WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.750 align:middle line:90% 00:00:00.750 --> 00:00:05.280 align:middle line:84% For the most part, I'd say it's exhilarating. 00:00:05.280 --> 00:00:07.810 align:middle line:84% For the most part, it feels great. 00:00:07.810 --> 00:00:11.280 align:middle line:84% It feels like you can just invent your life 00:00:11.280 --> 00:00:13.980 align:middle line:84% and all you have is a page or a screen. 00:00:13.980 --> 00:00:17.940 align:middle line:84% And that's all you have, the rest has been assumed, 00:00:17.940 --> 00:00:20.220 align:middle line:90% has been borrowed or inherited. 00:00:20.220 --> 00:00:23.970 align:middle line:84% It's all been-- none of it is how you necessarily 00:00:23.970 --> 00:00:25.890 align:middle line:90% need to proceed. 00:00:25.890 --> 00:00:29.790 align:middle line:84% The frustration is in feeling I have so far to go 00:00:29.790 --> 00:00:35.700 align:middle line:84% and I feel that line in the piece I just read, Where Does 00:00:35.700 --> 00:00:40.290 align:middle line:84% Your Life Go comes from so many places in me 00:00:40.290 --> 00:00:43.050 align:middle line:90% because I feel that the last-- 00:00:43.050 --> 00:00:45.000 align:middle line:84% now I've written 10 books and they've all 00:00:45.000 --> 00:00:46.860 align:middle line:90% been in apprenticeship. 00:00:46.860 --> 00:00:49.410 align:middle line:84% I've just learned by working so hard 00:00:49.410 --> 00:00:53.650 align:middle line:84% and writing so much what might be possible. 00:00:53.650 --> 00:00:57.510 align:middle line:84% And so it's a difficult place to be 00:00:57.510 --> 00:01:01.450 align:middle line:84% and how much one will get to do and of course, 00:01:01.450 --> 00:01:04.290 align:middle line:84% with all the other circumstances of one's life. 00:01:04.290 --> 00:01:06.690 align:middle line:84% It's a little bit difficult in that 00:01:06.690 --> 00:01:10.420 align:middle line:84% I can never dream of supporting myself as a writer. 00:01:10.420 --> 00:01:13.740 align:middle line:84% So I never will have full time to write. 00:01:13.740 --> 00:01:17.550 align:middle line:84% And none of my books has been easy to publish. 00:01:17.550 --> 00:01:20.790 align:middle line:84% Every single one of them has been an enormous struggle 00:01:20.790 --> 00:01:21.780 align:middle line:90% in one way or another. 00:01:21.780 --> 00:01:24.960 align:middle line:84% And I could go into lots of war stories, but it's just really-- 00:01:24.960 --> 00:01:26.730 align:middle line:90% it's just the case. 00:01:26.730 --> 00:01:32.640 align:middle line:90% 00:01:32.640 --> 00:01:34.150 align:middle line:90% That part is hard. 00:01:34.150 --> 00:01:38.100 align:middle line:84% But for me when I knew I was going to be a writer, 00:01:38.100 --> 00:01:46.200 align:middle line:84% the notion of just getting close to putting one's hand, 00:01:46.200 --> 00:01:49.500 align:middle line:84% fingerprints on a page, just doing whatever 00:01:49.500 --> 00:01:51.420 align:middle line:84% you could do to get close to that, 00:01:51.420 --> 00:01:54.000 align:middle line:84% to live next to what's essentially 00:01:54.000 --> 00:01:58.650 align:middle line:84% the great mysteries every day-- not to master them 00:01:58.650 --> 00:02:01.710 align:middle line:84% or to understand them but to just be next to them 00:02:01.710 --> 00:02:06.300 align:middle line:84% seem to me an amazing way to spend one's time on the Earth. 00:02:06.300 --> 00:02:09.509 align:middle line:84% And so for the most part, it's just a great-- 00:02:09.509 --> 00:02:12.900 align:middle line:84% it's just a great privilege to be able to do it. 00:02:12.900 --> 00:02:16.773 align:middle line:84% It's emotionally draining also a lot of the time. 00:02:16.773 --> 00:02:18.690 align:middle line:84% I wrote a book called Defiance, which I thought 00:02:18.690 --> 00:02:21.150 align:middle line:84% was just going to be a lark about a woman waiting 00:02:21.150 --> 00:02:23.640 align:middle line:84% to be executed on death row for murdering 00:02:23.640 --> 00:02:25.890 align:middle line:90% two of her favorite students. 00:02:25.890 --> 00:02:28.470 align:middle line:84% And I thought it would just be fun to do while I'm teaching 00:02:28.470 --> 00:02:29.880 align:middle line:90% and directing the program. 00:02:29.880 --> 00:02:35.590 align:middle line:84% I became indicted emotionally in a way I had no idea. 00:02:35.590 --> 00:02:40.110 align:middle line:84% I had no idea what was happening to me as I wrote this thing. 00:02:40.110 --> 00:02:42.300 align:middle line:90% And I think there's a lot of-- 00:02:42.300 --> 00:02:44.670 align:middle line:90% there's a lot of-- 00:02:44.670 --> 00:02:45.900 align:middle line:90% there's a lot of exhaustion. 00:02:45.900 --> 00:02:47.400 align:middle line:90% I feel like I'm always tired. 00:02:47.400 --> 00:02:51.150 align:middle line:84% And I don't think it's a coincidence that there 00:02:51.150 --> 00:02:54.090 align:middle line:84% are a lot of writers who have drinking problems or drug 00:02:54.090 --> 00:02:55.898 align:middle line:84% problems or have other problems because I 00:02:55.898 --> 00:02:57.690 align:middle line:84% do think that there are certain things that 00:02:57.690 --> 00:02:59.010 align:middle line:90% are rest from perception. 00:02:59.010 --> 00:03:01.650 align:middle line:84% But nothing else is that you're constantly 00:03:01.650 --> 00:03:04.530 align:middle line:84% emotionally invested and trying to find 00:03:04.530 --> 00:03:05.700 align:middle line:90% the shapes for language. 00:03:05.700 --> 00:03:10.020 align:middle line:84% And then language is just so much greater than any of us. 00:03:10.020 --> 00:03:12.060 align:middle line:84% Being at the altar of the unsayable 00:03:12.060 --> 00:03:15.570 align:middle line:84% constantly is emotionally exhausting too. 00:03:15.570 --> 00:03:18.810 align:middle line:90% So but mostly, it's just great. 00:03:18.810 --> 00:03:19.770 align:middle line:90% Mostly. 00:03:19.770 --> 00:03:23.980 align:middle line:84% And it varies, of course, book by book too. 00:03:23.980 --> 00:03:25.812 align:middle line:90% So yeah. 00:03:25.812 --> 00:03:26.770 align:middle line:90% Hear she's very frisky. 00:03:26.770 --> 00:03:27.978 align:middle line:90% I haven't seen the movie yet. 00:03:27.978 --> 00:03:33.490 align:middle line:84% But I hear she's very physically able, and that interests me 00:03:33.490 --> 00:03:35.560 align:middle line:90% that it's a huge-- 00:03:35.560 --> 00:03:37.960 align:middle line:84% I mean, to go back again to Frida as the painter, 00:03:37.960 --> 00:03:41.080 align:middle line:84% that it's a huge part of where those paintings came from 00:03:41.080 --> 00:03:44.650 align:middle line:84% was that pain and what that was like, 00:03:44.650 --> 00:03:48.020 align:middle line:84% the rhythm of that every day, the feel of that all of that. 00:03:48.020 --> 00:03:50.320 align:middle line:90% And so that interests me. 00:03:50.320 --> 00:03:53.590 align:middle line:84% I also-- the idea of retrieving Frida interests me 00:03:53.590 --> 00:03:55.360 align:middle line:84% because she's so maligned and she's so 00:03:55.360 --> 00:03:58.870 align:middle line:84% made to feel like just a someone who 00:03:58.870 --> 00:04:03.800 align:middle line:84% feminists have taken and done something with and elevated 00:04:03.800 --> 00:04:07.390 align:middle line:84% and she's really an extraordinary painter. 00:04:07.390 --> 00:04:09.130 align:middle line:84% But that she used all of this stuff. 00:04:09.130 --> 00:04:11.500 align:middle line:84% That she used the stuff of her life in order to make 00:04:11.500 --> 00:04:12.970 align:middle line:90% it is true. 00:04:12.970 --> 00:04:15.770 align:middle line:84% I feel that way about Plath too, and she's a great poet. 00:04:15.770 --> 00:04:17.649 align:middle line:84% And I feel like she's much maligned 00:04:17.649 --> 00:04:20.740 align:middle line:84% because of the circumstances of her life. 00:04:20.740 --> 00:04:29.620 align:middle line:84% And anyway, again, I think that to leave something out 00:04:29.620 --> 00:04:33.740 align:middle line:90% as huge as that is problematic. 00:04:33.740 --> 00:04:34.240 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:04:34.240 --> 00:04:36.790 align:middle line:90% Well, I had Rose-- 00:04:36.790 --> 00:04:39.640 align:middle line:90% I had Rose when I was over 40. 00:04:39.640 --> 00:04:44.050 align:middle line:84% And felt like I understood certain things 00:04:44.050 --> 00:04:47.810 align:middle line:84% about concentration and stamina artistically 00:04:47.810 --> 00:04:53.080 align:middle line:84% so that I could at least get back to that writing space 00:04:53.080 --> 00:04:54.040 align:middle line:90% maybe. 00:04:54.040 --> 00:04:59.050 align:middle line:84% After setting out on this thing, I 00:04:59.050 --> 00:05:01.060 align:middle line:84% knew not what it was going to be at all. 00:05:01.060 --> 00:05:04.360 align:middle line:90% And in fact, I've found that-- 00:05:04.360 --> 00:05:05.840 align:middle line:90% again, talk about exhaustion. 00:05:05.840 --> 00:05:07.900 align:middle line:84% We were talking about this earlier. 00:05:07.900 --> 00:05:10.780 align:middle line:84% It's another kind of exhaustion and yet it's 00:05:10.780 --> 00:05:13.060 align:middle line:90% also a window onto something. 00:05:13.060 --> 00:05:18.430 align:middle line:84% My work is even more tender and even more vulnerable 00:05:18.430 --> 00:05:24.100 align:middle line:84% now than it ever was because of understanding what it means now 00:05:24.100 --> 00:05:28.898 align:middle line:84% to have a little soul to move through the world in a way. 00:05:28.898 --> 00:05:29.815 align:middle line:90% I lost her for awhile. 00:05:29.815 --> 00:05:32.265 align:middle line:90% I was in New York. 00:05:32.265 --> 00:05:34.390 align:middle line:84% I didn't lose her, but I didn't know where she was. 00:05:34.390 --> 00:05:37.570 align:middle line:84% And this note was brought up in you and it's 00:05:37.570 --> 00:05:40.840 align:middle line:84% a fervor like no other and yet it's 00:05:40.840 --> 00:05:45.700 align:middle line:84% close to artistic fervor too, the devotional aspect, 00:05:45.700 --> 00:05:49.225 align:middle line:84% the notion of just taking care and being-- 00:05:49.225 --> 00:05:52.060 align:middle line:90% 00:05:52.060 --> 00:05:54.130 align:middle line:84% and you're always being watched so you've 00:05:54.130 --> 00:05:56.980 align:middle line:84% got to be better than you ever could be. 00:05:56.980 --> 00:05:59.260 align:middle line:84% And I feel like the work demands that of me too. 00:05:59.260 --> 00:06:03.040 align:middle line:84% That it's watching me and so I need to be a better person 00:06:03.040 --> 00:06:07.870 align:middle line:84% and be a better writer and risk more and be more there. 00:06:07.870 --> 00:06:09.020 align:middle line:90% And this is same thing. 00:06:09.020 --> 00:06:11.860 align:middle line:84% So motherhood is very, very similar in some ways. 00:06:11.860 --> 00:06:15.700 align:middle line:84% And teaching, I find a little bit that way too. 00:06:15.700 --> 00:06:17.440 align:middle line:84% So it's lucky I don't teach very much. 00:06:17.440 --> 00:06:19.240 align:middle line:84% I only teach one semester a year now, 00:06:19.240 --> 00:06:23.500 align:middle line:84% but it's all part of the same thing really. 00:06:23.500 --> 00:06:27.070 align:middle line:84% It's all incredibly creative acts, I think. 00:06:27.070 --> 00:06:33.730 align:middle line:90% And so, so enormous really. 00:06:33.730 --> 00:06:39.610 align:middle line:84% I'm writing now, though, in the book The Bay of Angels children 00:06:39.610 --> 00:06:41.080 align:middle line:90% have taken it over. 00:06:41.080 --> 00:06:41.860 align:middle line:90% I mean, utterly. 00:06:41.860 --> 00:06:45.340 align:middle line:84% There's this huge fantasy where these children are escaping 00:06:45.340 --> 00:06:50.080 align:middle line:84% in Germany and I'm thinking, how can I-- how can I 00:06:50.080 --> 00:06:51.550 align:middle line:90% rationalize narrative. 00:06:51.550 --> 00:06:53.530 align:middle line:84% Because now I really think about when 00:06:53.530 --> 00:06:56.320 align:middle line:84% to write a linear narrative, how it works, why it 00:06:56.320 --> 00:06:57.850 align:middle line:90% would work as opposed to other. 00:06:57.850 --> 00:06:59.622 align:middle line:84% And in this case, these kids have just 00:06:59.622 --> 00:07:00.830 align:middle line:90% got to get out of this place. 00:07:00.830 --> 00:07:03.130 align:middle line:84% I've got to keep things happening and moving so 00:07:03.130 --> 00:07:04.900 align:middle line:90% that they can get out of there. 00:07:04.900 --> 00:07:07.390 align:middle line:84% And so formally, it's a way for me 00:07:07.390 --> 00:07:12.100 align:middle line:84% to use a linear narrative in a way 00:07:12.100 --> 00:07:14.275 align:middle line:90% that I can still believe in. 00:07:14.275 --> 00:07:15.250 align:middle line:90% And that's interesting. 00:07:15.250 --> 00:07:17.480 align:middle line:84% But kids are everywhere, they've taken over the book. 00:07:17.480 --> 00:07:23.540 align:middle line:84% And I knew in Ava actually that Ava had a miscarriage, 00:07:23.540 --> 00:07:24.535 align:middle line:90% a stillbirth really. 00:07:24.535 --> 00:07:27.370 align:middle line:90% 00:07:27.370 --> 00:07:35.230 align:middle line:84% And this book opens and surrounds that a lot. 00:07:35.230 --> 00:07:39.970 align:middle line:84% And also her aunt Sophie from that book died at Treblinka 00:07:39.970 --> 00:07:42.650 align:middle line:84% and was shot into a ditch when she was seven months pregnant. 00:07:42.650 --> 00:07:44.650 align:middle line:84% So the children are just everywhere 00:07:44.650 --> 00:07:46.000 align:middle line:90% and it's very interesting. 00:07:46.000 --> 00:07:48.850 align:middle line:84% Then Rose becomes something else where she is-- 00:07:48.850 --> 00:07:51.694 align:middle line:90% 00:07:51.694 --> 00:07:54.300 align:middle line:84% I write down her knock-knock jokes, 00:07:54.300 --> 00:07:58.230 align:middle line:84% I write down everything she does and everything she-- 00:07:58.230 --> 00:08:01.680 align:middle line:84% and it becomes-- she becomes part of the work and a living 00:08:01.680 --> 00:08:02.640 align:middle line:90% real way. 00:08:02.640 --> 00:08:05.455 align:middle line:90% So it's very interesting. 00:08:05.455 --> 00:08:07.830 align:middle line:84% Still I'm not sure I have the temperament to be a mother. 00:08:07.830 --> 00:08:10.680 align:middle line:84% I'm very, very solitary and it demands 00:08:10.680 --> 00:08:15.240 align:middle line:84% that you be there in ways that are superhuman for someone 00:08:15.240 --> 00:08:16.750 align:middle line:90% as solitary as myself. 00:08:16.750 --> 00:08:19.050 align:middle line:84% So I don't know, but there you have it. 00:08:19.050 --> 00:08:19.680 align:middle line:90% She's there. 00:08:19.680 --> 00:08:23.680 align:middle line:90% 00:08:23.680 --> 00:08:26.650 align:middle line:84% Can you talk a little bit about returning to the character. 00:08:26.650 --> 00:08:29.440 align:middle line:90% 00:08:29.440 --> 00:08:31.390 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:08:31.390 --> 00:08:34.392 align:middle line:84% All of I'm not really returning to her as I never left her. 00:08:34.392 --> 00:08:36.559 align:middle line:84% I've been working on this book already for 10 years, 00:08:36.559 --> 00:08:40.150 align:middle line:84% and I think Ava was published in '93 so almost 10 years. 00:08:40.150 --> 00:08:41.740 align:middle line:90% I mean, I've been continually-- 00:08:41.740 --> 00:08:44.500 align:middle line:84% I always felt I wasn't a good enough writer yet 00:08:44.500 --> 00:08:46.900 align:middle line:90% to write this next book. 00:08:46.900 --> 00:08:49.840 align:middle line:84% And so all these other projects intervened 00:08:49.840 --> 00:08:55.450 align:middle line:84% and it was my scales while I was getting 00:08:55.450 --> 00:08:58.180 align:middle line:84% in the best shape I could in order to write the book. 00:08:58.180 --> 00:08:59.890 align:middle line:84% But then I started to realize I was 00:08:59.890 --> 00:09:04.480 align:middle line:84% going to lose it if I didn't really sit and begin 00:09:04.480 --> 00:09:05.530 align:middle line:90% composition. 00:09:05.530 --> 00:09:06.820 align:middle line:90% So she's always been there. 00:09:06.820 --> 00:09:09.910 align:middle line:84% And Ava is the only book of mine that I've written and has not 00:09:09.910 --> 00:09:12.190 align:middle line:90% stayed shut. 00:09:12.190 --> 00:09:13.780 align:middle line:90% It hasn't stayed over. 00:09:13.780 --> 00:09:17.950 align:middle line:84% It's unfinished in every way and it's an odd book. 00:09:17.950 --> 00:09:22.090 align:middle line:84% It doesn't live within its covers easily. 00:09:22.090 --> 00:09:25.750 align:middle line:90% It's fluid in a strange way. 00:09:25.750 --> 00:09:29.570 align:middle line:84% I can't quite articulate and yet it's the case. 00:09:29.570 --> 00:09:41.900 align:middle line:84% And so for a while, I tried to just 00:09:41.900 --> 00:09:47.950 align:middle line:84% to understand that as the oddness and the strange book 00:09:47.950 --> 00:09:48.450 align:middle line:90% that it was. 00:09:48.450 --> 00:09:49.920 align:middle line:90% It was written in one draft. 00:09:49.920 --> 00:09:51.420 align:middle line:90% It was written quickly. 00:09:51.420 --> 00:09:53.683 align:middle line:84% It was written in a bit of a trance. 00:09:53.683 --> 00:09:56.100 align:middle line:84% And everything in my books, I mean, they're all different. 00:09:56.100 --> 00:09:58.230 align:middle line:84% But some might go through a million drafts 00:09:58.230 --> 00:10:00.840 align:middle line:84% and some might have been written in one draft. 00:10:00.840 --> 00:10:05.370 align:middle line:90% And yet it's never left really. 00:10:05.370 --> 00:10:14.040 align:middle line:84% And so I went back or I never left really to stay with it. 00:10:14.040 --> 00:10:17.250 align:middle line:84% Again, it really varies from project to project. 00:10:17.250 --> 00:10:22.500 align:middle line:84% In something like-- some books come mysteriously from 00:10:22.500 --> 00:10:29.273 align:middle line:84% I'll find myself in a museum all the time. 00:10:29.273 --> 00:10:30.690 align:middle line:84% I'm wondering, Oh, I love museums. 00:10:30.690 --> 00:10:32.273 align:middle line:84% So I wonder why I keep looking at this 00:10:32.273 --> 00:10:33.513 align:middle line:90% and keep going back and back. 00:10:33.513 --> 00:10:34.680 align:middle line:90% And I just want to trust it. 00:10:34.680 --> 00:10:37.060 align:middle line:90% I don't worry about it too much. 00:10:37.060 --> 00:10:38.520 align:middle line:84% And then from there, the art love 00:10:38.520 --> 00:10:42.510 align:middle line:84% started materializing as visual concerns 00:10:42.510 --> 00:10:46.710 align:middle line:84% and then became an idea, became an idea 00:10:46.710 --> 00:10:53.170 align:middle line:84% about the relationship between the perfection of one's 00:10:53.170 --> 00:10:56.530 align:middle line:84% perfection of the kind of painting and a life and how 00:10:56.530 --> 00:10:57.380 align:middle line:90% those two things. 00:10:57.380 --> 00:10:59.140 align:middle line:84% And so I started writing around that idea 00:10:59.140 --> 00:11:02.590 align:middle line:84% little bit and constructed a fiction. 00:11:02.590 --> 00:11:05.470 align:middle line:84% And during the writing of that fiction, 00:11:05.470 --> 00:11:07.600 align:middle line:90% my own life intervened in ways. 00:11:07.600 --> 00:11:08.930 align:middle line:90% And I didn't understand it. 00:11:08.930 --> 00:11:10.300 align:middle line:90% But, my best friend-- 00:11:10.300 --> 00:11:12.160 align:middle line:90% this was in 1985-- 00:11:12.160 --> 00:11:14.230 align:middle line:84% was diagnosed with AIDS at a time when 00:11:14.230 --> 00:11:18.070 align:middle line:84% no one knew what it was, what anything other than what you 00:11:18.070 --> 00:11:20.530 align:middle line:84% have got the flu and the next day 00:11:20.530 --> 00:11:22.760 align:middle line:84% you're going to die sort of thing. 00:11:22.760 --> 00:11:25.240 align:middle line:84% And so I stopped writing that book utterly 00:11:25.240 --> 00:11:27.550 align:middle line:84% because I just didn't think I could-- 00:11:27.550 --> 00:11:33.500 align:middle line:84% I just couldn't be writing this thing, these perfect sentences. 00:11:33.500 --> 00:11:35.140 align:middle line:84% I worked so hard in my first book 00:11:35.140 --> 00:11:37.180 align:middle line:84% to learn how to write a perfect sentence. 00:11:37.180 --> 00:11:39.700 align:middle line:84% And then they just all seemed utterly false 00:11:39.700 --> 00:11:40.930 align:middle line:90% and utterly suspect. 00:11:40.930 --> 00:11:42.565 align:middle line:90% If I couldn't get close to-- 00:11:42.565 --> 00:11:44.440 align:middle line:84% in the morning, I would be writing this book. 00:11:44.440 --> 00:11:47.260 align:middle line:84% In the afternoon, I would be walking to St. Vincent's 00:11:47.260 --> 00:11:49.120 align:middle line:84% Hospital to visit him and to watch him 00:11:49.120 --> 00:11:52.330 align:middle line:84% under this fluorescent light of day after day dying. 00:11:52.330 --> 00:11:54.525 align:middle line:84% And then I come home and I try to write this late 00:11:54.525 --> 00:11:55.150 align:middle line:90% in the morning. 00:11:55.150 --> 00:11:57.525 align:middle line:84% And I go back again and I go back and forth. 00:11:57.525 --> 00:11:59.650 align:middle line:84% This is the time when I had a grant from someplace. 00:11:59.650 --> 00:12:01.150 align:middle line:90% I wasn't working at the time. 00:12:01.150 --> 00:12:05.290 align:middle line:84% And it just silenced me utterly finally. 00:12:05.290 --> 00:12:08.620 align:middle line:84% And not until I understood that this had to be-- 00:12:08.620 --> 00:12:11.170 align:middle line:84% this had to be part of the book itself, 00:12:11.170 --> 00:12:13.360 align:middle line:84% that this had to be this experience and that 00:12:13.360 --> 00:12:14.170 align:middle line:90% there's this-- 00:12:14.170 --> 00:12:17.290 align:middle line:84% the book's divided into sections-- 00:12:17.290 --> 00:12:20.740 align:middle line:84% spring, summer, fall, winter, more winter and spring. 00:12:20.740 --> 00:12:22.360 align:middle line:84% And in the more winter section, it's 00:12:22.360 --> 00:12:24.520 align:middle line:84% just-- it breaks from the fiction utterly 00:12:24.520 --> 00:12:29.860 align:middle line:84% and it's just me talking to Gary after his death. 00:12:29.860 --> 00:12:31.720 align:middle line:84% And then it resumes in fiction again. 00:12:31.720 --> 00:12:33.160 align:middle line:90% But I needed-- 00:12:33.160 --> 00:12:37.220 align:middle line:84% I needed to do this in order for a lot of reasons. 00:12:37.220 --> 00:12:40.070 align:middle line:84% But in order to continue to be a writer at all. 00:12:40.070 --> 00:12:42.430 align:middle line:84% And so while, I became an idea somehow 00:12:42.430 --> 00:12:48.010 align:middle line:90% then it entered the form formal. 00:12:48.010 --> 00:12:50.410 align:middle line:84% I'm most interested in form probably 00:12:50.410 --> 00:12:52.720 align:middle line:84% in the formal aspects of something. 00:12:52.720 --> 00:12:55.420 align:middle line:84% Like when it became clear I was keeping 00:12:55.420 --> 00:12:59.110 align:middle line:84% these notebooks of fragments because I was promoting 00:12:59.110 --> 00:13:01.550 align:middle line:84% one of my books, which I hate doing going out 00:13:01.550 --> 00:13:04.940 align:middle line:84% and doing all of the things one needs to do. 00:13:04.940 --> 00:13:07.300 align:middle line:84% And so to keep my sanity, I would just 00:13:07.300 --> 00:13:08.980 align:middle line:84% write a little fragment of something 00:13:08.980 --> 00:13:12.550 align:middle line:84% every day, like something overheard, something-- 00:13:12.550 --> 00:13:15.370 align:middle line:84% this is just the pleasure of writing one line. 00:13:15.370 --> 00:13:18.310 align:middle line:84% And I would collect these sentences, sentence 00:13:18.310 --> 00:13:20.050 align:middle line:90% after sentence after sentence. 00:13:20.050 --> 00:13:26.140 align:middle line:84% And ordinarily, what I would do is 00:13:26.140 --> 00:13:27.790 align:middle line:84% try to make a shape out of some of it 00:13:27.790 --> 00:13:30.580 align:middle line:84% or look and see what I had or try to understand 00:13:30.580 --> 00:13:31.690 align:middle line:90% what it was about. 00:13:31.690 --> 00:13:34.120 align:middle line:84% And all I noticed was there was a sensibility 00:13:34.120 --> 00:13:35.290 align:middle line:90% there of some sort. 00:13:35.290 --> 00:13:42.580 align:middle line:84% Then Bush-- the Bush father, Senior, decided to-- 00:13:42.580 --> 00:13:45.730 align:middle line:90% the Gulf War began. 00:13:45.730 --> 00:13:48.160 align:middle line:84% And I became so enraged that I just 00:13:48.160 --> 00:13:50.940 align:middle line:90% decided no, I'm not going to-- 00:13:50.940 --> 00:13:54.460 align:middle line:84% I'm not going to buy into that traditional narrative, 00:13:54.460 --> 00:14:00.430 align:middle line:84% that narrative which I started to perceive of as an inherited 00:14:00.430 --> 00:14:04.270 align:middle line:84% narrative of tyranny, a tyrannical narrative in which I 00:14:04.270 --> 00:14:06.640 align:middle line:84% the writer was going to tell you what to think. 00:14:06.640 --> 00:14:08.380 align:middle line:84% And I knew something you didn't know 00:14:08.380 --> 00:14:11.910 align:middle line:84% and I was going to make up this story for you. 00:14:11.910 --> 00:14:15.910 align:middle line:84% Seemed to me just appalling under the circumstances. 00:14:15.910 --> 00:14:21.010 align:middle line:84% And it's interesting that now he was coming up anyway. 00:14:21.010 --> 00:14:23.320 align:middle line:90% That became Ava. 00:14:23.320 --> 00:14:27.580 align:middle line:84% I just decided to let it stand with very little anything 00:14:27.580 --> 00:14:29.020 align:middle line:90% to it. 00:14:29.020 --> 00:14:32.020 align:middle line:90% That readers are actually-- 00:14:32.020 --> 00:14:34.810 align:middle line:84% that it's exciting to write the story yourself. 00:14:34.810 --> 00:14:37.630 align:middle line:84% It's exciting to have these fragments, 00:14:37.630 --> 00:14:38.950 align:middle line:90% these pieces, these bits. 00:14:38.950 --> 00:14:41.620 align:middle line:84% And I understood that the sensibility 00:14:41.620 --> 00:14:44.710 align:middle line:84% was one that was abstracting, that was breaking down, 00:14:44.710 --> 00:14:46.450 align:middle line:90% that was changing, that was-- 00:14:46.450 --> 00:14:48.760 align:middle line:84% so it became clear to me it was the last day. 00:14:48.760 --> 00:14:51.070 align:middle line:84% It was a dire moment in this woman's life. 00:14:51.070 --> 00:14:53.620 align:middle line:84% And then it became clear after a much longer time 00:14:53.620 --> 00:14:56.800 align:middle line:84% that it was the last day of her life. 00:14:56.800 --> 00:14:58.980 align:middle line:90% And every book has a story. 00:14:58.980 --> 00:15:09.000 align:middle line:90%