 Somebody who was called me up. They were writing about I forget which book of yours, and I don't know why they bothered to call me but they said You know Joyce Carol Oates is not only prolific, but the annoying part is that every book is so good You know What do you think? That's very very sweet I'll tell you before we get into this it might might be of interest to some of you that Joyce and I this is our Third or fourth anthology we fourth our fourth anthology that that we've done together and it's it's always an incredible Just say as and Joyce has done in thought anthologies. Yes, so very it's very challenging. Yeah Whatever the book is just it represents in a way a fraction of the effort that went into it And there are many absent works that one can't get permission for because they've charged too much money or something's gone wrong So to be a to be an editor of an anthology is really like embarking on a journey Yeah, it is it is what's especially nice about this book, which I've actually never done is Jonathan being an artist himself he's included art including corrosive and wildly hilarious Political cartoons is so funny. Yeah, well, you know, I did well. I really wanted the book Do you know it's like that feeling in the midst of after you pulled yourself up off the floor as to what's going on in our Country our world nowadays that you want to watch that episode of 20 years ago from friends, you know but I mean I wanted some beautiful and funny things in the book and we have that you know and and I think Joyce when would I'm just curious how you feel about I know you told me something about your story, which I'd like to get to in a minute, but what do you feel generally about You know the place of the writer and the artist at this point in history. I mean do Is our writing affected so much by the the moment do you think or Well, it's a good question. I think I think writing is affected by the moment all our Is of its time, but there's certain timelessness also and though it seems very grim and dark and Parallels with the time that we're living in right now. It's probably not as bad as some other times You know like you know 1939 or 1940 and when the Holocaust was being revealed and the sort of horror that's washed over Humanity, I mean we're worse. I'm not saying we're exaggerating it, but we're sort of Maybe not in quite as bad a situation Some people live through the McCarthy era where people were there wasn't anything like the resistance Yeah, the resistance is pretty palpable all these people marching and the sense of solidarity and idealism But in the McCarthy era people were informing on one another Yeah, yeah professors and teachers and that really divided up what might have been the resistance Liberal people just sort of isolated. So we don't have that. Yeah, it's true. I'm glad I like hearing some hopeful thoughts. You know, it's interesting Elizabeth Frank who's in this book who's She's only she's a very slow slow worker, but her father was Melvin Frank who did movies like a touch of class He did all the on-the-road movies But he was blacklisted and she wrote a book called cheat and charmer her one novel and it's a Ramona clay But it's about her parents and what happened to them and they they moved to London because he could not work in the states And they were went from being very rich to having essentially no money at all And then he came back and had his comeback movie was a touch of class by the way, which was in I guess 60 I don't know when it was but And I asked her to write about that she said no, I'm finished with that but Yeah, I think what you just said though You know, it's funny So I'm gonna ask you also then about your story because I didn't know until you told me recently that you had been working on That story as a as an idea for a novel Many years ago or several years ago and then when you tell us more about that Joyce's story good news Well, I work on my novels my fiction and maybe what sounds like strange way I will finish a novel pretty much finished and then I'll put it put it away in a drawer And it could be there for a couple of years in the case of a novel called the accursed I wrote it in 1987 and finished it and I didn't go back to it to about 2011 It was like a moldering manuscript, which All writers have these manuscripts sort of mold again another room And I would go and look at it once in a while of like a year would go by and finally I became the right time so too with this novel I started writing that I remember we were in in Traveling My husband at the time who's sitting there was like a new husband at the time It was that was that long ago and we were traveling in some a hot dusty Place and I was working on this and it was so hot outside the blinds were drawn in a hotel window. So that was like 2010 maybe I was working on it 2009. It's really a long time ago and It's a novel that is Set in the in the future. That's not too far away But the irony is in this sort of nightmare feeling is that when I wrote it It seemed comfortably in the future and maybe like a metaphor, but now today Much of it is actually like would be next week, you know, and it's no longer comfortably in the future and some of the areas of freedom of speech and freedom of press and just the The the idea that people can be Deported people are being asked to to show their papers I don't even know what papers are like I don't carry Often when I'm out, I mean I don't carry my passport with me, you know So it's becoming a world in which there are divisions Where there's a concerted effort on the part of the administration to make people enemies of one another and We're just not really used to that in this country We're used to a president who may in the past say things that are so Pious and platitude in this, you know bringing people together and maybe that didn't sound always believable But in this case, it's just the opposite that the things that are said are very believable and very hostile and Designed to make people divide against one another and it's wonderful that the women's marriage and all the all the great Men who join with the women's March can overcome that and have a really mass Surge of optimism in the face of this sort of hostility. Yeah, you know, it's it's interesting that a Gentleman last night in Boston asked a question and he said how do you get people on the other side to read this book and It it actually threw me for a moment because in fact, you know, this book was in a roundup of books I forget where it was but an associated press Reporter called me and he said I'm doing a roundup of resistance books and I said, well, I don't think our books are resistance book I said, you know, I we didn't set out to do that. We set out to do something that would be thought provoking and About them about the moment but would go beyond the moment and and have hopefulness and you know things about Race about immigration about sexual orientation, but about the freedoms that we experienced I mean, I know as you just said, I mean, I grew up. I mean, I didn't really realize I was a privileged white man until more recently but you know The truth is it hasn't worked all that well, but anyhow, but You know, what I wanted to say was that I took a lot for granted, you know, and and maybe Just maybe this moment is not so bad for us because we're going to stop taking things for granted, right? We have to fight for them. Absolutely Yes, and our colleagues who are who are scientists are really confronting even more hostility You know federal departments just becoming Rigoriously anti-science that's so shocking and in the 21st century We never would have thought that would happen writers and visual artists. I think I've not faced that kind of censorship yet Well, you know, we had a moment when I was a fairly young I started out as a visual artist So and we had the moment the maple Thorpe moment as we all called it, you know when I did get a national endowment for the arts and my Anyhow, I had to sign something that said I would do nothing obscene With that, but I didn't read it, you know, I was young I wanted the money and then later Actually, my wife found it and said did you read this and I said this makes me want to make such obscene art with this Money, you know, but I think the I do do you feel that as an artist you had certain Freedoms that or that did you you did did or did not consider them at all in your work? Do you know what I haven't really felt any Restraints, I think that I've been maybe fortunate. I haven't noticed it, you know, but I may not be representative of other people Since since the election of 2016 there was kind of ripples of shock that took a while I think to to make their way through various Enclaves like after 2011 after 9-11 and you of course you live in New York City. Yeah, I watched the second building fall down Were you living on 20 seconds? Yeah, I could I watched it from the street. Yeah Well, some of us who live in Princeton were Relatively close also, but it was almost like a feeling of My asthma that many artists many writers including myself just couldn't write couldn't Somehow everything seemed Hopeless and I knew many writers who felt well, what's there to write about or is a sort of Death of the spirit. It's like a trauma and I remember I remember those days So and you probably know this My husband and I at the time We're so depressed and and also feeling very helpless. We went out to an animal shelter and brought home a kitten a Homeless cat so we thought we can't do anything, you know really but we'll make we'll make a little animal happy So, you know, that's Sherry and she's been with me since Sherry writes books Sherry well even more Sherry does tweets. That's Sometimes she does the naughty tweets late at night But I remember that feeling, you know, what is art with this rubble and all these deaths and it was very existential Not an idea or philosophical notion of angst or anxiety Not nothing intellectual just like physical like losing somebody So I think that the election of 2016 for some people For many women and girls. I think it was like that, you know You're waking up to in this world that you thought would be so optimistic and such a Wonderful symbolic gesture for women and girls and it was just the opposite Somebody elected who was sort of anti all those things. So I think that all the people in this book Sort of relating to that and and the the visual artists With a lot of gusto and having having fun. The art Spiegelman is certainly depressing You think yeah, I think yeah, I think pretty I mean beautiful work, but you know, well, they're a suite of Ellis Island Images that beautiful. Yeah, I think that I mean and he also does a piece about a woman who was Disguised as a man from her life. That was great. So which is that is brilliant But you know that feeling People have talked about jig just what you've said People have talked about who've been in that who have involved in this book and written or did art for this book All had that same feeling, you know Yeah, and while reading this book has been so interesting to me because I would have thought That I knew a lot of things but actually in reading these different perspectives like I Think it's Julia of vera is a young girl from the Dominican Republic whose family fled some Political violence and how when she was a little girl in grade school just her experiences were so so vividly realized and so touching and There's no self-pity. It's more almost like like a little humor But she said the one thing that is true for all of us that I wouldn't had never thought about She said that she felt very Alone because she was Hispanic and I think she was in New England But when she went in the library and she opened up books She was in a world of absolute freedom. She could be anybody She could read about anything and the books were salvation I had the same feeling but I but I didn't I've never articulated it quite like that Yeah, well, I wonder if it's because you know, she is Really closer to being an immigrant, you know, so many of us had immigrant parents or grandparents, but Julia Alvarez writes about Her how she was growing up as an immigrant and also being exposed to in fact She taught her story is going to a very prestigious art colony. She's going to Yaddo in the story and she ends up Talking to the cooks and the cleaning women and finds inspiration from them. That was so good It's such a beautiful Story, but I think that you see that I Don't know. I mean, I want I think all the stories as you said are so surprising often, right? Do you know things you don't know or don't expect and then Alice Alice Walker's little story It's called don't despair and we've already Alice Walker, but somehow this story just puts everything in a very condensed way and she talks about being a little black girl growing up in the Sort of the tyranny of the the white the tyranny of the white majority and that is really so Searing and kind of you know jarring to us because with our white skin as you said We take it for granted And but they can't someone like like Alice Walker cannot take Things for granted to the same extent, but this idea that we represented tyranny of the majority is so It's necessary for us to to sort of experience even though it's a little bit startling And to acknowledge it. I think you know, I think it's interesting because she writes She there are only three people in the book who didn't write actual Stories though most people wrote from some experience many I many people I encouraged to write fiction and To explore a civil liberty or a freedom or something Alice Walker the thing that struck me the most, you know, I mean she does talk about This fear of white men growing up and how we have this ultimate fearsome sort of white man now but she also writes about the Incredible bravery of her father going and voting for FDR, you know when they were armed guards And I I said to her could you write more about that she said no She said I can't because I don't really know more about it except that it happened My father didn't really speak about it. That was amazing It was just a couple lines and the story is so good Reminded me of this movie of today mudbound You've seen mudbound just well mudbound is so Emotionally gripping it is completely Draining in fact, I had to leave the room at one point. We were seeing it on a Netflix I think I actually had to leave the room But then I came back and it wasn't quite as bad as I had thought And without giving anything away, you don't have to worry if you see the movie if you want to see the movie Don't worry. It has an ending that is not tragic You won't believe it as you won't believe it as you're moving through that movie because it's not for the faint hearted But if you can get through it, you will feel uplifted At the end you all do you agree? Yeah, it's got a strong kind of wonderful ending Well, I hope you know, I think that It's something about you know something in the career. I wanted to ask you about this something in the creative process, you know Well, let's talk about blonde blonde took you a few years to write Yes Did you feel as if as one sometimes does when they write a novel that they've fallen into a pit and they're clawing their way out It was more like a tunnel There's a tunnel. Well, like a tunnel. Well of all the people in the room, Jonathan may be the only person Who actually has met Marilyn Monroe? I was just a boy I know you're reluctant to acknowledge this now. It's pretty wonderful another time, you know, he's written about it But you he has actually written about it. Well, I had never met Marilyn Monroe and Norbert Jean Baker But I did a fair amount of research and I saw all Marilyn Monroe's movies that are available on DVD So I had a sense of her growing as an actress and getting Matureing and and as I wrote my novel, which is a long novel. It's a post-modernist novel in the sense that it's being told by Nomadine Baker Pasturously, so she's sort of looking back over her life as it's as if it's a movie Instead of seeing herself from the inside and also from the outside and I was the one who knew That she would die And usually when we write when we write fiction We control our characters Destinies and we don't have to have them die if we don't want to But from the very beginning if I elected to write about normie gene baker Just like 10 years after her her her ascendancy to to great fame about 10 years later. She'd be dead She had a very truncated career when you think about how iconic she is and how famous But as I was working in the novel, of course That was always in sight. It was like going through a tunnel But she would have to die and I thought of other things, you know, fantastic ways out or something But to be true to the material I wanted my novel to end right with her death I didn't want to go into that another world of speculation about who really killed her them in many books It's not at all like that No, it just it sort of ends where there are different possibilities of how she died And nobody really could say for sure when people are addicted to barbiturates And have been very unhappy the sort of unable to sleep in the middle of the night, you know reaching for more pills If you happen to overdose is that is that deliberate or just a kind of accident a kind of sad tragic accident Then some people think she was actually killed And there have been books Well, there's a lot of the subject because when she was found dead The Los Angeles police came in but already The crime scene had been ex altered and things were taken And her telephone records have been expunged. So something happened there We know it doesn't mean that anybody killed her but it means that somebody did not want Something to come out To be divulged but anyway in writing my novel I didn't want to go into that Because other people had written about it. I think there's a Los Angeles detective He's totally obsessed with with the whole subject. He had been one of the people who came in And he knew that he knew that there was a cover up. So he's he's devoted. He had devoted his life He may not be living now, but it's it's one of those things like the assassination of John Kennedy Some people believe in conspiracies and they fall into that pit Of writing about it and obsessing about I didn't want to I didn't want to go into that Well, I was thinking you know, I was thinking about how You know asking you to write for this anthology I've asked you to write for other anthologies And asking anyone to write for an anthology like this Is a hard thing to do because you know you're also we were giving people six months to Write their story Form their story paint their painting make their thing for the book and that you know, that's a big thing to ask somebody to do And I think that it I just reminded me I had and Joyce was in a an anthology I did for believe it or not rock star videos And rock star videos if you have any I'll say kids who play video games They did one called la noir and la noir They decided they wanted to have famous writers like Joyce They sent me a list. They said would you do an anthology and ask fame? Did I ever tell you and we went famous writers like Joyce carol oates to write stories? I did not good writers. Just yeah Yeah, uh-huh. Okay. I'm gonna pass right over that one, but And you wrote to me and I I did I didn't feel that I could do it for some reason. I said you're on a book tour Well, I think right. I just said that I didn't think I could do it So jonathan just wrote back again. I think Well a little more adamantly Actually I'll tell you this it's one of my favorite stories unless I've made it up. You tell me if it's true so all they said They let me watch the game and it took place in 1947 los angeles and it had true crime And then they made me sign non disclosures like who was I gonna tell but anyhow They said just ask writers to write a story. The only thing they have to do is set it in 1947 So joy said well, I I don't think I can do this and then about two days later said I still don't think I can do it But I had this idea because I finished blonde But I still have these other thoughts. What if I had norma gene baker in 1947 be roommates with the black dahlia But I don't think I can do it and I said then I'll write it Yeah, you did and I thought oh, no, I'd never write it Elizabeth short. This is the black dahlia. That's never been that that murder grizzly murder never been solved It's very likely that the two girls Could have been roommates We're not saying that they were but it isn't impossible. They were about the same age One was very blonde and the other was black black hair very glossy Does anybody know who Elizabeth short was? Yeah, the black dahlia James Elroy has written about her sort of compulsively. Was that a little clapping somebody clap for james elroy Did you ever heard james elroy speak? Hmm. I think of him as the american dostoevsky. Yeah, you know that this He's very deep very dark very dark But he's been so obsessed with the black dahlia and with his own mother's murder, which he's kind of conflated Yeah, but I I think Perhaps the point of the story that I was telling you is that how I blackmail people into writing for their anthologies You know, I mean, I had no intention of writing that story. I didn't think I could Oh, I thought you were serious. Well, I hoped you did so that you would write it and in fact it became a amazing story called White rose or white black dahlia and white rose. Okay. It's a great story You should find that collection as well. Um, I I didn't I didn't I didn't have to blackmail Joyce for this I don't think I think most people Said yes, and we're and we're happy to do it The young writer wonderful young african-american writer angela flornoi Said to me I asked people why they said yes after they said yes And she said well, I think it must have been a day that I was so Furious about what was going on in the world. I thought I just I wrote back to you and I just wrote Yes, I'll do it And I said well, then I'm happy something terrible happened in the world that made you write this story but I mean I I don't but um The I didn't know Joyce's story had that had been that you had been working on this at all and maybe you'd want to Talk about that and read a little tiny bit of it so people could get an idea of your story Like okay, I'll just read a little bit of it But to introduce it I was working on this novel which I had thought would be sort of a short novel It's I the title was vicissitudes of time travel But my publisher and other people said vicissitudes So I had to change it to hazards of time travel hazards of time travel To me it will always be always be vicissitudes of time travel Even though it's not very marketable So I had this idea of a slightly future world that in which things that we take for good and now have all been altered But as I said when I wrote it it was more like a metaphor But now it's starting to take place for instance in this world that I have evoked in the near future Public lands are gone and national parks and there just aren't any parks anymore There may be some old desolate place of a lot of litter blowing around but they're not kept up And they're very wealthy people and then they're just other people and then the society is ranked by skin color and That seems almost to be happening right now where people are are basically persecuted because of their skin color and apprehended on buses and asked to show their papers Well, whereas white people I assume are probably are probably not And then there's the bias against science the In some court is one can't use the word climate change, I think If you're writing Florida government Maybe maybe the federal government or you can't use certain scientific terms and And so in my novel too, there is this hatred of science The science represents objective truth and the The idea of experimenting and a methodology that's not political or biased or linked to religion Science is sort of the beacon from the enlightenment And when Science is attacked because people don't want to allow that kind of questioning The scientific spirit is one of questioning. So in my novel the young girl She's only 17 in the beginning She does become a psychologist But but the novel becomes somewhat complicated because she goes out she sent in exile She sent away to another time that the pun people are people who think too much and question too much They're either vaporized or just completely annihilated or they're sent to some other time where they won't make any trouble so I had a lot of fun writing it and maybe I've talked so much about I shouldn't even read But the most fun about the novel was I evoked a world that's Set in the midwest and what would have been wisconsin But as has a different name now in the future world is only just all of north america Canada and mexico have been sort of assimilated by the united states and the united states doesn't exist anymore just this big power It's not so different from the world that we That we almost have Right now if our if our president had his way, but he's being checked and involved in different Stages, but if he had his way, I think he would just amass a lot of power and put some of his His political opponents. I'm afraid he'd put them in jail if he could put them in prison Once they're in prison things happen to people. I mean they could die. They could be tortured I mean what keeps him from doing that is probably just a little flimsy veneer of of something So in my novel the girl is sent to a place like wisconsin in 1953 and she's at a she's at a state university where everyone there All the research scientists and the writers and and the philosophers and psychologists everyone there is working on mistaken ideas But the mistaken ideas that were taken seriously at that time Like if you were in psychology, you would be a skinarian You know who skinner was so you'd be following a sort of skinarian psychology And if you were an astrophysicist you'd be following the idea of the universe a steady state universe that was sort of like steady and if you were in anthropology Or maybe some other biology you'd you'd be thinking that The the height of evolution was right then That all of evolution was leading up to like essentially the white Protestant American person and that the people actually thought that was the highest peak of of evolution Now we don't feel that way at all. I mean we have a very different everything's different today But at that time intelligent people Did feel that way and people spent their whole lives working on what we would see as as dead ends So I wanted to get back to that world in which uh working earnestly Oh and people the poets were all rhyming And maybe there was the glimmer of beatnik poetry, but they didn't like that You know that was sort of that's not really that's not poetry What we're doing these little rhymes and they did all these things that were so conventional and so proper but in the 1960s You know completely completely swept away So this is this part that i'm going to read is she's in high school And it's a high school where you're sort of you have to be very careful and like to be too smart So the really smart kids the really smart kids. They always get like a b plus they don't want to get in trouble and If they're if they're not really careful about then they wind up with a d and that ruins their lives So sort of set upon a life You're you're you're you're doomed if almost at the age of 18 Which is true from start for some countries in the world right now But this girl is sort of heedless and naive and she gets an a And she becomes valedictorian nobody else wanted to be valedictorian And she's just sort of a she's kind of a A naive girl in patriot democracy history For instance, I questioned the facts of history quotation marks around facts sometimes I'd ask questions about the subject no one ever questioned the great terrorist attacks of 9 11 01 But not in an arrogant way really just out of curiosity I certainly didn't want to get any of my teachers in trouble With the education oversight bureau, which could result in them being demoted or fired or vaporized And then she's um, she's Named valedictorian because the smarter kids didn't want to do it And all her valedictory speech is just going to be asking questions Like why are we doing this? Why are we at war? Why this and and the calendar started They don't have the calendar that we have they have a whole new calendar and everything has been changed And she's just asking questions and this is the rehearsal for the commencement But after she gives her speech, she's arrested The words were brisk impersonal stroll adrian hands behind your back It happened so fast at graduation rehearsal so fast. I was too surprised and too scared to think of resisting Except I guess I did try to resist in childless desperation From the rougher offices rough hands on me wrenching my arms behind my back with such force I had to bite my lips to keep from screaming. What was happening? I could not believe it. I was being arrested Yet even in my shock thinking I will not scream. I will not beg for mercy My wrists were handcuffed behind my back within seconds. I was a captive of a homeland security And then she's denounced by the principal who wants to dissociate himself from her. So he doesn't get in trouble She was warned They were all warned. We did our best to educate her as a patriot, but the girl is a born provocateur Even this expression she was warned When I wrote this it didn't it wasn't Elizabeth Warren was somebody was warned. She was warned Yeah, here it is in my it's in my novel and I'm afraid people will think that I just took a lot of these things from the It's so weird Provocateur I knew what the term meant. I never heard such a charge applied to me Later I would realize that the arrest warrant must have been drawn out for me before the rehearsal And so anyway, she's arrested and then later on the principal costs for an emergency assembly of the senior class Jonathan had asked originally and your first letter was to write about democracy That's actually what you said in the beginning and then it got a little modified. So this was my answer to that democracy So all the student her classmates settled into the auditorium 322 students in the class Knew was that my arrest had spread around them within seconds Gravely the principal announced from the podium the adjunct's trial formally valedictorian Have been arrested by the state on charges of treason and questioning Authority and what was required now was a vote of confidence from her peers regarding the action That is all members of the class Were to vote on whether to confirm the arrest or to challenge it We will ask for a show of hands. Mr. McKay said In full fair and unbiased demonstration of democracy Hmm At this time I was positioned handcuffed with a wet street guilty face at the very edge of the stage As he spoke the principal glared at me even pointing at me once when accusing forefinger As if my classmates needed to be reminded who the arrestee was Gripping my upper arms were two husky offices from the youth disciplinary division of homeland security It's the russians There were one man and one woman They had uh blue uniforms with billy clubs tasers mason revolvers My classmates stirred wide eyed both intimidated and thrilled And arrest at school and a show of hands vote which is not A novelty in itself except on this occasion boys and girls attention all those in favor Of adrian being stripped of the honor of class field victorian is a consequence of having committed treason And questions authority raise your hands. Yes There was a brief stunned pause Hesitantly a few hands were lifted then a few more No doubt the presence of the uniform youth disciplinary officers glaring at them roused my classmates to action Entire rows lifted their hands Yes Here and there were individuals who shifted uneasily in their seats. They were not voting yet I caught the eye of my friend carla whose face appeared to be wet with tears and there was page all but signaled to me I'm sorry adrian. I have no choice As in a nightmare at last a sea of hands were raised against me If there were some not voting I could not see them and all opposed. No Mr. McKay's voice hovered dramatically as if he were counting raised hands In fact, there was not a single hand And all the rows of seniors to be seen I think then we have a stunning example of democracy and action boys and girls Majority rule the truth is in the numbers Joyce is correct that my first Sort of mandate I I asked people to to write about draw about paint about do anything about democracy And then some of the contributors said can we broaden that? And I said sure You know, um, what however that strikes you do what you want and and I I'm looking at the book now and Russell banks wrote about x being an x-pat and the 60s and going to canada Bliss broyard wrote about you know, sort of it takes places at a party with a mix of wealthy white and black people And obama's about to come. It's a very odd Story filled with all kinds of lee child, you know, the great crime writer Who the other night said, you know, I'm just an immigrant And he you know, he came to this country 20 years ago And made a big success of himself. I'd say where'd you come from now? He's from england Oh, and uh, he uh, you know his story. He doesn't write As he said it's not a crime story, but it is a crime It's about a hate crime that's covered up many many years ago, but it's not Um, it's not jack reacher, you know Um, so there's so many what michael cunningham Writes a story and it's an unidentified prison where criminals and remind me there was a sort of crossover with your story ever so slightly but it's a Prison where people don't know what they've done wrong And he admitted the other night that he got the idea thinking about guantanamo, but he never names it or You know, there's just james hannaham writes a really shocking story about a black couple trying to adopt a white baby And uh, it's a story I gasped, but you know, if you can get me to gasp, that's pretty good Uh, alice hoffman like your story also about a world that's disappearing slowly, you know, very touching story susan isaac's I don't know. There might be a few people here who remember compromising positions in the 70s So she writes a story that's really funny About a rich white woman who is suddenly helping Haitians and I thought I said to her on the phone You are going to be in big trouble with this story And she said why I said I just get ready and there has been a little Something, you know, but I sometimes think You know, I I always say to my students I don't know what you say politically correct is what you do in your life But not necessarily in your art your characters do anything they want to do, you know, just make sure it's not you So, you know the the other thing I just wanted to quickly say because I was told that we have to wrap up And I wanted questions, but you know, we have to you know, so you'll have them and when you buy books, I know because the tie-in that I want to say Is we thought about a way to expand this book and so all of the writers and artists in this book Are really aligned with the mission of the aclu And there's a statement from anthony romero, who's the director of the aclu in new york And they've been incredible. They've come to a lot of the events and spoken And It was a way of making this book something other than It is, you know, so You know for an institution about civil liberties that's been doing it for almost 100 years And and so that this is something for them as well And I hope you will all join Joyce and myself in a little while. I don't know where we're going, but somewhere back there To sign books Again, I guess, you know, when I think about One of the the let's say, you know in a time joys brought up something so earlier about You know the hopefulness and other bad times in the world You know, hopefully we'll look back at this book and we'll be looking at these stories in a different way that they represented a moment But they also represented feelings of writers and artists And, you know, I think the writer's writer's voice is Always important, you know as much as anyone, but you know, I feel So much, you know, it's sort of like that feeling we talked about, you know Like as you said of artists being flattened like after 9 11 not being able to write not being able to work nothing matters Why should I do it? And then you realize if you just do something, you know, it's like going to your job It's like doing something makes you feel better, right? Just action is better than non-action And and so, you know, maybe this is a call to arms, you know, it's seeing Um For me, it's very both distressing and touching To have a daughter who's marching. I thought we were long past those days, you know, long past them And being, you know, all of the things that I think our generation fought for the Dory march with them My daughter marched in All of the marches. Yeah, right So but I you know, I wish she didn't have to do it I wish none of us had to do it but but maybe this is our our time to remember Not to take for granted what we had what we have what we want to have Again, you know, what do we need to preserve? Um, and I I I hope this, you know, having Very important to me to have Writers and artists of the stature of somebody like Joyce carolotes who are willing you have to realize Who are willing to put their reputations as artists on the line? Not everybody's going to agree that you're in a book like this or that you're going to speak out, you know There's a risk involved and that That I find is an incredibly touching and meaningful Thing, you know that that somebody is well, you know that Joyce carolotes is willing to be here and say this and to put it in print or the Lee child Who's our most popular crime writer, you know is willing to take a risk that no Some people won't buy the next jack reach your novel. I think is brave, you know, it's putting something at personal risk um In any case Do you have some last words Joyce? No, I think what you're saying is really very very wonderful And it's it's an optimistic feeling. I think all all art is generally Optimistic Samuel Beckett said just to be an artist is to be an optimist even though he was completely depressed and his work is The act of the art represents Having faith in the future Yeah, I think I think you're right. I think, you know, I I feel like I came of age at the first revolution in this country, you know And I thought we fixed it, but in any case, you know, I remember at that time Many other artists I knew said, you know being an artist is enough of a revolutionary thing to be No, not really, you know, that's just playtime So, um, thank you all. I'm sorry. There's no time for questions, but you can Yes Let's give a big round of applause. Thank you, Jonathan St. Lover and uh, Joyce carolotes And I do believe that the books are available in the back of the auditorium For signing and further conversation with the authors. Thank you so much. Good night