WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:07.420 align:middle line:90% 00:00:07.420 --> 00:00:09.110 align:middle line:90% Those were children's stories. 00:00:09.110 --> 00:00:09.610 align:middle line:90% No, I just-- 00:00:09.610 --> 00:00:11.582 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:00:11.582 --> 00:00:13.540 align:middle line:84% You know, actually, the old fairy tales weren't 00:00:13.540 --> 00:00:15.160 align:middle line:90% for children at all, of course. 00:00:15.160 --> 00:00:17.380 align:middle line:84% I mean they were very bawdy stories-- 00:00:17.380 --> 00:00:21.250 align:middle line:84% B-A-W-D-Y, but also B-O-D-Y. The oldest version of Little Red 00:00:21.250 --> 00:00:23.800 align:middle line:84% Riding Hood has Little Red Riding Hood doing a striptease 00:00:23.800 --> 00:00:25.870 align:middle line:84% for the wolf, get in bed with him, 00:00:25.870 --> 00:00:29.200 align:middle line:84% and then escape only by realizing he's about to "eat" 00:00:29.200 --> 00:00:32.168 align:middle line:84% her, and she says she has to pee and wants to do it 00:00:32.168 --> 00:00:32.710 align:middle line:90% in the woods. 00:00:32.710 --> 00:00:33.520 align:middle line:90% And that's how she gets out. 00:00:33.520 --> 00:00:34.600 align:middle line:90% So she runs home naked. 00:00:34.600 --> 00:00:36.670 align:middle line:84% That's the old Little Red Riding Hood. 00:00:36.670 --> 00:00:39.665 align:middle line:84% Folklorists think of it as the oldest one. 00:00:39.665 --> 00:00:41.290 align:middle line:84% Actually, that was one of the questions 00:00:41.290 --> 00:00:42.280 align:middle line:90% in the "Wildcat," right? 00:00:42.280 --> 00:00:44.320 align:middle line:84% It was like, well, my question that I got-- and they 00:00:44.320 --> 00:00:45.945 align:middle line:84% sort of blended our questions together, 00:00:45.945 --> 00:00:47.362 align:middle line:84% but the question I got was, what's 00:00:47.362 --> 00:00:49.120 align:middle line:84% the difference between writing fairy tales 00:00:49.120 --> 00:00:49.930 align:middle line:90% and writing for children? 00:00:49.930 --> 00:00:51.347 align:middle line:84% It was actually the same question. 00:00:51.347 --> 00:00:54.440 align:middle line:84% And I love Maurice Sendak's great quote about that. 00:00:54.440 --> 00:00:57.890 align:middle line:84% He wrote Where the Wild Things Are, Dear Mili, all 00:00:57.890 --> 00:00:59.020 align:middle line:90% of these amazing books. 00:00:59.020 --> 00:01:02.060 align:middle line:84% And when he was asked why do you write for children? 00:01:02.060 --> 00:01:04.602 align:middle line:84% He said in his typically disdainful way-- he's great, 00:01:04.602 --> 00:01:05.560 align:middle line:90% I love his personality. 00:01:05.560 --> 00:01:07.690 align:middle line:84% But he's like, I don't write for children. 00:01:07.690 --> 00:01:09.020 align:middle line:90% I write. 00:01:09.020 --> 00:01:09.520 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:01:09.520 --> 00:01:11.890 align:middle line:90% And I kind of get that. 00:01:11.890 --> 00:01:14.020 align:middle line:90% I just sit down and write. 00:01:14.020 --> 00:01:15.970 align:middle line:90% And my picture books-- 00:01:15.970 --> 00:01:17.950 align:middle line:84% I love my picture book editor, and I 00:01:17.950 --> 00:01:24.100 align:middle line:84% guess those stories have maybe slightly happier endings? 00:01:24.100 --> 00:01:26.560 align:middle line:84% But some reviewers call them creepy, 00:01:26.560 --> 00:01:30.850 align:middle line:84% so I feel like they can be whatever to any reader. 00:01:30.850 --> 00:01:32.710 align:middle line:84% But I do get rather dismayed when-- 00:01:32.710 --> 00:01:36.730 align:middle line:84% because Fairy Tales are on the title of that book, 00:01:36.730 --> 00:01:38.830 align:middle line:84% I find it, sometimes, in the picture book section 00:01:38.830 --> 00:01:40.120 align:middle line:90% at libraries or bookstores. 00:01:40.120 --> 00:01:45.430 align:middle line:84% And I always quickly move it because some things children 00:01:45.430 --> 00:01:47.830 align:middle line:84% shouldn't hear, and that's a line straight from old fairy 00:01:47.830 --> 00:01:49.510 align:middle line:90% tales, too. 00:01:49.510 --> 00:01:51.250 align:middle line:90% I don't adjust what I do. 00:01:51.250 --> 00:01:53.890 align:middle line:84% I think that's all so much the reader, the lens 00:01:53.890 --> 00:01:55.100 align:middle line:90% that you bring to the work. 00:01:55.100 --> 00:01:55.600 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:01:55.600 --> 00:02:01.860 align:middle line:90% 00:02:01.860 --> 00:02:04.240 align:middle line:90% Anyone else? 00:02:04.240 --> 00:02:06.655 align:middle line:90% Oh, OK. 00:02:06.655 --> 00:02:08.280 align:middle line:84% This one's for Ander, and I'm wondering 00:02:08.280 --> 00:02:12.210 align:middle line:84% if you can say more about the process of writing poems 00:02:12.210 --> 00:02:19.380 align:middle line:84% that ended up as 750-word essays or how that happened over time? 00:02:19.380 --> 00:02:21.330 align:middle line:84% Well, a big part of that had to do 00:02:21.330 --> 00:02:23.820 align:middle line:84% with just trying to find a constraint to get 00:02:23.820 --> 00:02:26.490 align:middle line:90% me to keep them from expanding. 00:02:26.490 --> 00:02:28.020 align:middle line:84% I don't know how to write an essay. 00:02:28.020 --> 00:02:29.728 align:middle line:84% I didn't know how to write a short essay, 00:02:29.728 --> 00:02:32.038 align:middle line:84% so all I know how is to write an essay 00:02:32.038 --> 00:02:34.330 align:middle line:84% and then kind of let it go as long as it's going to go. 00:02:34.330 --> 00:02:36.280 align:middle line:84% But if you limit it to 750 words, 00:02:36.280 --> 00:02:39.163 align:middle line:84% you can't do what you normally do with an essay, 00:02:39.163 --> 00:02:41.580 align:middle line:84% or what I normally do I guess, with an essay which is just 00:02:41.580 --> 00:02:44.455 align:middle line:90% keep researching and adding. 00:02:44.455 --> 00:02:46.080 align:middle line:84% You can make it a little bit narrative, 00:02:46.080 --> 00:02:49.710 align:middle line:84% but honestly, what I found is I needed another engine. 00:02:49.710 --> 00:02:53.640 align:middle line:84% And so I thought the better strategy would be to rely on-- 00:02:53.640 --> 00:02:56.250 align:middle line:84% as I've done in some of my longer essays also-- 00:02:56.250 --> 00:02:59.760 align:middle line:90% tools from the poetry cookbook. 00:02:59.760 --> 00:03:01.920 align:middle line:84% And so having that sense of constraint, 00:03:01.920 --> 00:03:05.370 align:middle line:84% writing them as lineated poems in the first draft, 00:03:05.370 --> 00:03:08.985 align:middle line:90% keeps them from spiraling away. 00:03:08.985 --> 00:03:11.610 align:middle line:84% Not that it inhibits discovery because I don't think-- 00:03:11.610 --> 00:03:13.140 align:middle line:90% that's constraint. 00:03:13.140 --> 00:03:14.940 align:middle line:84% It actually inspires discovery, and that's 00:03:14.940 --> 00:03:16.260 align:middle line:90% the benefit of constraint. 00:03:16.260 --> 00:03:18.660 align:middle line:84% But then, having said that, I wanted 00:03:18.660 --> 00:03:21.690 align:middle line:84% to loosen it up afterwards because I 00:03:21.690 --> 00:03:23.010 align:middle line:90% don't think of them as poems. 00:03:23.010 --> 00:03:25.020 align:middle line:84% I don't think they work as poems. 00:03:25.020 --> 00:03:26.940 align:middle line:84% And some of them are actually very prose-y, 00:03:26.940 --> 00:03:29.250 align:middle line:90% but they do rely on-- 00:03:29.250 --> 00:03:31.530 align:middle line:84% you can hear some of the rhyme, some 00:03:31.530 --> 00:03:35.430 align:middle line:84% of the way in which I sort of swerve from one thing 00:03:35.430 --> 00:03:41.430 align:middle line:84% to another, which is, I think, a very poetry-oriented strategy. 00:03:41.430 --> 00:03:43.110 align:middle line:90% And they have to-- 00:03:43.110 --> 00:03:46.050 align:middle line:84% I remember one of my poetry professors, 00:03:46.050 --> 00:03:48.150 align:middle line:84% after I just graduated from college, 00:03:48.150 --> 00:03:51.150 align:middle line:84% she was telling this to me as a way of telling me 00:03:51.150 --> 00:03:53.550 align:middle line:90% why my poems sucked. 00:03:53.550 --> 00:03:54.975 align:middle line:90% And she was very kind, but-- 00:03:54.975 --> 00:03:55.590 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:03:55.590 --> 00:04:00.000 align:middle line:84% --but they did, they did kind of suck, I think, in retrospect. 00:04:00.000 --> 00:04:02.520 align:middle line:84% There needs to be a kind of transformation that happens 00:04:02.520 --> 00:04:05.490 align:middle line:90% in the writing of the thing. 00:04:05.490 --> 00:04:06.990 align:middle line:90% That isn't unique to poetry. 00:04:06.990 --> 00:04:08.910 align:middle line:84% But I sort of thought of that-- it's like, no, 00:04:08.910 --> 00:04:12.120 align:middle line:84% if I just do what my plan was in the first place, 00:04:12.120 --> 00:04:18.209 align:middle line:84% then QED, awesome thing, appraise please. 00:04:18.209 --> 00:04:19.589 align:middle line:90% But that's not the case. 00:04:19.589 --> 00:04:21.300 align:middle line:84% So what I found is I would have to keep 00:04:21.300 --> 00:04:23.700 align:middle line:84% moving and shifting and bringing things 00:04:23.700 --> 00:04:25.590 align:middle line:84% into alignment with these in a way 00:04:25.590 --> 00:04:29.250 align:middle line:84% that it makes a kind of logic and it's propulsive, 00:04:29.250 --> 00:04:32.908 align:middle line:84% I hope, in different ways throughout the collection. 00:04:32.908 --> 00:04:34.950 align:middle line:84% And so there's a little system on the micro level 00:04:34.950 --> 00:04:36.408 align:middle line:84% with these essays, and then there's 00:04:36.408 --> 00:04:39.150 align:middle line:84% a whole bunch of macro level systems. 00:04:39.150 --> 00:04:41.580 align:middle line:84% And we never talked about this, Katie, I don't think. 00:04:41.580 --> 00:04:44.290 align:middle line:84% It's like an abecedarian that's going on, 00:04:44.290 --> 00:04:46.110 align:middle line:84% and then there's all this other stuff. 00:04:46.110 --> 00:04:51.360 align:middle line:84% There's a lot of math that's in there, perhaps overly so. 00:04:51.360 --> 00:04:55.380 align:middle line:84% But that's one of the pleasures of working on a collection. 00:04:55.380 --> 00:04:58.710 align:middle line:84% It's trying to find ways of pinning it and getting 00:04:58.710 --> 00:05:01.410 align:middle line:84% it to make new connections in the nexus-- 00:05:01.410 --> 00:05:02.760 align:middle line:90% nexuses? 00:05:02.760 --> 00:05:05.010 align:middle line:90% Probably nexuses, yeah. 00:05:05.010 --> 00:05:11.120 align:middle line:90% 00:05:11.120 --> 00:05:12.637 align:middle line:90% I hope this is for Kate. 00:05:12.637 --> 00:05:13.990 align:middle line:90% This is for you. 00:05:13.990 --> 00:05:14.490 align:middle line:90% I know. 00:05:14.490 --> 00:05:19.190 align:middle line:90% 00:05:19.190 --> 00:05:21.023 align:middle line:84% Actually, it's for both of you, so you can-- 00:05:21.023 --> 00:05:21.523 align:middle line:90% All right. 00:05:21.523 --> 00:05:22.170 align:middle line:90% --both get up. 00:05:22.170 --> 00:05:22.730 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:05:22.730 --> 00:05:23.660 align:middle line:90% That's perfectly good. 00:05:23.660 --> 00:05:24.243 align:middle line:90% Come on, Kate. 00:05:24.243 --> 00:05:25.660 align:middle line:90% You have to come up at least. 00:05:25.660 --> 00:05:26.493 align:middle line:90% I'm just wondering-- 00:05:26.493 --> 00:05:27.012 align:middle line:90% --same time. 00:05:27.012 --> 00:05:29.220 align:middle line:84% --that-- and you both talked about this a little bit. 00:05:29.220 --> 00:05:30.920 align:middle line:84% But it seems to me like both of you 00:05:30.920 --> 00:05:34.160 align:middle line:90% are preoccupied with things-- 00:05:34.160 --> 00:05:39.140 align:middle line:84% old things, relics, remnants, perhaps lost things, 00:05:39.140 --> 00:05:40.850 align:middle line:90% peripheral things-- 00:05:40.850 --> 00:05:43.520 align:middle line:84% and I'm wondering where, in the process of that, 00:05:43.520 --> 00:05:45.680 align:middle line:84% you seem like you take them, you're drawn to them, 00:05:45.680 --> 00:05:48.390 align:middle line:84% and you have a need to transform them in a way. 00:05:48.390 --> 00:05:51.710 align:middle line:84% And I'm wondering where that impetus comes from? 00:05:51.710 --> 00:05:54.440 align:middle line:84% And then when you're done, how does it feel? 00:05:54.440 --> 00:05:55.597 align:middle line:90% Thanks. 00:05:55.597 --> 00:05:56.930 align:middle line:90% That's a pretty killer question. 00:05:56.930 --> 00:05:58.115 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:05:58.115 --> 00:05:59.240 align:middle line:90% That's a great observation. 00:05:59.240 --> 00:06:01.397 align:middle line:90% I think that's an accurate-- 00:06:01.397 --> 00:06:03.230 align:middle line:84% it's hard not to think about, I don't if you 00:06:03.230 --> 00:06:06.500 align:middle line:84% think about the work you do with fairy tales is 00:06:06.500 --> 00:06:11.070 align:middle line:84% a kind of library browse, which it inevitably is. 00:06:11.070 --> 00:06:12.840 align:middle line:90% Having said that, it's also-- 00:06:12.840 --> 00:06:15.590 align:middle line:84% if you write fiction or write anything, 00:06:15.590 --> 00:06:19.118 align:middle line:84% it's not like we're coming up with anything new. 00:06:19.118 --> 00:06:21.410 align:middle line:84% You hope you find something new, maybe, in combination. 00:06:21.410 --> 00:06:25.500 align:middle line:84% But it's all configurations of stuff that we've seen before. 00:06:25.500 --> 00:06:27.407 align:middle line:90% That's one of the really-- 00:06:27.407 --> 00:06:29.240 align:middle line:84% I wrote this whole book about library books, 00:06:29.240 --> 00:06:33.020 align:middle line:84% right, and browsing the library as if I'm the first person 00:06:33.020 --> 00:06:34.880 align:middle line:90% to do that or think about it. 00:06:34.880 --> 00:06:38.960 align:middle line:84% And I was giving a reading in Maryland, 00:06:38.960 --> 00:06:41.870 align:middle line:84% and I found in one of the libraries there, there was-- 00:06:41.870 --> 00:06:44.900 align:middle line:84% John Barth has this great essay called "Browsing" 00:06:44.900 --> 00:06:46.580 align:middle line:90% about library book browsing. 00:06:46.580 --> 00:06:47.860 align:middle line:90% I'm like, oh. 00:06:47.860 --> 00:06:48.560 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:06:48.560 --> 00:06:50.030 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:06:50.030 --> 00:06:50.690 align:middle line:90% Yeah, that. 00:06:50.690 --> 00:06:52.250 align:middle line:90% What he said. 00:06:52.250 --> 00:06:54.603 align:middle line:84% And if you even consider yourself 00:06:54.603 --> 00:06:56.270 align:middle line:84% an experimental writer, whatever, you're 00:06:56.270 --> 00:06:58.340 align:middle line:84% doing cool stuff on the page, and you're like, 00:06:58.340 --> 00:07:02.510 align:middle line:84% oh, Tristram Shandy kind of did a lot of stuff 00:07:02.510 --> 00:07:03.650 align:middle line:90% like that already. 00:07:03.650 --> 00:07:05.750 align:middle line:90% So it's a kind of-- 00:07:05.750 --> 00:07:10.520 align:middle line:84% I guess from my perspective, it's-- 00:07:10.520 --> 00:07:13.670 align:middle line:84% I don't want to say it's like a ritual humiliation, exactly. 00:07:13.670 --> 00:07:18.057 align:middle line:84% But it's a kind of exercise in humility and an understanding 00:07:18.057 --> 00:07:19.640 align:middle line:84% that the things that we do are made up 00:07:19.640 --> 00:07:22.640 align:middle line:84% of other things that already exist and have gone 00:07:22.640 --> 00:07:27.020 align:middle line:84% in or out of people's lenses for 10 years, or for 100 years, 00:07:27.020 --> 00:07:29.570 align:middle line:84% or for 1,000 years, or just for a year. 00:07:29.570 --> 00:07:32.270 align:middle line:84% Or just like, whatever, since 1997 when the Wayback 00:07:32.270 --> 00:07:35.390 align:middle line:84% Machine brings us back to this sense that we had of what 00:07:35.390 --> 00:07:37.380 align:middle line:90% the web was, right, in 1997? 00:07:37.380 --> 00:07:40.410 align:middle line:84% Which is completely different than what we have now. 00:07:40.410 --> 00:07:44.630 align:middle line:84% So I guess my feeling as a writer is you want to-- 00:07:44.630 --> 00:07:46.332 align:middle line:84% you're not spinning it out of nothing. 00:07:46.332 --> 00:07:47.540 align:middle line:90% Nothing comes out of nothing. 00:07:47.540 --> 00:07:50.690 align:middle line:84% But you do want to make something interesting and maybe 00:07:50.690 --> 00:07:53.960 align:middle line:84% explosive or beautiful, and most explosive things 00:07:53.960 --> 00:07:55.970 align:middle line:90% are also beautiful in some way. 00:07:55.970 --> 00:07:57.800 align:middle line:84% And so that's, I guess, what I hope to do. 00:07:57.800 --> 00:08:00.480 align:middle line:90% 00:08:00.480 --> 00:08:04.020 align:middle line:84% That's a great question, and it's a good answer 00:08:04.020 --> 00:08:05.650 align:middle line:90% and hard to follow. 00:08:05.650 --> 00:08:09.750 align:middle line:90% Thank you, as always, Ander. 00:08:09.750 --> 00:08:10.830 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:08:10.830 --> 00:08:15.060 align:middle line:84% So fairy tales are old things, right? 00:08:15.060 --> 00:08:18.030 align:middle line:84% But they were always contemporary to someone. 00:08:18.030 --> 00:08:21.135 align:middle line:84% So even the 1812 first edition of the Brothers Grimm 00:08:21.135 --> 00:08:23.010 align:middle line:84% was sort of scandalous when it was published, 00:08:23.010 --> 00:08:25.320 align:middle line:84% or the Perrault in the 17th century, 00:08:25.320 --> 00:08:28.328 align:middle line:84% or going to Arabian Nights, they were always 00:08:28.328 --> 00:08:29.370 align:middle line:90% contemporary to somebody. 00:08:29.370 --> 00:08:33.179 align:middle line:84% And so what I love so much is it just happens to be my obsession 00:08:33.179 --> 00:08:36.780 align:middle line:84% or something about the form of the fairy tale book-- 00:08:36.780 --> 00:08:37.799 align:middle line:90% book marchen-- 00:08:37.799 --> 00:08:39.360 align:middle line:84% there's tales that are specifically 00:08:39.360 --> 00:08:41.350 align:middle line:84% contained inside books, and there are versions. 00:08:41.350 --> 00:08:43.590 align:middle line:84% So you're on this huge scavenger hunt. 00:08:43.590 --> 00:08:45.840 align:middle line:84% So when I start to write a new story, 00:08:45.840 --> 00:08:49.197 align:middle line:84% I basically do the kind of hunting 00:08:49.197 --> 00:08:50.280 align:middle line:90% that you did in libraries. 00:08:50.280 --> 00:08:53.310 align:middle line:84% Maybe I read 100 versions from around the world in translation 00:08:53.310 --> 00:08:55.680 align:middle line:84% to English, and then I pick one to go from. 00:08:55.680 --> 00:09:01.110 align:middle line:84% But it's this endless collecting that maybe partially attracts 00:09:01.110 --> 00:09:04.530 align:middle line:84% me to this form of story and book. 00:09:04.530 --> 00:09:08.940 align:middle line:84% And then it's also the idea that there is no original-- people 00:09:08.940 --> 00:09:10.658 align:middle line:84% will say, well, what's the original this? 00:09:10.658 --> 00:09:11.700 align:middle line:90% What's the original that? 00:09:11.700 --> 00:09:14.010 align:middle line:84% And all you can do is point to a version 00:09:14.010 --> 00:09:17.190 align:middle line:84% that people have excavated at a time 00:09:17.190 --> 00:09:18.743 align:middle line:90% or printed at a certain time. 00:09:18.743 --> 00:09:20.160 align:middle line:84% But what you find around the world 00:09:20.160 --> 00:09:21.990 align:middle line:84% is that the nouns, which are some 00:09:21.990 --> 00:09:26.440 align:middle line:84% of the things in the stories, repeat across cultures, 00:09:26.440 --> 00:09:28.050 align:middle line:90% across centuries. 00:09:28.050 --> 00:09:33.220 align:middle line:84% And that these things, like if you say girl, woods, wolf-- 00:09:33.220 --> 00:09:35.170 align:middle line:90% what story are we in? 00:09:35.170 --> 00:09:35.740 align:middle line:90% Predator. 00:09:35.740 --> 00:09:37.070 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:09:37.070 --> 00:09:40.960 align:middle line:84% Well, Predator is a great fairy tale, by the way. 00:09:40.960 --> 00:09:44.300 align:middle line:84% It is a great fairy tale movie, actually, don't you think? 00:09:44.300 --> 00:09:44.800 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:09:44.800 --> 00:09:46.030 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:09:46.030 --> 00:09:49.180 align:middle line:84% You take these things and you kind of put them together 00:09:49.180 --> 00:09:51.205 align:middle line:84% in a different way like one of those-- 00:09:51.205 --> 00:09:53.830 align:middle line:84% I don't know if you guys had any of those books where you could 00:09:53.830 --> 00:09:56.560 align:middle line:84% turn the pages and you can make different creatures out 00:09:56.560 --> 00:09:59.110 align:middle line:84% a different pages, like the top, middle, bottom, 00:09:59.110 --> 00:10:02.042 align:middle line:84% or those Topsy-Turvy dolls where you pull the skirt up, 00:10:02.042 --> 00:10:04.250 align:middle line:84% and on one side is one thing, and on the other side-- 00:10:04.250 --> 00:10:06.880 align:middle line:84% So just these are stories that are pieced together 00:10:06.880 --> 00:10:07.960 align:middle line:90% Humpty-Dumpty style. 00:10:07.960 --> 00:10:09.310 align:middle line:90% And they're always wrong. 00:10:09.310 --> 00:10:11.320 align:middle line:84% There's never going to be a right version. 00:10:11.320 --> 00:10:14.930 align:middle line:84% And, I guess, that's part of what 00:10:14.930 --> 00:10:18.500 align:middle line:84% I would think in response to your really eloquent question. 00:10:18.500 --> 00:10:21.680 align:middle line:84% But because they're so old but they were always new, 00:10:21.680 --> 00:10:25.640 align:middle line:84% and because they're always changing, being transformed, 00:10:25.640 --> 00:10:30.017 align:middle line:84% they're sort of vintage and futuristic at the same time. 00:10:30.017 --> 00:10:32.600 align:middle line:84% And I think that's what people call "timelessness" about them, 00:10:32.600 --> 00:10:35.930 align:middle line:84% but I don't think it's timeless, I think it's actually more-- 00:10:35.930 --> 00:10:38.330 align:middle line:84% there's something more time-warping about it. 00:10:38.330 --> 00:10:42.050 align:middle line:84% So that interests me, how these things travel across time 00:10:42.050 --> 00:10:44.870 align:middle line:84% and cultures in mysterious ways that we really 00:10:44.870 --> 00:10:46.190 align:middle line:90% don't understand. 00:10:46.190 --> 00:10:49.970 align:middle line:84% Neurologists study fairy tales as often as anthropologists, 00:10:49.970 --> 00:10:53.390 align:middle line:84% so I'm really curious about all that-- the things excavated 00:10:53.390 --> 00:10:55.520 align:middle line:90% through that. 00:10:55.520 --> 00:10:58.140 align:middle line:84% I'd also add something just briefly that, 00:10:58.140 --> 00:11:00.140 align:middle line:84% all you need is for, probably, I don't know what 00:11:00.140 --> 00:11:02.300 align:middle line:90% it is, maybe 30 years to pass? 00:11:02.300 --> 00:11:05.930 align:middle line:84% And then a lot of things seem relevant again. 00:11:05.930 --> 00:11:09.980 align:middle line:84% There's this great book by Bob Brown called The Readies that 00:11:09.980 --> 00:11:13.610 align:middle line:84% came out in I think 1927, and someone online 00:11:13.610 --> 00:11:16.040 align:middle line:90% has a great version of it. 00:11:16.040 --> 00:11:17.420 align:middle line:84% And it's his book where he's sort 00:11:17.420 --> 00:11:22.820 align:middle line:84% of imagining the future in which we are reading things-- 00:11:22.820 --> 00:11:25.370 align:middle line:84% in which books are outdated and what we need 00:11:25.370 --> 00:11:27.230 align:middle line:84% is some kind of electronic machine 00:11:27.230 --> 00:11:30.620 align:middle line:84% that we can read books on at super speed. 00:11:30.620 --> 00:11:34.430 align:middle line:84% And it's a really interesting book to read, 1927, 00:11:34.430 --> 00:11:37.070 align:middle line:84% but it's not that far from some of the things 00:11:37.070 --> 00:11:39.830 align:middle line:84% that people have said or thought about books recently. 00:11:39.830 --> 00:11:42.050 align:middle line:84% So you have these things that just 00:11:42.050 --> 00:11:44.570 align:middle line:84% keep reoccurring or showing up from some time ago, 00:11:44.570 --> 00:11:48.080 align:middle line:84% and your job is to find them and bring them back into the light. 00:11:48.080 --> 00:11:55.630 align:middle line:90% 00:11:55.630 --> 00:11:59.950 align:middle line:84% Along with the excavating of the history in-- 00:11:59.950 --> 00:12:01.600 align:middle line:84% there's a kind of parallel between both 00:12:01.600 --> 00:12:04.090 align:middle line:84% of your work and the adolescent, and the Atari, 00:12:04.090 --> 00:12:06.940 align:middle line:84% and the childhood, and all those kinds of parallels, I think, 00:12:06.940 --> 00:12:08.720 align:middle line:90% that we can sort of see. 00:12:08.720 --> 00:12:11.140 align:middle line:84% But to me, it also seems like there's 00:12:11.140 --> 00:12:14.410 align:middle line:84% a kind of counter history that both of you guys 00:12:14.410 --> 00:12:15.580 align:middle line:90% are interested in? 00:12:15.580 --> 00:12:19.480 align:middle line:84% Like not taking the fairy tale at its surface 00:12:19.480 --> 00:12:23.920 align:middle line:84% and not taking even something as seemingly as silly as Predator 00:12:23.920 --> 00:12:28.060 align:middle line:84% at its surface in terms of-- especially with the violent 00:12:28.060 --> 00:12:30.340 align:middle line:84% and the sexual in the fairy tales, 00:12:30.340 --> 00:12:32.548 align:middle line:84% in the way that you're interested in those counter 00:12:32.548 --> 00:12:34.840 align:middle line:84% histories and something that's kind of anti-Disney kind 00:12:34.840 --> 00:12:37.240 align:middle line:90% of version of the fairy tale. 00:12:37.240 --> 00:12:43.240 align:middle line:84% And also even something with clear homophobia and misogyny 00:12:43.240 --> 00:12:47.620 align:middle line:84% of the kinds of library kinds of things that you're finding 00:12:47.620 --> 00:12:49.915 align:middle line:84% there that you're interested in is 00:12:49.915 --> 00:12:53.520 align:middle line:84% kind of reproducing, but also speaking against, you know? 00:12:53.520 --> 00:12:55.270 align:middle line:84% And I wonder if you guys could talk about 00:12:55.270 --> 00:12:57.603 align:middle line:84% that because there's a counter history that you guys are 00:12:57.603 --> 00:12:59.110 align:middle line:84% both interested in, it seems to me-- 00:12:59.110 --> 00:13:01.780 align:middle line:84% not just finding something old and valuing it 00:13:01.780 --> 00:13:06.400 align:middle line:84% because it's old, but battling with these other versions 00:13:06.400 --> 00:13:10.750 align:middle line:84% of it, in a certain way, and remaking them in some way? 00:13:10.750 --> 00:13:14.710 align:middle line:84% I wonder how that alterity or that negativity, 00:13:14.710 --> 00:13:21.790 align:middle line:84% or those kinds of whitewashed aspects of those histories 00:13:21.790 --> 00:13:24.940 align:middle line:84% that you guys are encountering and remaking, how that works 00:13:24.940 --> 00:13:28.300 align:middle line:84% for you and why those things percolate or stick out 00:13:28.300 --> 00:13:32.770 align:middle line:84% for you as notes of entry points, or wanting to speak to, 00:13:32.770 --> 00:13:33.360 align:middle line:90% speak against? 00:13:33.360 --> 00:13:38.280 align:middle line:90% 00:13:38.280 --> 00:13:39.910 align:middle line:84% I'll speak really briefly about that. 00:13:39.910 --> 00:13:41.760 align:middle line:90% Thanks for that comment. 00:13:41.760 --> 00:13:45.300 align:middle line:84% I think we do share that, actually, quite a bit. 00:13:45.300 --> 00:13:48.627 align:middle line:84% And so many video gamers are really 00:13:48.627 --> 00:13:49.710 align:middle line:90% interested in fairy tales. 00:13:49.710 --> 00:13:53.430 align:middle line:90% Some of their syntax, I think. 00:13:53.430 --> 00:13:55.290 align:middle line:84% Fairy tale-- you can't really say 00:13:55.290 --> 00:13:57.480 align:middle line:84% there's such a thing even as fairy tales, 00:13:57.480 --> 00:13:59.910 align:middle line:84% so it's not like there's this one history of fairy tales 00:13:59.910 --> 00:14:02.550 align:middle line:84% and then there's the real history of fairy tales. 00:14:02.550 --> 00:14:06.113 align:middle line:84% But because fairy tales are so adaptive-- 00:14:06.113 --> 00:14:07.530 align:middle line:84% in World War II Germany, they were 00:14:07.530 --> 00:14:13.230 align:middle line:84% used to propagate a lot of anti-Semitic stereotypes. 00:14:13.230 --> 00:14:15.780 align:middle line:84% There were comic strips based on fairy tales. 00:14:15.780 --> 00:14:19.110 align:middle line:84% And I'm really interested in the way fairy tales have been 00:14:19.110 --> 00:14:25.020 align:middle line:84% historically both sanitized and then degraded, used by those 00:14:25.020 --> 00:14:27.150 align:middle line:84% who want to abuse power, and then sometimes 00:14:27.150 --> 00:14:30.030 align:middle line:84% be used by those who seek to liberate. 00:14:30.030 --> 00:14:35.910 align:middle line:84% And what a fine, tricky balance the human equilibrium 00:14:35.910 --> 00:14:38.010 align:middle line:90% never will be, basically. 00:14:38.010 --> 00:14:43.230 align:middle line:84% And I'm really interested in how fairy tales absorb extremes. 00:14:43.230 --> 00:14:47.190 align:middle line:84% But in another way, I'm also interested in how fairy tales 00:14:47.190 --> 00:14:48.930 align:middle line:90% so often are outsider stories. 00:14:48.930 --> 00:14:55.800 align:middle line:84% There are characters who are marginalized, abused, punished, 00:14:55.800 --> 00:15:03.910 align:middle line:84% and not always discovered, saved, or let alone, 00:15:03.910 --> 00:15:05.990 align:middle line:90% fed and treated well. 00:15:05.990 --> 00:15:08.200 align:middle line:84% So I'm really interested in those radical means 00:15:08.200 --> 00:15:09.242 align:middle line:90% of survival. 00:15:09.242 --> 00:15:11.200 align:middle line:84% And I think that in a certain way that's always 00:15:11.200 --> 00:15:14.350 align:middle line:84% going to be a story of resistance 00:15:14.350 --> 00:15:16.840 align:middle line:84% as long as, unfortunately, there are humans on this Earth, 00:15:16.840 --> 00:15:17.530 align:middle line:90% right? 00:15:17.530 --> 00:15:24.510 align:middle line:84% So that's part of that counterculture impulse 00:15:24.510 --> 00:15:25.170 align:middle line:90% that I have. 00:15:25.170 --> 00:15:27.030 align:middle line:84% And I'm a kid of the 70s, so I grew up 00:15:27.030 --> 00:15:30.910 align:middle line:84% with punk and underground comic book movements and all of that. 00:15:30.910 --> 00:15:33.600 align:middle line:84% So I think it was just in the politics of the times. 00:15:33.600 --> 00:15:36.570 align:middle line:84% I think that that really was a gathering force for me, 00:15:36.570 --> 00:15:40.600 align:middle line:84% why I was drawn to these stories, in part. 00:15:40.600 --> 00:15:44.410 align:middle line:84% I think resistance is a useful way to think about it. 00:15:44.410 --> 00:15:46.540 align:middle line:84% I guess what I look for when I'm-- 00:15:46.540 --> 00:15:48.910 align:middle line:84% one of the things I really look for when 00:15:48.910 --> 00:15:52.017 align:middle line:84% I'm looking for stuff to respond to is 00:15:52.017 --> 00:15:54.350 align:middle line:84% I'm looking for things that really rub me the wrong way, 00:15:54.350 --> 00:15:58.482 align:middle line:84% and one of those is people that write in books. 00:15:58.482 --> 00:16:00.940 align:middle line:84% Not writing in your own books, but writing in library books 00:16:00.940 --> 00:16:03.280 align:middle line:84% and putting it back in a library book for someone else 00:16:03.280 --> 00:16:04.100 align:middle line:90% to encounter. 00:16:04.100 --> 00:16:05.650 align:middle line:90% Sometimes it can be-- 00:16:05.650 --> 00:16:08.260 align:middle line:84% there's a way of doing that artfully and interestingly. 00:16:08.260 --> 00:16:13.630 align:middle line:84% There's this British artist who did a good amount of collage 00:16:13.630 --> 00:16:17.770 align:middle line:84% work as a provocation, which was actually really interesting. 00:16:17.770 --> 00:16:21.940 align:middle line:84% But one of the things about the act of writing back to a book 00:16:21.940 --> 00:16:25.000 align:middle line:90% is you're asserting authority. 00:16:25.000 --> 00:16:26.530 align:middle line:90% You are literally marginalized. 00:16:26.530 --> 00:16:30.820 align:middle line:84% You have the margins which you can write back in. 00:16:30.820 --> 00:16:35.540 align:middle line:84% And so in a way, it's a kind of empowerment 00:16:35.540 --> 00:16:37.030 align:middle line:90% to write back to something. 00:16:37.030 --> 00:16:38.290 align:middle line:90% There's this one book called-- 00:16:38.290 --> 00:16:42.880 align:middle line:84% it's Mortimer Jerome Adler's How to Read a Book, 1945. 00:16:42.880 --> 00:16:44.620 align:middle line:84% He's trying to explain to the people 00:16:44.620 --> 00:16:48.880 align:middle line:84% how you're supposed to read a book, which maybe could still 00:16:48.880 --> 00:16:49.630 align:middle line:90% be a useful thing. 00:16:49.630 --> 00:16:52.210 align:middle line:84% And I was looking at the U of A library copies, 00:16:52.210 --> 00:16:55.120 align:middle line:84% and there's this one line, "Any book, I think, 00:16:55.120 --> 00:16:56.830 align:middle line:84% the reader will admit is a work of art." 00:16:56.830 --> 00:16:58.390 align:middle line:84% And then in the library copy, someone 00:16:58.390 --> 00:17:00.370 align:middle line:84% had written in the margin, not this one. 00:17:00.370 --> 00:17:01.900 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:17:01.900 --> 00:17:05.529 align:middle line:84% Which you have to admire a little bit of like, burn. 00:17:05.529 --> 00:17:07.630 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:17:07.630 --> 00:17:09.970 align:middle line:84% But at the same time, it's a library book, man. 00:17:09.970 --> 00:17:10.869 align:middle line:90% I mean, really? 00:17:10.869 --> 00:17:13.810 align:middle line:84% You're just going to take cheap shots at this guy from 1945 00:17:13.810 --> 00:17:16.089 align:middle line:90% writing to the kids about books. 00:17:16.089 --> 00:17:18.010 align:middle line:90% But that sense-- 00:17:18.010 --> 00:17:20.380 align:middle line:84% I had a real angry response to this 00:17:20.380 --> 00:17:22.810 align:middle line:84% and a kind of appreciative one at the same time. 00:17:22.810 --> 00:17:24.819 align:middle line:84% But trying to push on those moments 00:17:24.819 --> 00:17:28.089 align:middle line:84% where they're resistant, and even with my defacer-- 00:17:28.089 --> 00:17:30.160 align:middle line:84% I think of him as my defacer now because I've 00:17:30.160 --> 00:17:32.560 align:middle line:84% just written so much about him and thought 00:17:32.560 --> 00:17:36.230 align:middle line:84% so much about this guy, there's like five defacer essays 00:17:36.230 --> 00:17:36.730 align:middle line:90% in the book. 00:17:36.730 --> 00:17:39.100 align:middle line:84% And I just can't get him out of my head. 00:17:39.100 --> 00:17:41.530 align:middle line:90% What a sad guy this guy is. 00:17:41.530 --> 00:17:43.803 align:middle line:84% But he's writing in response to something. 00:17:43.803 --> 00:17:45.220 align:middle line:84% He's writing in response, I think, 00:17:45.220 --> 00:17:49.938 align:middle line:84% to his own sense of sublimated homosexuality, obviously. 00:17:49.938 --> 00:17:51.730 align:middle line:84% You read this, it's really clear this guy's 00:17:51.730 --> 00:17:53.410 align:middle line:84% been in the closet his whole life, 00:17:53.410 --> 00:17:55.780 align:middle line:84% upset at all these people who finally came out 00:17:55.780 --> 00:17:58.060 align:middle line:84% and who were able to do that once they had money, 00:17:58.060 --> 00:17:59.320 align:middle line:90% as he says over and over. 00:17:59.320 --> 00:18:02.050 align:middle line:90% 00:18:02.050 --> 00:18:03.610 align:middle line:90% It's a sad story, also. 00:18:03.610 --> 00:18:07.030 align:middle line:84% But then he goes to the university library, and then-- 00:18:07.030 --> 00:18:08.680 align:middle line:90% it's a really political act. 00:18:08.680 --> 00:18:12.340 align:middle line:84% And so they discovered these books within, 00:18:12.340 --> 00:18:15.690 align:middle line:84% I think, three months of when Gabrielle Giffords was shot. 00:18:15.690 --> 00:18:17.440 align:middle line:84% And so when we were having this discussion 00:18:17.440 --> 00:18:19.450 align:middle line:90% about civil conversation-- 00:18:19.450 --> 00:18:22.272 align:middle line:84% what is civil discourse-- and I was looking 00:18:22.272 --> 00:18:23.980 align:middle line:84% for is there any coverage of this guy who 00:18:23.980 --> 00:18:25.300 align:middle line:90% has defaced all these books? 00:18:25.300 --> 00:18:27.580 align:middle line:84% And one of the only bits of coverage I could find 00:18:27.580 --> 00:18:29.230 align:middle line:84% was someone who had made some comment 00:18:29.230 --> 00:18:30.980 align:middle line:84% about like, well, they're both in Arizona, 00:18:30.980 --> 00:18:32.950 align:middle line:84% so obviously this guy has related 00:18:32.950 --> 00:18:35.380 align:middle line:84% to this sense of incivility that's 00:18:35.380 --> 00:18:37.460 align:middle line:90% going on in southern Arizona. 00:18:37.460 --> 00:18:41.390 align:middle line:84% Which is, I think, a ridiculous statement to make, 00:18:41.390 --> 00:18:45.058 align:middle line:84% but at the same time, it's sort of hard to parse this, 00:18:45.058 --> 00:18:45.600 align:middle line:90% to parse him. 00:18:45.600 --> 00:18:48.200 align:middle line:84% I would have loved to have actually found him. 00:18:48.200 --> 00:18:50.300 align:middle line:84% If anyone knows, by the way, who this guy is, 00:18:50.300 --> 00:18:52.580 align:middle line:84% I would love to try to have a conversation with him 00:18:52.580 --> 00:18:54.170 align:middle line:90% because I'm really curious. 00:18:54.170 --> 00:18:55.222 align:middle line:90% And no one will tell me. 00:18:55.222 --> 00:18:57.680 align:middle line:84% And there's no police report that they would release to me. 00:18:57.680 --> 00:19:00.260 align:middle line:84% So they wouldn't finally release that. 00:19:00.260 --> 00:19:03.250 align:middle line:84% So a lot of it is trying to parse resistance, 00:19:03.250 --> 00:19:05.810 align:middle line:84% in some case, kind of enact my own resistance 00:19:05.810 --> 00:19:11.870 align:middle line:84% to this desire of, I don't know, the PDFing of everything. 00:19:11.870 --> 00:19:15.470 align:middle line:84% That it's not the same, and it's not going to last, 00:19:15.470 --> 00:19:16.730 align:middle line:90% and it's not going to be-- 00:19:16.730 --> 00:19:18.920 align:middle line:84% it's convenient, but it's not, I don't know. 00:19:18.920 --> 00:19:20.330 align:middle line:90% It's not a necessary good. 00:19:20.330 --> 00:19:22.100 align:middle line:90% The book is a technology, too. 00:19:22.100 --> 00:19:23.930 align:middle line:84% The website's not the only technology 00:19:23.930 --> 00:19:25.760 align:middle line:90% that we like to think about. 00:19:25.760 --> 00:19:29.870 align:middle line:84% So I'm probably like an old angry person 00:19:29.870 --> 00:19:30.995 align:middle line:90% with my graying beard-- 00:19:30.995 --> 00:19:31.790 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHING] 00:19:31.790 --> 00:19:37.800 align:middle line:84% --and bashing my Kindle on YouTube, which I can do later. 00:19:37.800 --> 00:19:40.700 align:middle line:84% Well, that seems like as productive a place as any to-- 00:19:40.700 --> 00:19:42.200 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:19:42.200 --> 00:19:44.000 align:middle line:90% 00:19:44.000 --> 00:19:45.550 align:middle line:90% But-- 00:19:45.550 --> 00:19:47.000 align:middle line:90%