harry Middleton Lectureship in 1994 to honor a man who's sitting right down here, who meant the world to President Johnson and to her both professionally and personally. Mrs. Johnson's goal was to make the lectureship a center of learning for the University of Texas students and the Austin community. Speakers have included Mikhail Gorbachev, presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, and numerous other luminaries. The series is co-sponsored by the LBJ Presidential Library and the LBJ Foundation. We're in for a treat tonight. Author Elizabeth Crook, who is going to come up right after me and then have a full discussion with Mark Updegrove in a little bit, is going to talk to you about her new book. Her book is going to be available tonight in the library's bookstore. I want to tell you just a little bit about Harry Middleton. You know, I think I'm safe in saying that President and Mrs. Johnson loved him like a son, but just because they loved Harry doesn't mean that they ever, ever gave him a free pass. Harry, who was the president's speechwriter starting in 1967, one time was asked, for instance, by LBJ to craft remarks for a talk in Detroit at the convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. The talk was to center primarily on Vietnam. President Johnson instructed Harry to include a line about draft dodgers. But Harry refused to put it in. Johnson read the speeches written, but the omission of his specific request did not go unnoticed. On Air Force One on the return flight to Washington, Harry sat near the president and General Westmoreland. LBJ asked Westmoreland very pointedly and loudly to ensure that Harry heard it. What the general would do to someone who disobeyed an order. Apparently Westmoreland gracefully said it would depend on the circumstances. I am giving you the G rated version and President Johnson let the issue go. I can imagine Harry breathing a big sigh of relief. Let's end by reflecting on some of Harry's most stirring words. These were written to celebrate the signing of the 1968 Civil Rights Act. The time is here. Action must be now. So I would appeal to my fellow Americans by saying the only real road to progress for free people is through the process of law. And that is the road that America will travel. Thank you, Harry, as always for helping President Lyndon Johnson put the feelings in his heart into words. It's now my pleasure to introduce Elizabeth Crook, an acclaimed author of a new book called Monday, Monday. No stranger to the LBJ Library and the LBJ family. She's going to speak to us for a few minutes about her book and her experience and then have a conversation with Library Director Mark Updegrove. Thank you for being here. Thank you, Elizabeth. And it is really wonderful to be here. I'm honored not only because I love this library and have spent so many truly memorable evenings in the audience, but also because I know and love Harry Middleton. And I have such great respect for him as a friend and as a writer. I didn't realize until recently that among all the other things Harry has written through the years he once co-wrote a novel back in 1958. And it was published by Random House entitled Pax, a novel of the drug industry. And if you look online at rare book sites, you can still get hold of a copy. As for what I'm here to talk about today, my book Monday, Monday. I was first inspired to write it in 2006 when a Texas Monthly magazine with a dark cover image of the UT Tower and the title UT's Darkest Day, Charles Whitman, 40 years later, arrived in my mailbox. The story was by Pamela Coloff and was called 96 Minutes. It described what happened at UT on August 1st of 1966 when Charles Whitman lugged a footlocker of guns up to the deck of the tower and started shooting down at people on the ground. What moved me about her story was that it stitched together a number of firsthand accounts from people who were there that day or who were otherwise deeply affected by the event. It wasn't about Charles Whitman, it was about the people on the ground and reading it made me wonder what it's like to plan your life and think you know when you're headed when you start across a campus in the middle of a sunny day and then to find yourself hauled off in a different direction, wounded and changed with a different life in front of you. How do you live that different life for the next 30, 40, 50 years? Is forgiveness really even the issue? So I started writing this book in 2006 before Virginia Tech and Sandy Hook and the other recent incidents of mass murder in schools and public places. At the time I felt I was dealing with an isolated historical incident but then gradually as these horrific events began to happen more frequently it became clear to me that I was dealing with what was becoming a trend in our country. I should explain that my book is not specifically about Charles Whitman or that day in 1966. It's about what happened and how it affected the people in the story over the course of their lives. Today we hear from the people who are involved in scenes of mass killings. We see them on the news and hear them tell their stories. They tell us what they witnessed and what they felt about it. But what they can't tell us that the people who were here on campus on August 1st 1966 can tell us is what effect this will have on them in several decades. How the memories will play out over time. The tower shooting is the event that gives us that kind of long distance perspective. In talking with people who were there that day I started to realize how much the story is still with us in Austin. I was surprised to realize how many people I knew who were somehow connected to the event. There are a number of people here tonight who were there that day including I think Neil Spells who covered the story live on KTBC television and radio as it was happening. At the start of Monday Monday my character Shelly Maddox is walking across the sunny campus of the University of Texas on that hot August day when Charles Whitman places her in his crosshairs. As the author of her story I'm not terribly interested in Charles Whitman who is basically an unhinged young man who has lost control. But I can't take my eyes off Shelly. Because Shelly doesn't see what's coming and because I could be in her place any day on any campus any of us could. Her actions or reactions are what I'm waiting to see. I'm not writing a violent scene to try to make sense of the bloodshed or put it to rest in my mind because that's out of the question. I'm writing to see how Shelly will respond to what happens and to figure out how I would. What sort of person in her place I would be. To fill you in on the background I'm going to tell you what Charles Whitman did in the immediate hours before going up into the tower on that tragic Monday. On Sunday afternoon he had lunch with his wife Kathy and his mother at Wyatt's cafeteria where his mother worked in Hancock Center. That evening while Kathy was at Southwestern Bell working, Whitman at home typed out a note that began, I don't quite understand what it is that compels me to type this letter. And went on to say that he did not understand himself that he was supposed to be an average reasonable and intelligent young man but that lately he had been having unusual and irrational thoughts. He requested that after his death an autopsy be performed to see if there was any visible physical disorder. He wrote that he had decided to kill his wife that he loved her and would do so as painlessly as possible. He also wrote of his intentions to kill his mother whom he also loved. He was interrupted from writing by friends arriving at the door. He let them in and had a normal visit with them. After his friends left he picked up Kathy at work, took her home and went to his mother's apartment and killed her. He left a note with her body saying, I have just taken my mother's life. I am very upset over having done it. The note then went on to express how much he hated his father for having abused his mother. He then went back to his home and killed his wife Kathy who was asleep when he stabbed her. Then he continued with the letter he had started earlier. His closing remarks stated that if his life insurance policy was valid he would like for the worthless checks he had written that weekend to be paid off. Donate the rest anonymously to a mental health foundation, he wrote. Maybe the research can prevent further tragedies of this type. He then wrote letters to both of his brothers and one to his father which has never been made public. After this for the next few hours he loaded provisions and arms into a large marine footlocker. These included a number of guns, weapons of various kinds, ammunition, a transistor radio, water jugs, cans of sigo diet drink, toilet paper, sweet rolls, an alarm clock, a flashlight and many other things. Early in the morning he drove downtown and rented a dolly and checked some cash and checks. He went to a hardware store and bought more guns and ammunition to add to the collection he already had. He went to a gun shop and joked around with the clerk and bought more ammunition. He went to a sporting goods department of Sears at Hancock Center and bought a shotgun which he took home and customized in his garage by sawing off the barrel. The postal carrier stopped to visit and reminded Whitman that it was illegal to saw off the barrel, but Whitman said it was his gun and he would do what he wanted with it. After he finished the preparations he dressed himself as a janitor wearing coveralls, drove to the campus and gained access through the guard station on 21st Street by presenting a carrier identification card. The card had been issued to him previously when he was a lab assistant and it allowed him to transport heavy equipment onto campus. After some discussion the guard gave him a loading zone permit. Whitman then entered the campus and parked in a lot on the north side of the tower that was reserved for administration. He unloaded the rented dolly and his footlocker of guns and supplies and entered the building. When he entered the elevator he pressed the button for the 27th floor, but the elevator didn't move so he asked the receptionist at the desk for help. Your elevator is turned off, she told him and switched it on. Thank you ma'am, you don't know how happy that makes me, he told her. He ascended to the 27th floor, dragged the dolly and footlocker up three half lights of stairs and entered the reception area where he attacked the receptionist and a townslee with a blow to her head and dragged her nearly dead stashing her behind a couch. A young couple that had been out on the deck admiring the views stepped inside and encountered Whitman wearing his janitor coveralls and holding two rifles and they assumed he was there to shoot pigeons. They assumed the receptionist's blood on the floor was varnished he had smeared with a mop. They said hello to him and then proceeded down the stairs. Moments later a family of tourists tried to enter the reception area and Whitman opened fire with his sawed off shotgun continuing to fire killing two and gravely wounding two more as they tumbled backwards down the stairs. He then shot the wounded receptionist in the head still not quite killing her dragged his footlocker outside into the August heat jammed the door shut behind him with the dolly and took aim on pedestrians below through the scope of his six millimeter rimmington. And this is when my character Shelly Maddox completely a fictional character steps into the crosshairs. She's coming out of a summer math class in Benedict Hall during which she's been trying to understand the concept of imaginary numbers while thinking about the last time she was home in Lockhart and daydreaming about joining the Peace Corps. She's intending to walk up the tree lined walkway of the South Mall cross the plaza and head over to the drag where she's going to have a coke and a sandwich at the Rexall. So I'm starting here on page five and I'm going to skip around a little throughout the chapter in order not to read more than about 10 minutes so that I'll have time to visit with Mark and take questions if anybody has any. Outside belligerent grackles greeted her with loud squawking. The August heat was thick. She started along the shaded path toward the main building and the tower squinting even before she left the shade of the trees. Crossing a narrow street she walked under the statue of Woodrow Wilson mounted the steps to the upper part of the plaza as a boy carrying a transistor radio blaring Monday Monday passed her on his way down. Monday Monday Shelly hummed along with the mamas and the papas as she climbed the steps can't trust that day. Monday Monday sometimes it just turns out that way. On the plaza the sunlight was unnerving. It whitewashed the massive stone arches and the carved pillars of the main building before her making the tower look as flat against the skies if it had been pasted on blue poster board. The song sounded tinny now reduced to a mere ditty behind her every other day every other day every other day the week is fine yeah but whenever Monday comes but whenever Monday comes you can find me crying all of the time. Perhaps she should have a seago diet drink at the Rexall and skip the coke and sandwich she thought starting across the plaza. She had put on five unwanted pounds during her freshman year and the pencil skirt she wore felt tight around her waist. She was heading toward a grassy square around a flagpole intending to cut across when she noticed a boy from her biology class coming down the steps of the main building. He fumbled through the pages of a book as he walked and she tried to remember his name in case he noticed her. Chad she thought it was or Chet. When he started across the plaza he lifted his eyes and saw her. He closed the book tucked it under his arm and raised his hand to wave but something puzzled her instead of a smile a sudden grimace. The raised hand flung itself back at the wrist and one leg cocked forward. It was a clownish gesture and she wondered how to respond to it. In the same second she heard a sharp noise like a car backfiring or maybe it was the jostling of construction equipment on the drag where the theater was being renovated. He fell face down the book tumbling open beside him and a splotch of red spreading on the back of his plaid shirt. An ungainly lurching movement seized his legs and then stopped. She stood looking at him trying to understand and was taking a step toward him when something struck her slinging one of her arms outward and spinning her toward the small hedge that boarded the grassy square. She tried to break the fall but the side of her head struck the ground and she lay for a second stunned and embarrassed to have fallen in public. She tried to get to her knees and get her balance so she wouldn't topple over but her arm was coming apart. It seemed almost detached. The bone above the elbow jetted jaggedly out of the flesh and the lower part was weirdly twisted. Blood poured from her breast. She tried lifting her hands to stop the blood but her arm wouldn't comply. It hung at her side. The pain was electric. She pressed the other hand against her breast but the blood ran between her fingers and spurred it down her side soaking the tattered bits of her bra and the pattern of yellow flowers on her blouse. She reached to get her book bag and gather what was scattered. Her books, her math notes, but her arm hung like a puppet. Clarity took hold. The boy lay dead before her. She heard the sound again ring down from the sky plunking itself into the clear heat of the day. Someone began horribly to scream and a man yelled something about the tower. A woman fell to the ground not far from Shelly. Birds flew from the trees and cement exploded upward. Shelly tried to stand again but her legs wouldn't support her and she sat back on her knees. She had suffered dreams like this. Her limbs refusing to move. The atmosphere is thick as water and waiting her down. Crawl she told herself to the hedge. She tried to look at the tower but the sun was too intense. She pawed at the ground breathing hard and coughing with nausea but her wounded arm just hung there. She heard herself wail. The hedge was only knee high and wouldn't protect her even if she could reach it. Yet it was the only vertical shape the world offered. Everything else was flat ground. Things flew about her. There was the thud of impact on flesh and bone. Not her she thought, not me this time. A whimper and cry. The hot concrete seared her palm when she tried to pull herself forward dragging her mangled arm. Blood seeped into the porous stone beneath her. The frayed bra held her breast to her body and kept the lump of flesh from dropping like jello. She whispered for someone to help her and methodically lifted her palm then methodically set it down pulling her knees forward watching her blood bubble into the ground. The sound instantly struck white. Calvert is out of place blasting over the stentorian voice of his professor and bouncing through the plaza outside. Destruction of Kiev he was writing in his notebook. Mongols 1240. He looked up as the sound repeated. It reminded him of deer hunting and the concussion of rifle shots in a canyon. A student with a crew cut who was near the window stood up and looked out over the crown of an oak tree and the professor paused from his lecture. There's something happening on the mall, sir. The student said. A girl got up and looked out. I think it's something to do with the drama department. Wyatt made his way through the rows of desks to the windows. The panes were dirty, the view partly cluttered by a tangle of branches. Fumbling with a lock, he shoved a window open and pulled hard at the frame until it jerked upward. Creating an open rectangle of raw heat and emitting the buzz of insects and the sudden flutter of wings and then the blast again, louder now and its echo. The wide overhang a few feet above blocked the noon sun. Below a dozen people in the bright square of the plaza had an odd disruption in their movements, a hesitation. Some had come to a standstill and were looking around. A boy with a laundry bag ran diagonally across, shouting over his shoulder. At the steps to the lower part of the mall, a plump girl and red pedal pushers lay on her back. Her hands clutching her stomach, her legs lifting and sinking at the knees in a languid gesture as if to escape the scalding concrete. In the center of the plaza, a guy in a plaid shirt and black trousers lay motionless, half on his side, his arm thrown out and a book on the ground beside him. Close to him, a girl in a skirt dragged herself laboriously toward the hedge row with the use of one arm, leaving a trail of gore and moving like a wounded beetle. Christ Wyatt said, somebody's shooting people. He didn't move for a second or two. His eyes fixed on the spectacle. A man climbing the steps from the lower part of the plaza toppled backward, followed by the blast of sound again. Thick in the shoulders and heavy, he lay face up on the steps, as if tobogganing on his back, head first down, the soles of his shoes pointing upward near the girl and the pedal pushers. Wyatt swung his gaze to the tower and searched the rows of windows up to the top. The gold hands of the tower clock marked the time at 1151. On the high wall deck below it, a figure appeared and then eerily vanished. A second later, it popped into view again, aiming a glinting rifle down at the east mall. Smoke puffed from the barrel as the sound blasted. From below came a muted noise and a muffled lingering shout. The figure on the deck disappeared again and then reappeared a second later. Wyatt saw the white bloom, but didn't hear the blast this time. The window beside him exploded. Get down, the professor yelled, open the windows down. The important thing to realize at this point is that people were very slow to understand what was happening because nothing like this had ever happened before. And they made all kinds of, they came up with all kinds of reasons what they thought was going on. So at this point, Wyatt goes in search of his cousin, Jack, who is back from an early term in Vietnam, and they decide to go out onto the plaza and try to help some people who are there and wounded. So they leave the building and walk outside. Looking at the plaza, Wyatt saw the blonde girl who'd been calling for help was gone. The girl and the pedal pusher still lay at the top of the steps near the dead man tobogganing backward. A tall man wearing a coat and tie strolled into the open from the far side of the plaza and Wyatt waved his arms at him and shouted, pointing toward the tower. But the bells drowned out his voice. The man's face splintered. Part of it flew away. His arms rose in the air. Shelly heard the gunshot whistling through the melodic notes followed instantly by a boom as loud as a cannon. The man in the black suit entered the edge of her vision and she saw his face explode. Empty sky hung where his jaw had been. He stayed upright and teetered there. A guy climbed over the wall and pulled him to safety, shoving him over the balusters into someone's reaching hands. She lay still breathing shallow wisps of air. The spectacle of her arm grilling on the hot cement was grotesque so she tried to keep her eyes closed. Occasionally she opened them to a slit admitting a view of a thin, bright, topsy-turvy rectangular world partly obscured by her shattered arm. She was lying in a puddle of blood. With the hand that was operable she tried to hold her breast in place while still appearing lifeless. She was barely shy of the hedge and could force herself to crawl the last few feet but the shooter in the tower might be looking at her through his scope searching for movement or breath for the blink of an eye even. She had forgotten what it was like to lie so still but a fragment of a childhood memory came flapping haphazardly into the horror of the present. She had played dead with a neighbor boy in a field in back of his home a trick to attract the buzzard so that the boy lying flat on his back beside her with his BB gun pointed into the air could shoot at them when they circled. Don't move, he had told her. They have good eyesight. Don't blink. Close your eyes. The shots were coming now from a different side of the tower and sounded slight and harmless. Shelly's jaw was beginning to pump rattling her teeth together. She remembered one of her high school teachers talking about the symptoms of a shock but couldn't remember what they were. Rapid breathing or slowed breathing she had forgotten which. Rapid pulse or slow. The only obvious thing about her pulse was that it was pumping the blood out of her arm. She had stopped her frenzied panting. Afraid of passing out and bleeding to death without knowing, she thought she would stop playing dead if she felt any sense of darkness and would try once more to drag herself toward the hedge. She wouldn't be able to wedge herself beneath it. She would need to get through the opening and crawl across the grassy square to the stone base of the flagpole to find protection. If she had to, she would stand up and run. The concrete baked her side in her ruined arm and she wanted to cradle her face and protect her cheek from the heat but she had locked her hand around her breast to stop the bleeding. From her awkward vantage, she saw two men run toward the girl at the top of the steps. They leaned and scooped her up and carried her down out of sight. Her legs and bright red pedal pushers dangling over their arms. They left behind her textbooks and her sandal. On the steps, the soles of a man's shoes pointed up like the ears of a curious rabbit. Shelly summoned the voice of her childhood neighbor demanding that she close her eyes. She imagined the piercing weightless gaze of buzzards circling and heard the popping of guns and realized some of the firing was coming now from ground level. Moving her head just slightly impuring her closed eyes, she saw someone shove a barrel out of a window of the history building and fire up at the tower. The smell of blood baking into the ground sickened her. She was aware of the dead boy lying behind her and heard moaning and cries. The tower clock struck 15 minutes after the hour. She wondered if she would live to the half hour. When the gunfire blasted down again she felt it through the ground. Fragments flew over the wall. Thoughts arose in pieces. Her mother spreading jelly over a slice of buttered toast. A dog in the distance barking. Her father changing a flat tire. His shoulders moving as he pumped the jack. Count the seconds she thought. Count the seconds that I can stand this. She was waiting for the bells. And then we go on. So that's how the story begins. Elizabeth, thank you. I read that part of the book. I must say I couldn't put it down. I wonder, for those of you in the audience, who was here on campus that day? It just gets a show of hands. Who remembers the event vividly playing out at the time? So this is clearly a part of the consciousness of so many, not only Texans but Americans, when this horrific scene played out. Where were you when this happened? We were aware of what happened? I was not, and I wondered why I was not when I started doing the research. And so I went to my mother's diaries, her journals, to find out where we were. And it was the day we buried my grandfather, my dad's, I mean my grandmother, my dad's mother in Ingleside, Texas. We're not near televisions or radios that day. And I wasn't aware of what was happening. As you grew up, were you aware of the tragedy? No. I now live within just very close to the university. And I can hear the bells at night. And so I think it was really more after I moved here that I sort of became a little more curious about the event. It was really Pam Coloff's story, because the way that she told it was very powerful by dealing with the people who had been affected rather than dealing with him. And so that was really what got me interested in writing the book. As Anderson, you had developed the characters, Shelley, Wyatt and Jack, prior to reading Pam's story. Right. I was intending to write a sort of a light, contemporary story about a mother and her two daughters. And so I had that part of the story. But I just was not emotionally invested in it. There was nothing really at risk for the characters. There was nothing to worry about on their behalf. And so I didn't find myself loving the book. And so when I read Pamela's article, it was just one of those moments that writers are always looking for. This is a place I could live for a while. You know, this is something that is, it felt more important and more urgent to me. And so my entire story shifted backwards by 40 years at that point. And Shelley was no longer a mother with two daughters. She was at that point a co-ed, you know, starting across the mall. Right. You capture that scene so vividly, that horrific scene on campus. How do you do that? How do you research something and capture it with such great and really gory but compelling detail? The research is one thing. I really had to, you know, I had to speak with a lot of people. And, you know, I was so aware from the very beginning that this was not a tragedy that belonged to me. This, you know, belonged to other people. I wanted to get it right for that reason. And so I tried to speak with as many people as I could. I only spoke with one person who had been shot because it just seemed, I don't know, presumptuous of me writing a novel to be calling somebody up who had really been deeply affected and changed by this event and asking them to tell their story once again. And those accounts had all been, they had all been recorded, you know, in various places. And so I was able to piece that together simply through research. But then when it comes to, you know, sort of injecting your character into that, the scene that you then, you know, understand because of the research, it really is just, for me, it's a very intimate thing. You put yourself, you know, inside Shelley, you see everything exactly through her point of view. You don't see anything else. You know, there's something in writing called the point of view, obviously, with the characters. And so anything that's happening that she doesn't see or hear or understand, it's not in the scope of that telling. You're just very close to her point of view. And then when Jack and Wyatt enter the scene, it's Wyatt's point of view we're dealing with, and I stay very close to his point of view. So that's, I think, you know, how you can inject some reality into a fictional scene is just strictly by limiting what you're trying to tell. This is the first chapter. These three characters are going about their lives, and they don't realize that fate is going to intervene until those shots come from the tower. Talk about the rest, the balance of the book. It gives a sense of where these characters go in the subsequent pages. Right. I was interested in sort of that 40-year span, because we do hear from people who have witnessed these kinds of events immediately after they have, but we don't really have the big picture of then what do they do with that for the next 40 years? How do they live with that? And that was a really interesting question to me. How do you not make peace with it, but come to terms with it, you know, in some way, which you have to if you're going to go on. And so I wanted to have the span of their lives. I wanted this event to change them, to bring them together, and to make the story be their story, you know, together. But then they also go on and have many other things in their lives happen to them. It all comes back to the tower, and the tower sort of looms over the entire novel, but it's not all about the tower, because when something like this happens to somebody, the rest of their life isn't all about that event, you know? And so I really wanted that lifespan for both of them. Well, all three of them. So as you're writing this, other tragedies are playing out contemporaneously. Fort Hood, Virginia Tech, Newtown. Did that inform the way you wrote this book? Did that change things for you? I don't think it changed the way I felt about it. I don't think it changed the outcome of the story. You know, because in the beginning, I really felt I was writing about this isolated historical incident. And I had written about historical incidents before, and the two books that preceded this one were both dealt with massacres. There was the Goliad Massacre in 1836, then 1857, the Mount Meadows Massacre. And so, you know, but none of those had people who were still living. And so, you know, when I started writing this, I felt, you know, I still felt it was history. It was an isolated event. And when these other events began to happen, I suddenly felt we were dealing with more of a situation, a social situation in our country, because the escalation of these was so rapid. I mean, there had been, when I started writing, there had been this event and there had been a Columbine, which was in 1999. And then after that, there were so many, you know. What draws you to historical fiction? You know, there's a framework, there's the history. And I mean, if you're just writing contemporary fiction, you have to make everything up. And so, I think that would be harder, because there's sort of, you don't have those moments that you're pinning the story to. And with historical fiction, it's a matter, you do the research and you find the dramatic moments, you know, in the research. You realize that could be a scene. That's an important thing. And so it really is, I mean, also it's an act of discovery. I mean, when you're doing the research, you learn so many things you didn't expect to learn. And so I really kind of love that part of it. So it gives you, the history gives you a framework, essentially, in which to put, it provides a vehicle for your characters. That's right, exactly. You figure out, you know, what's the story of the revolution, where are the moments, you know, that I think are dramatic, that I want to be part of the story, and then you fit your characters into those moments. So you do a book about every eight years, is that right? Every seven or eight years. Yeah, I'm not very prolific or organized. I don't, you know, I think I'm just slow. I think, you know, I'm sort of a slow thinker and a slow writer. I'm not suggesting you're going too slowly. No, no, yeah, I just, I do a lot of rewriting, a lot of revising. I do a lot of starting over. I cut out characters. I change the plot. I go down all these wrong roads. You know, there's just, I mean, there's just a lot more in the process than I think is in the process for a more efficient writer. What does the genesis of a project look like for you? What does the starting point look like? Right. The starting point looks like a lot of research. It's just a lot of books, a lot of note cards, a lot of them just, you know, trying to get ideas. And usually what I end up with, the book that is finished, is nothing like what I envisioned in the beginning, because there's so many transformations along the way. And it's sort of along the way that I figure out what the book is really about. So I sort of like that way of doing it simply because, you know, you couldn't do that if you were really trying to write a book, you know, and build a career in the sense of having a book out every couple of years. But it allows you to, you know, I sort of see it, you know, I don't have a lot of vision as a writer. I don't know what's going to happen in the next chapter or sometimes on the next page. It's more of kind of putting yourself in the life of that character and seeing what happens. And I sort of think of it like living your own life. You know, you don't have it all planned out. There's not an outline. You don't know what's in the next chapter. And so it's more interesting and exciting. And I kind of like it better. And also you end up, you know, by going down all these wrong roads you find places that you would not have thought to go. If I were trying to make up a story and say this is all that's going to happen along the way, I just don't think my imagination would be able to do that. But when I say this is what's going to happen in the next chapter and then I see, and then how are my, you know, how are my characters going to respond to that? What are they going to realistically, authentically? What would they do? What would they say? What would they think? What do I need them to say or do or think in order to get along this plot line? But what would they realistically do? And that, because when I'm reading a book, if I don't believe that the characters would act that way or say that, then I'm disengaged emotionally. So I'd like to try when I'm writing to make it as authentic and realistic as I can so that people I think can then get more invested in the story emotionally. So how do you stay true to that character? You say if you don't believe the character then you don't want to write. How do you know that you're not, that you don't believe the character? In other words, as you're fleshing out one of your characters, are you writing things down and keeping meticulous notes to make sure that you understand the makeup of that character? And if you digress or go off course, you think, oh no, no, I can't do that. What does that look like? Right. I don't make the notes or write any of that down. I think it's more like when you're getting to know a friend, you know, you have a first impression and you think, you know, oh, you know, I like this person for these reasons or they have these characteristics. But then as you really get to know them, you realize so much more about their personality. And so it's a matter of, you know, sort of, as you get to know your characters, then you realize, oh, they have this trait and I didn't really get that trait in this last scene. So I need to go back and revise that last scene. With Shelly, it was constantly a matter of making her stronger. I mean, she was not strong enough in the beginning. And, you know, when I'm working, I always show what I'm writing to one person, Steve Harrigan, who is really helpful. And, you know, he felt from the very beginning, actually my sister also felt she wasn't strong enough. And I just needed to ramp her up some, you know, because she was a small town girl, she was from Lockhart, and she's victimized in the first scene. And so, you know, it was hard for me to make that leap and get her to be stronger. Throughout the book, she becomes stronger and stronger. But also, throughout draft after draft, she became stronger because I felt in the beginning, we all felt she just wasn't there yet and you didn't care enough about her. Right. Doris Kern's good ones on this stage, not too long ago, and she writes it about the same pace that you do, which means that you both live with your characters, fictional, hers, non-fictional for a very long time. And she talked about how difficult it is to let go of those characters when the book ends. Is that a difficult process for you? Because, again, you've not only lived with these folks, you've developed them. As you pointed out, you've evolved them over that period of time. Right. And you have your coffee with them every morning. Right. And, you know, I mean, these are the people. It's a very, you feel a little disconnected because, you know, you're with these people all day, these fictional people who don't exist and don't know any of your real friends, you know, or your family. And then you go to be with your real friends and your family, you know, in the evening. And they don't know these fictional people. And so it's, you know, you feel sort of like you're living this double life. And, yeah, it is. It's odd. And, you know, when you finish the book, it's really strange to realize that those people aren't ever going to say anything again. I mean, they're, you know, they're done. And, I mean, with my second book, Steve Harrigan was writing a book at the same time. And we decided to have sort of cameo appearances of each other's characters throughout the book. And so my book came out, you know, before his did. And this was Promise Lands. And then he was writing The Gates of the Alamo. And his didn't come out for another couple of years. And so when I was reading through his manuscript, there was my character like doing and saying things. I didn't mandate, you know. And it was like this resurrection of this person that, you know, I had let go. And it was this odd feeling like, well, you know, he really did have his own life here. Here he is by this campfire. And I didn't know he was there, you know. So, yeah, it's a strange thing. While you were living with these characters, you were also living with the memory of that day, August 1st, 1966, and the shootings. Is there a kind of post-traumatic syndrome that goes with that? You know, I don't have any trouble writing violent scenes. I think because I know that I'm writing them and I'm in charge and nothing's going to happen that I don't let happen. And so I don't go to violent movies. I don't like violence on the screen and I don't read violent books very much because somebody else, you know, is going to do something and I don't know what it's going to be. And so I'm not in charge and there's something unnerving about that. When you know exactly what you're going to make happen and the pace at which you're going to make it happen and you know as you're making it happen that you're the one pulling those strings and you can stop pulling the strings, you know, then there's a kind of a comfort in that that you don't have when you're sitting in a theater and it's all just happening and it's sort of nerve-wracking because you don't know what it is and somebody else is doing it. You've clearly thought a lot about shootings and that being an endemic part of American life. Are there lessons that we should have learned in 1966 that we didn't take to heart? Yeah, there are a lot of lessons. I think, you know, clearly we're not doing too well with that. I think we need better, more accessible mental health care. I think it's easier to buy a gun to get mental health care. And I think we need better gun laws. I think the American people all, you know, feel that pretty unanimously and bipartisanly, you know. So, and I think we have a population that's a little bit unhinged, you know, in some ways. And so we just need to take better care of our kids, you know. We showed, as a prelude to the program we showed images of your four books including Monday Monday and a picture of you with your first editor, former first lady named Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Talk about that relationship and how that came to be. Yeah, she was just lovely. That came to be because my book was, my first book, The Raven's Bride, was going to be published by Texas Monthly Press. And we had galleys, we had a pub day, we were ready to go, and then Texas Monthly Press was sold to a press called Gulf Publishing in Houston which published, you know, things like pamphlets on hydrocarbon processing and, you know, not fiction. And they owned my book when that sale happened. And so I had just been traveling with Bill Moyers working on a program that he did from D-Day to the Rhine. Actually, I wasn't working that hard. I was sort of tagging along and he was nice enough to let me go. And he had read the galley. And so he called, after Texas Monthly, you know, sort of, you know, was no longer going to publish my book and I really had no viable publisher. He called and said, how's it going with the book? And I said, well, it's not. And he said, you know, I would like to show this to Jackie Onassis who was his editor because I just, I think she would like it. I think she would resonate to the story. And so I had one galley is all I had. It was all beat up because I was like taking it everywhere. It was all I had for like six, seven, eight years of work. And so I sent it to him and he gave it to her and then she called to tell me, you know, that she had read it in two days and she wanted to buy it. And then she ended up buying that one in my second book at the same time. And she was just really, really kind and just lovely to work with. And I mean, I was nervous when I met her and it was funny because she seemed, I think she was shy was my impression. You know, she seemed kind of nervous too. I mean, I want to say it's only me, Jackie. It was just like, you know, it was just, she was just, you know, maybe she was just sort of quiet to, you know, so that I would feel at ease. But she was very sort of maternal in a way. I'm exactly the same age as Caroline. Maybe that's what it was. But, and I felt, you know, from the very beginning, I mean, she gave me her home phone number, which I never would have used, you know, but that she was so quick to sort of trust me and include me. You know, it was really nice. And I never tried to develop any kind of a personal relationship with her. She was very professional. But she was really smart and her editing was very astute. You know, she just sort of got it, you know. What drew her to the works, your first two works? Maybe Sam Houston, the fact that it was about Sam Houston, the first book. His first wife. It was about his first wife. And of course, President Kennedy had, you know, written profiles in Courage, which dealt with Sam Houston. And so, you know, I think maybe the subject matter to begin with. And then I think she just liked the story. She liked the character. She did not change a thing. Something on the cover. She felt that the candlesticks on the, because we already had cover design from Texas Monthly. We had a painting and she liked it. The candlesticks and the frame over the mantle were both not of the right period. And so she wanted those changed. But she liked the book as it was. So that was good. With my second book, she was very much a hands-on editor and did a lot of, you know, notations and the margins and correction of my spelling. A lot of things she wanted me to cut and trim down and shorten and make work better. Yeah, she was good. You were telling me a story when we first met about the message that she left on your answering machine. Can you share that story? Oh, about To Tell the Truth. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. I mean, I was invited to go out to be on To Tell the Truth and I couldn't figure out why. And I thought, I know this is about Mrs. Arnaz. This is not, you know, I mean, I've written one novel. Why would they want me to be the real Elizabeth Crook on To Tell the Truth? And so, you know, I inquired. You know, I asked the publicist to ask, you know, was this about Mrs. Arnaz? And so they called back and I said, no, you know, in the little preface, you know, I was with Crook. There might be one line about her being your editor or something. So, well, okay, this sounds kind of, you know, interesting. And so I went out there to do it and they had us all three on the stage, two imposters and me. And the curtain goes up and this was the trial run. This was before the real one. They have you do this trial run. And the imposters have tried to memorize everything they can about the book or about, you know, so that they can be appropriate imposters. And so then the big voice comes on and says, you know, I, Elizabeth Crook, was, you know, writing this book, I was in, basically it had been through a lot of rejections before she had bought it. It goes through all the pitiful rejections it had been through. And says, in one article, somebody had said, what were you doing when Mrs. Arnaz first called you and told you she wanted by the book. And I said, well, actually I was eating pork and beans out of the can. Well, so this thing said I was in the depths of despair and eating pork and beans out of the can. This is on to tell the truth. When I received a phone call, it was from the editor, Jacqueline Kennedy O'Nass. So of course it was all about her. So I just froze and said, can I go use your telephone? And so I went in there and called her and got her on the phone and she said, Elizabeth, it's okay. Nobody we know watches to tell the truth. She was very afraid of her. She was very afraid of her. So I went out and... So the book has been published. It's been a great success. I highly recommend it, by the way. But you're now at the point, I assume, where you have another blank canvas. What are your thoughts for your next book? You know, it's a very blank canvas. I would like to tell... I'm gonna go back further in time with this one, 1860s maybe, in the Hill Country area. But every time I start researching, I had to go back and do another draft of this or something. So then I would forget everything I'd researched. So now I feel sort of tired of the book already because I researched it three times and I haven't started writing it yet. So I really don't know whether that's the book I'll write or not. I don't know about writing. 1860s near Comfort and Bandera, Kerrville, that area. There was a lot going on out there. It was during the Civil War, obviously. And you had all the German settlers who were actually opposed to secession. Many of them were murdered, you know, by the Confederate troops. So... So in a way, you're a time traveler. You have to choose where you travel back in time and spend about eight years of your life. Yeah. We look forward to seeing the next time traveling that you do. Let's open up the microphones to any of you who might have questions of Elizabeth. Elizabeth, before we get to those questions, as people come up to the mics, do you go back and reread your work? After it's published? No. Yeah, because it's frustrating because you always think of things that you wish you'd done differently. And so I read my first two for books on tape, recording for the blind. So I did reread those, but you move on. Yeah. You kind of have to divorce yourself from it because in fact, it's a little embarrassing because if I'm asked to come to school and speak about the Texas Revolution or something, I don't remember anything. And I was supposed to be interviewed about, you know, Sam Houston talking head on a PBS program, and I kept calling him Andrew Jackson. I don't know why I was doing it. I was like, you know, I couldn't... I mean, I just was so confused. So, yeah, I have to... I don't remember well enough to carry him with me, you know. Questions? Yes, sir. What's about the cover art on this work? You know, rural probably Texas scene is about as far from Central Austin as we can get. Yes. The cover is lovely. But yes, it's not Central Austin. It's not the tower because, you know, because the book is really not about the tower. It's about these people. And they... A lot of the story takes place out near Alpine and Marfa. The second part of the story takes place in that area. And so, yeah, and it's sort of about the road, the traveled road, you know. I just somehow, emotionally, this really does, in a nice way, capture kind of the journey, I think. But it's not... I think if we put the tower on there, you know, it's a little confusing because while it begins with the tower, it isn't about that. None of us really wanted it to be sold that way because that would be misleading to the buyers. It's a novel. Do you have a hand in that, Elizabeth? How does that work? The way that works is that my editor sends me the cover and tells me that... And I actually had a whole different cover in mind. But when she sent this, I just thought, you know what, that's really much better than what I was thinking. And so I was right from the very beginning. I mean, I got to... We had a lot of discussion about whether to put the comma after Monday, for Monday, Monday, and the arrangement of those letters. But as far as the picture and the frame and everything, they just, you know, for our styles, just does a beautiful job with books. And so, you know, I certainly wasn't going to argue with them. Great. Other questions? Yes, sir. My name's Sam Wilson. I used to have a little company called Wilson Oxygen Company here at 4th and Nature's, which is now part of the Hilton Hotel. Along tower day, my phone rang. We sold medical equipment, being in the oxygen business. And it was Mary Arts, who was a nurse in charge of respiratory therapy at Breckenridge Hospital. Mary said, Sam, how many Bennett machines do you have? Bennett was a positive pressure breathing machine that patients used. She says, bring whatever you've got and get over here right away. Well, I was only about 10 blocks south of Breckenridge to go up Red River, unload them, take one end to Mary, and she says, get it ready. I got a patient I need to use it on. So I got it ready to go, turned it on. She had the patient, and she had her hand on the rib cage. She turned the machine on, and a bullet popped out into her hand. I know Mary never forgot that, and neither have I. Was that at Breckenridge? Breckenridge. Yeah. We don't give credit to the medical staff at Breckenridge. They did one tremendous job that day. Everything I read says that they were just extraordinary. The care, and there were physicians coming to volunteer from all over Austin, and of course it was ambulance drivers who were, there wasn't, I mean it was funeral home drivers, basically it was horses that were bringing in the wounded because there were no ambulances. Those were called ambulances then. But Breckenridge was where almost all of the wounded and the deceased were taken. And it was just a scene. The people who were there saying, you know, it was just extraordinary. It was so unexpected, and everybody did such a good job. Any other questions? Well, before we wrap up. I think there was one right there, yeah. Yes, ma'am. Yes, sir. So you're a Texas writer writing books anchored in Texas. Have you thought about going elsewhere? You know, I have thought about it, and it just seems to come back. My third book takes place mostly in New Mexico. So that was a little further west for me. But you know, this is just the area I know and love and am familiar with. It's much easier for me to write about landscape and so forth because I feel at home here, and I've lived here almost all my life. So, nope, I'm pretty much, I think. And I used to kind of think, well, I don't want to just, you know, like just be a Texas writer. And now I feel like, yeah, that's what I am. And I'm sure all my books will probably be here. And I like that. So, thanks, Mark. Thank you. Listening to how you describe your writing style, do you know the end of your books before you start them? I sort of know where I want them to end. And I know who's going to live and who's not. But as far as, you know, it's the middle part that I'm, it's a little bit blurry to me. But I do actually know the end before I know any of the rest of it. When does that come to you? So you start with characters. You start with a basic plot line, albeit one that's going to evolve as the characters evolve in your mind. But when do you get a sense of how you want the book to end? Well, with this one, I wanted the symmetry Monday. It starts on a Monday, it ends on a Monday, and both of them at the tower. And, you know, when you're writing the book, I mean, there's just, it comes to a place where the stories are finished. I mean, they're not wrapped up in a way, you know, because no stories even in real life are ever really wrapped up. But where you know where the characters are and you basically know where they're going, and then it just feels over. And I kind of always have a sense of where that place is that I'm aiming for. And then I usually write, you know, about so much more than I actually need or can use. And particularly with historical fiction, the hardest thing for me is knowing what to leave out, you know, because you run across all this exciting information, you want to put it in there. But my rule of thumb is, you know, like if it happened one county over, it doesn't dramatically affect the lives of your character, you know, or inform the reader about, you know, the story in some really pertinent way, then it has to go. And so that's always the hard part is knowing, you know, it's compiling all the information. I mean, I always think of it like in a boat, you know, it's going to sink, it's too big, you have too much. Something has to go overboard, and you think, but I love all of this, and I've worked really hard to get it all in here, but the whole thing's going to sink if you don't throw it out. So you start, you know, sort of with impunity, throwing things overboard. And that's, I imagine with writing non-fiction, that's really an enormously difficult thing. Yeah. Yeah, that question. Yeah. Well, this is the Harry Middleton Lecture. And before we part tonight, I just want to pay tribute to my friend, Harry Middleton, and thank him for all he's done for this institution, all he continues to do for this institution. But I also want to relate a quick anecdote, if I may. Harry is, the lecture is named for Harry Middleton, but Harry technically does not have a bearing on who gets chosen to do the lecture. That doesn't mean that he doesn't sit in meetings, that doesn't mean he doesn't have an opinion. And we recently, I'm looking at my friends, Larry Temple and Elizabeth Christian, there are several others who are on the committee to determine who the Harry Middleton Lecture is. And so we convened a couple of years ago and we had a fine record of putting together very well-known luminaries on this stage under the auspices of the Harry Middleton Lecture. Mikhail Gorbachev and Sandra Day O'Connor and Jimmy Carter among them. And Harry repeatedly said throughout this meeting, I want a writer. I want a writer. And he must have said it, and I'm looking at Larry probably 30 times. And I got back to my desk, we had the meeting at the Headliners Club and I got back to my desk after the meeting and my phone rang instantly and I picked it up and it was Larry Temple. And Larry said to me, I get the impression that Harry wants a writer. Harry, we could not have done better than the writer that we got tonight, Elizabeth Crook. And I want to thank Elizabeth Crook for this. Thank you very much. Thank you.