WEBVTT

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The next thing I'm
going to read to you

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is on a more serious note.

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This is a story
set in Wisconsin.

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And it's about a
girl called Crystal,

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who I have a little
crush on at the moment.

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Crystal is a girl from
a poor family, who--

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I have a connection with
Wisconsin, which is that my--

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all of you are
thinking, what the hell

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does this guy have
to do with Wisconsin?

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And how dare he write about it.

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But actually, I
have a connection

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with Wisconsin, which is that
my mother comes from there.

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And I've spent a
lot of time there.

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So this is about
Crystal, who Crystal

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belongs to a poor family.

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The politically incorrect
phrase is she's trailer trash.

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She is brought up
in this family where

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they drink Budweiser constantly
all day and don't have jobs.

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And she-- somebody said to me,
your stories are so depressing.

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And why can't you
write a positive story?

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And I thought about this.

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Well, the problem with that
is that there's no conflict

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in positive stories.

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People who are positive are
sort of positively positive,

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and therefore they
don't have conflict.

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But anyway, I thought
about it and thought, well,

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the one way you could do
this is to describe somebody

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who comes from a difficult place
and ascends to the heavens,

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or at least to the place
where they buy their groceries

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from Whole Foods.

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[LAUGHTER]

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And therefore I'm going to
read you the first paragraph

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and then one other bit.

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I haven't finished this story.

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And so it's all sort
of up in the air.

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The working title
of it is-- and I've

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had very negative
comments on this,

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so it probably won't end
up being the final title.

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The working title is "Where
You Are There is No Winter."

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And this is the first paragraph.

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"The county owned the
place, the old Millard's

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prairie schoolhouse, and
rented it to Crystal's father

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on a government
program, the fruits

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of her father's disability,
which no one believed in.

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When the highway department
realigned County W back

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in the '60s, they moved
the road to the other side

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of Seymour Creek.

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And the tube they put
in for the driveway

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washed out again and again,
till finally the town

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poured a concrete slab
for the water to run over,

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just a trickle in
the summer, a flood

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for a few weeks in the spring.

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In the fall, the
willows along the creek

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would shed their leaves.

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And then the house
stood bare for all

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to see, cars up on blocks
right to the walls,

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like cattle at a barn
gate clamoring to be fed

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or to get in, and
the windows covered

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with heavy plastic,
stapled to the frames,

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ripping loose halfway
through the winter,

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and the chimney always smoking.

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Riding the school bus through
fall and winter and spring,

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Crystal felt her life
being uncovered, bare

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and smoking through the
hard Wisconsin winter.

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The afternoons, when she stepped
from the bus and the growing

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dark and walked down to
the stream and across,

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not looking back, not
waiting for her two younger

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brothers, and up toward
the iron valley that

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opened behind the house.

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In the spring, tree branches
swelled and blurred,

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and then the leaves like
sprouting green feathers

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spread and obscured the long
view of the crumbling brick

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schoolhouse with
its rotting bell

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tower just visible
to the other kids

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as the school bus growled away.

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She had grown into beauty, the
assurance of beauty struggling

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unconsciously free of this harsh
background, the beauty that

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might carry her away
from this place,

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with that untouchable
smallness of feature and limbs

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that gives beautiful girls
the air of unreality, of make

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believe, a brave paleness,
her skin is fine as paper.

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Brown eyebrows dashed
hard against an oval face,

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a sexually charged
detail unawakened."

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So that's where she lives.

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And what happens with
Crystal is that all rising

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is by winding stair.

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So her winding stair passes
through the Piggly Wiggly,

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which is a grocery store.

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So she the first
thing she does when

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she graduates from
high school is

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get a job in the Piggly Wiggly.

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And in the Piggly Wiggly, she
finds her first emancipation.

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The only thing you need
to do is that she's moved

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into a town called Black Earth.

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So that's where
she's living now.

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"Leaving home, moving into
the little shadowed town,

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emptying for years
since the railway left,

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she had not been
prepared for the silence,

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for the disengagement.

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And at first it frightened
her, and then it

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filled her with wonder.

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She saw no one, spoke
with no one about anything

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but work, which goods came
in, cans to be stocked,

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when to take lunch.

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Even in a community as
small as Black Earth,

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she had managed not to
become known, as she

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grew toward womanhood,
had wanted at least

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not to degrade her life further
by too much activity and talk.

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The more successful
farmers would joke with her

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as she bagged their
groceries, just at the edge

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of being suggestive.

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And the bachelor farmers
from back in the hills

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would blush to
their roots and try

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not to check out in her line.

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It surprised her to find that
her classmates, other kids

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from the school, suddenly
had changed toward her,

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flat and open in their approach,
as if 12 years together

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had been wiped away, as
if now they all were level

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and the relations eased.

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The cool kids were
breezy, friendly,

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as they had never been.

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And the boys who wouldn't have
looked at her four weeks go now

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circled and sniffed.

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Mrs. Schone sorry.

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The owner of the Piggly Wiggly,
who everybody calls Mrs. Pig,

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is actually called Mrs.
Schone "Mrs. Schone

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let employees make lunch
sandwiches from the meat that

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wouldn't last in
the deli counter

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or eat the salads that
couldn't be sold much longer--

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egg, tuna.

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The bliss of sitting in back
behind the store, no sound

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but the creaking of the wind
in the joists of the building,

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of looking out at the
alfalfa in the fields

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nearby now flowering, that bliss
hollowed her out and slowed

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down her chewing and
then mixed with the taste

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of the white bread, of the meat,
the baloney, the egg salad.

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She took in the green
fields transparently

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without interpretation
and didn't

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want to go back into the store
and back to her checkout line,

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yet wanted to also
because she knew

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that her freedom and
this life could only

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be held if she stayed a little
bit cleaner than the others.

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Because she had
started with less

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could be trusted
less than others

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till she proved her worth.

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For these were the
economies of her town.

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Her pride, her bitter
virtue had always

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been of two kinds,
the pride that

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made her inviolate no
matter what touched her

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and the pride that
had determined

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her to wade through mud or
flood, to bow however low

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she must in order never again to
be thrust back where she came."

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That's Crystal.

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[CHUCKLES]

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[APPLAUSE]

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