WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.970 align:middle line:90% If you've got any questions-- 00:00:03.970 --> 00:00:05.970 align:middle line:84% I don't know what the format of these things is. 00:00:05.970 --> 00:00:08.352 align:middle line:90% 00:00:08.352 --> 00:00:09.810 align:middle line:84% Are we happy to try to answer that? 00:00:09.810 --> 00:00:16.750 align:middle line:90% 00:00:16.750 --> 00:00:21.390 align:middle line:84% I got the material for it from two very diverse places. 00:00:21.390 --> 00:00:25.590 align:middle line:84% I spent a year, about a year teaching 00:00:25.590 --> 00:00:29.910 align:middle line:84% in a statement of profit and program type thing 00:00:29.910 --> 00:00:33.420 align:middle line:84% in Bedford-Stuyvesant in New York. 00:00:33.420 --> 00:00:38.400 align:middle line:84% And I got an awful lot of the medical material 00:00:38.400 --> 00:00:45.120 align:middle line:84% from a year I spent doing some cardiovascular research on dogs 00:00:45.120 --> 00:00:48.060 align:middle line:90% after I got out of college. 00:00:48.060 --> 00:00:52.080 align:middle line:84% And they were experiences some nine years apart. 00:00:52.080 --> 00:00:54.450 align:middle line:84% And I always had it in my mind when 00:00:54.450 --> 00:00:57.732 align:middle line:84% I decided I wanted to write full medicine. 00:00:57.732 --> 00:00:59.190 align:middle line:84% I always had it in my mind that I'd 00:00:59.190 --> 00:01:03.780 align:middle line:84% like to do something with the animals 00:01:03.780 --> 00:01:06.210 align:middle line:84% and that a very vibrant kind of metaphor 00:01:06.210 --> 00:01:08.070 align:middle line:84% when you begin to think about it. 00:01:08.070 --> 00:01:10.723 align:middle line:84% And it never got put together right for me 00:01:10.723 --> 00:01:11.640 align:middle line:90% until that experience. 00:01:11.640 --> 00:01:13.290 align:middle line:84% And one day, they simply fell together 00:01:13.290 --> 00:01:19.930 align:middle line:84% and it was a gift from God type thing I suppose. 00:01:19.930 --> 00:01:22.210 align:middle line:90% Do you develop the dogs at all? 00:01:22.210 --> 00:01:25.120 align:middle line:90% Oh, yeah. 00:01:25.120 --> 00:01:29.650 align:middle line:84% The dogs are about a half of the book. 00:01:29.650 --> 00:01:37.180 align:middle line:84% The dogs go in number throughout the book from about 27 00:01:37.180 --> 00:01:39.910 align:middle line:90% all the way up to 93. 00:01:39.910 --> 00:01:45.940 align:middle line:84% And every one of them because of the nature of the experiments, 00:01:45.940 --> 00:01:49.060 align:middle line:84% they're all experimented on to death. 00:01:49.060 --> 00:01:52.870 align:middle line:84% Every one of them is killed off except number 93 00:01:52.870 --> 00:01:55.540 align:middle line:90% who becomes a-- 00:01:55.540 --> 00:01:56.500 align:middle line:90% he's a boxer dog. 00:01:56.500 --> 00:01:59.440 align:middle line:84% I hope that fulfills the metaphor. 00:01:59.440 --> 00:02:01.420 align:middle line:90% But he-- nothing seems-- 00:02:01.420 --> 00:02:03.370 align:middle line:84% is an incredible dog actually because nothing 00:02:03.370 --> 00:02:04.960 align:middle line:90% seems to bother him. 00:02:04.960 --> 00:02:09.490 align:middle line:84% They do all kinds of things on this one dog 00:02:09.490 --> 00:02:14.950 align:middle line:84% and he simply survives them and he shows the scars. 00:02:14.950 --> 00:02:17.350 align:middle line:84% But his energy, and his enthusiasm, 00:02:17.350 --> 00:02:20.800 align:middle line:84% and his desire for affection from Billy Peoples 00:02:20.800 --> 00:02:22.780 align:middle line:90% is never diminished. 00:02:22.780 --> 00:02:25.030 align:middle line:84% And he-- Billy Peoples at the end of the book 00:02:25.030 --> 00:02:31.600 align:middle line:84% simply leaves the dog there and nobody knows its fate. 00:02:31.600 --> 00:02:36.740 align:middle line:84% I couldn't kill the dog off, you know. 00:02:36.740 --> 00:02:42.470 align:middle line:84% But there's-- the metaphor of the dogs is-- 00:02:42.470 --> 00:02:45.660 align:middle line:84% I wouldn't call it heavy handed but it's an obvious, 00:02:45.660 --> 00:02:47.540 align:middle line:90% It's an obvious metaphor. 00:02:47.540 --> 00:02:50.660 align:middle line:84% I think most of them have a kind of individual ones-- 00:02:50.660 --> 00:02:52.620 align:middle line:84% have kind of human characteristics from time 00:02:52.620 --> 00:02:55.210 align:middle line:84% to time not swiftly in that but-- 00:02:55.210 --> 00:02:59.665 align:middle line:90% 00:02:59.665 --> 00:03:02.140 align:middle line:84% [INAUDIBLE QUESTION FROM AUDIENCE] 00:03:02.140 --> 00:03:05.590 align:middle line:84% So far as I know, the first of next year. 00:03:05.590 --> 00:03:08.950 align:middle line:84% Depends on how the blue one does. 00:03:08.950 --> 00:03:14.260 align:middle line:84% Well, they told me an hour, and it's an hour. 00:03:14.260 --> 00:03:16.570 align:middle line:84% Thank you all very much for coming, I appreciate it. 00:03:16.570 --> 00:03:19.920 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:03:19.920 --> 00:03:22.058 align:middle line:90%