WEBVTT

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Thank you.

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I'm going to kind of
rummage around tonight

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in a book I wrote last spring.

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Since I'm here in
the desert, I thought

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it would be appropriate.

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It's a book called
The Desert Rose.

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It came about
quite accidentally.

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A movie studio,
Universal Studios,

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asked me to go to
Las Vegas and write

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a movie about the real
life of a showgirl.

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For some reason,
I had the notion

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that this would be a joyous
and entertaining movie.

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And I went to Las Vegas.

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And I wrote a novel about
the real life of a showgirl.

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I think this novel came about
because I was extremely bored

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with the book that I had been
laboring on for a long time.

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One of the problems of
being a middle-aged writer

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is that you've been
writing for a long time,

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and writing entails
reading yourself every day

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for a great number of years.

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And it's unnatural to read
any one writer every day

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for a great number of
years, even yourself.

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And I think this
is a common problem

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with middle-aged writers.

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They may not be-- they
may not articulate it,

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or they may not
quite realize it.

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But they get bored with
reading themselves.

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And I find the only
way that I can work now

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is to have about
three books going,

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so that when I get
intolerably bored with one,

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I sort of switch off to another.

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And for the last
several years, I've

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been writing intermittently
on an extremely long book

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about the 19th century West, The
Trail Driving book, which has

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climbed to enormous length now.

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And is only about a third done.

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And this spring, this
little trip to Las Vegas

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sprung me out of my boredom
with my cowboy book.

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And I wrote this novel, The
Desert Rose, in about a month.

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It's one of those lucky
things that you may not regard

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as lucky when you hear it.

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But it's one of those lucky
things that can sometimes

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happen to you in a long writing
career, when you suddenly--

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a sudden change makes
everything seem fresher

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than it has seemed.

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The Desert Rose is a
novel about an aging

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showgirl named Harmony and her
daughter, whose name is Pepper.

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It's really a
mother-daughter novel.

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As it happens, Harmony
is on her way out.

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She's 39 years old.

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And she has been a showgirl.

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That is to say she has been
simply a beautiful woman who

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stands around partially
nude in a lot of feathers

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and gorgeous costumes.

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She doesn't dance.

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She isn't supposed to do
anything except exhibit

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herself.

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Her daughter, whom you're
not going to hear much of.

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I can't illustrate a
whole novel very well.

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And I personally am
fonder of the mother

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than I am of the daughter.

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So I'm going to read
you mainly passages

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having to do with the mother,
whose name is Harmony.

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I'm just going to skip around.

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But I'm going to start at the
beginning and end at the end.

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I Hope you like it.

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Choose between seeing you
and seeing my pages now.

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