So I'm told you do questions, again, after this--
[LAUGHTER]
--which I'm excited about.
[LAUGHTER]
We heard a little rumor earlier, after the Q and A,
that you threw out a five-hundred-something page
draft that was your writings to a reputable [INAUDIBLE]
And I was actually, even before that, you mentioned that this
was originally a commissioned essay,
but then, it became longer and longer.
So now it looked like-- but it, obviously, still unanswered.
A lot of us are second-year students working on, not
necessarily, turning one essay into a book,
but thinking about--
story or a book, or structure it.
How did you make your total decisions?
And today, how did you decide to toss away hundreds of pages?
What was that like?
It's a great question.
I don't think I have an answer for it, but I can tell you--
the real answer is it took nine years.
And so it's easy over nine years to convince yourself
that 500 pages have to go.
I mean, I've already talked about this elsewhere,
so I have no problem talking about it now, especially
since we're in school.
This book originally had a different publisher,
and they bought this idea.
That's all they bought.
I think they bought seven pages worth of an idea.
And I think, maybe, three years after that,
I handed in something close to that 500-page thing.
And they said, well, not quite.
Do another draft.
And so I did another draft.
And they said, no.
We didn't know this was what you were going to do.
There were formal issues with it,
but we disagreed about what the book was supposed to be.
Partly, they didn't understand why Levi was in it.
And also, they were expecting me to--
I don't know why but they were expecting
me to-- do a general, nonfiction book about Yucca mountain.
And, I mean, I told them that I never
would write that kind of book.
Though, we certainly should have one,
but it just wouldn't be something that I would do.
So we so we parted ways.
But it was--
I mean, this isn't really a helpful answer,
but it's the answer, I think.
It was that-- and this was a publisher that, I assume,
any writer in the room would want to be published by.
I thought I had made it.
And so that kick in the teeth made
me look at those 500 pages, which I was telling Ander,
he didn't tell you the whole rumor, or the whole story.
It was ridiculous, formally.
Those 500 pages consisted of nine paragraphs.
That's stupid.
[LAUGHTER]
That's just dumb.
Because in that little bit about the nines,
I had convinced myself that nine was the principal, formal issue
in the book.
And that is the only thing about nine
that still exists in the book.
But it took-- again, I have no problem admitting this--
it took two years of not writing,
feeling really sorry for myself, wanting to quit.
I almost quit my job teaching because I said,
I have no right to teach if I can't figure out
how to put this book together.
There were stupid years.
[LAUGHTER]
And I can't really tell you how I started trimming, except
to say, it was that helped me see, more clearly,
the problems with the book.
Also, their confusion about why Levi should be a part of this--
because Levi influences the structure of the book.
He influences the way that the book
leaps from subject to subject, especially
toward the last third of the book.
It was their saying, we just don't get this,
we don't think he belongs in here, that made me--
despite the fact that they rejected the book--
clarify for myself why he needed to be a part of it.
So again, that's not useful because I
know you can't set out to find a publisher in hopes that they
fire you so that you learn an important lesson.
But it really is what happened to me.
But I can't actually-- because my perspective at this point
on the book is, well, I have none at the moment--
I can't really explain to you how I started trimming away.
But there really wasn't a moment where I said, this is the form.
It was just as matter of finally,
I guess, being able to see it for what it was,
which it was in a form that really
was only appealing to my nerdy interest in form
rather than a form that was actually servicing the story.
And while I teach, endlessly, the importance
of understanding your form--
especially because students come to the university I teach
at, thinking that I'm just going to be a candy store,
and we can all run wild, and play willy-nilly with form--
I tend to be a lot less permissive about form.
And I tend to emphasize with them--
more strictly than, I think, my colleagues--
that they understand why they're making
the formal choices they're making
and that the form is servicing the story or, hopefully,
working in conjunction thematically
with their argument.
So despite that, it took a while for me
to understand that the form needed to do something other
than just challenge me to put together
100-page paragraphs that function the way a paragraph is
supposed to function.
I'm just going to start spinning if I try to keep this going.
I can think more and, maybe, talk to you after about some
of the specifics.
Yes.
You.
I'm trying to formulate this question.
So "Worth the Wait" is the story about [INAUDIBLE]
and the others, of [INAUDIBLE] and, really, the connection
is literal, in a way.
When did you decide that you could not be with them?
When did you make the decision?
Well, partly, I'm stubborn.
That helped.
But I think I could answer, as I said before, I started--
I was already in town researching
Yucca and, on the side, researching Levi and learning,
in that process,
Everything else about suicide in that town.
And also, while trying to figure out who Levi was,
finding that city officials not only
didn't want to give me information about Levi's death,
but they simply didn't want to talk about suicide at all.
There's a very long section of the book
that just details how people were
refusing to speak with me and about the problem of suicide.
And so, I suppose, it was the fact
that both were getting in my blood at the same time
that they--
again, not very practically useful as advice--
but they, eventually, just naturally,
felt like the same issue.
And so still, I'm not entirely sure which
is a metaphor for what.
It's incredibly crude for me to suggest
that Levi is a metaphor for what was happening with Yucca,
or Yucca is a metaphor for what may
have been going on with Levi and suicide
in general in Las Vegas.
But that's how I think of them.
I think of them as speaking to each other atmospherically.
I'm not answering your question, I understand that, but--
[LAUGHTER]
So the point that you decide that you would not give up,
regardless of who was publishing the book,
was when you could not take criticism?
Oh, well, it's when they said, Levi doesn't belong in here.
And I dug my heels in saying, yes, he does.
But, I suppose, when they said, well then, screw you, book.
Goodbye.
And I think it was a bit of stubbornness where I, then,
spent a long time either trying to prove them wrong
or just clarifying for myself why he needed
to be a part of that book.
I can't give you a specific--
I apologize for that.
I should.
I should be able to answer that, but I can't.
I'll think more about that and talk to you after if you--
[LAUGHTER] want to.
We can do one more question.
Yes.
I hope I can answer it.
It's a yes or no.
OK.
[LAUGHTER]
Did you write down the warning on the roll to--
when you were in Las Vegas--
to go back to get that later?
I'm just wondering if you're not supposed to do--
Uh huh.
Well, I went to the stratosphere pretty quickly.
I think, he died on a Saturday.
I learned about it that Saturday night.
I started worrying about it that Saturday night.
I think I was probably there--
I'd never been to the stratosphere before.
I think I was probably there that Sunday and then
just kept going.
So I was probably collecting information for a while.
Then I left town but then returned
to continue doing more research.
Oh, but no, I can answer this.
It wasn't, actually, until later that I knew the path that he
had taken through the hotel.
So I don't know exactly how much later,
but it was months later that I actually
knew where he went on his way to the tower.
So it's, then, that I actually retraced his steps
and wrote down everything I could find.
Does that answer that?
It did.
That was easy.
[LAUGHTER]
All right.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
No problem.
Thanks.
[APPLAUSE]