WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.190 align:middle line:84% You can ask a few questions if you want to. 00:00:02.190 --> 00:00:04.170 align:middle line:84% If you have any questions that any of you 00:00:04.170 --> 00:00:07.320 align:middle line:84% didn't get a chance to ask questions during the day. 00:00:07.320 --> 00:00:10.150 align:middle line:84% I'm curious on how you [INAUDIBLE] 00:00:10.150 --> 00:00:11.730 align:middle line:90% characters for that novel. 00:00:11.730 --> 00:00:14.340 align:middle line:84% Did you meet people in Las Vegas that-- 00:00:14.340 --> 00:00:16.890 align:middle line:84% No, to tell the truth, I was only there two days. 00:00:16.890 --> 00:00:18.930 align:middle line:84% I only met one retired showgirl, who 00:00:18.930 --> 00:00:21.330 align:middle line:84% was raising peacocks out in the desert. 00:00:21.330 --> 00:00:23.580 align:middle line:84% And I think that gave me the idea for the whole novel, 00:00:23.580 --> 00:00:25.997 align:middle line:84% the notion that someone who had spent all her life wearing 00:00:25.997 --> 00:00:27.750 align:middle line:84% these feathers was raising peacocks. 00:00:27.750 --> 00:00:29.840 align:middle line:84% It really seemed wonderful to me. 00:00:29.840 --> 00:00:30.720 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHS] 00:00:30.720 --> 00:00:32.259 align:middle line:90% She was very evangelical. 00:00:32.259 --> 00:00:34.125 align:middle line:84% She was a born again showgirl who-- 00:00:34.125 --> 00:00:35.600 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHING] 00:00:35.600 --> 00:00:38.250 align:middle line:84% --held regular baptisms in her swimming pool. 00:00:38.250 --> 00:00:39.270 align:middle line:90% And I don't know. 00:00:39.270 --> 00:00:40.590 align:middle line:90% It just hit me right. 00:00:40.590 --> 00:00:43.590 align:middle line:84% And I didn't meet anybody, really, basically. 00:00:43.590 --> 00:00:47.100 align:middle line:84% I go to bed at 9 o'clock every night normally. 00:00:47.100 --> 00:00:49.500 align:middle line:84% Nothing starts in Las Vegas by that hour. 00:00:49.500 --> 00:00:51.690 align:middle line:84% So I really just wandered around during the day 00:00:51.690 --> 00:00:52.650 align:middle line:90% for a couple of days. 00:00:52.650 --> 00:00:56.010 align:middle line:84% But I did meet the one showgirl and I saw her 00:00:56.010 --> 00:00:57.510 align:middle line:90% with her peacocks. 00:00:57.510 --> 00:00:59.160 align:middle line:84% I didn't get to read any of the stuff 00:00:59.160 --> 00:01:01.020 align:middle line:84% about Harmony and the peacocks, but there's 00:01:01.020 --> 00:01:04.040 align:middle line:90% a lot of it in there. 00:01:04.040 --> 00:01:05.269 align:middle line:90% Just lucky. 00:01:05.269 --> 00:01:07.290 align:middle line:90% You get good accidents and bad. 00:01:07.290 --> 00:01:07.850 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:01:07.850 --> 00:01:09.827 align:middle line:84% Yeah, how do you feel about [INAUDIBLE] books 00:01:09.827 --> 00:01:11.330 align:middle line:90% that you've written? 00:01:11.330 --> 00:01:12.920 align:middle line:84% Well, I enjoyed writing this book. 00:01:12.920 --> 00:01:14.692 align:middle line:84% As I said as a preliminary, I've been 00:01:14.692 --> 00:01:17.150 align:middle line:84% writing books for several years that I haven't particularly 00:01:17.150 --> 00:01:17.960 align:middle line:90% enjoyed writing. 00:01:17.960 --> 00:01:19.460 align:middle line:84% I mean, they may have some interest, 00:01:19.460 --> 00:01:21.230 align:middle line:84% but they bore me when I'm writing them. 00:01:21.230 --> 00:01:22.400 align:middle line:90% This book didn't. 00:01:22.400 --> 00:01:24.950 align:middle line:84% It's a matter of switching into a voice that you really like, 00:01:24.950 --> 00:01:26.600 align:middle line:84% I think, and that's refreshing to you. 00:01:26.600 --> 00:01:28.577 align:middle line:90% And Harmony just was for me. 00:01:28.577 --> 00:01:31.160 align:middle line:84% I don't know how I'll feel about it two years from now or even 00:01:31.160 --> 00:01:32.820 align:middle line:90% six months from now. 00:01:32.820 --> 00:01:34.800 align:middle line:84% But when I did it, it immediately felt right, 00:01:34.800 --> 00:01:36.800 align:middle line:84% and I knew I wasn't going to write a screenplay. 00:01:36.800 --> 00:01:38.580 align:middle line:84% I knew I was going to write a novel. 00:01:38.580 --> 00:01:41.915 align:middle line:84% And I really wrote it very rapidly. 00:01:41.915 --> 00:01:43.290 align:middle line:90% Mm-hmm? 00:01:43.290 --> 00:01:45.050 align:middle line:90% How easy is it [INAUDIBLE]? 00:01:45.050 --> 00:01:46.220 align:middle line:90% Not easy. 00:01:46.220 --> 00:01:54.020 align:middle line:84% Very difficult, very difficult. You have to be very persistent. 00:01:54.020 --> 00:01:54.860 align:middle line:90% Is it out yet? 00:01:54.860 --> 00:01:57.602 align:middle line:84% No, this will be out in about May or June. 00:01:57.602 --> 00:02:01.004 align:middle line:90% [INAUDIBLE] 00:02:01.004 --> 00:02:04.900 align:middle line:90% 00:02:04.900 --> 00:02:07.660 align:middle line:84% Well, I felt right away that, if I 00:02:07.660 --> 00:02:10.300 align:middle line:84% couldn't create these characters in the screenplay form-- 00:02:10.300 --> 00:02:13.210 align:middle line:84% because the screenplay form has a lot of serious limitations. 00:02:13.210 --> 00:02:16.480 align:middle line:84% It's very difficult. And what I proposed to the studio 00:02:16.480 --> 00:02:18.970 align:middle line:84% was that they let me do a sort of novel, what 00:02:18.970 --> 00:02:20.240 align:middle line:90% might be called a treatment. 00:02:20.240 --> 00:02:22.120 align:middle line:84% But in fact, it wasn't even a treatment. 00:02:22.120 --> 00:02:24.790 align:middle line:84% A treatment is a sort of extended synopsis. 00:02:24.790 --> 00:02:26.822 align:middle line:84% And I really wanted to write the characters. 00:02:26.822 --> 00:02:28.780 align:middle line:84% So I wrote the characters, wrote it as a novel, 00:02:28.780 --> 00:02:30.380 align:middle line:90% offered it to the studio. 00:02:30.380 --> 00:02:32.560 align:middle line:84% Turns out what they really wanted was "9 to 5 00:02:32.560 --> 00:02:34.570 align:middle line:84% goes to the Flamingo" or something like that. 00:02:34.570 --> 00:02:35.680 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHING] 00:02:35.680 --> 00:02:39.190 align:middle line:84% So they were appalled by this because it was basically, 00:02:39.190 --> 00:02:41.050 align:middle line:84% in their terms, a very depressing story 00:02:41.050 --> 00:02:42.970 align:middle line:84% about this aging woman getting fired 00:02:42.970 --> 00:02:44.647 align:middle line:84% and being replaced by her daughter. 00:02:44.647 --> 00:02:46.480 align:middle line:84% So there was never any serious consideration 00:02:46.480 --> 00:02:48.880 align:middle line:84% of it being a movie once I figured out that I wanted it 00:02:48.880 --> 00:02:52.000 align:middle line:90% to be about Harmony and Pepper. 00:02:52.000 --> 00:02:56.050 align:middle line:84% But I started with the option of doing it as a screenplay 00:02:56.050 --> 00:02:57.670 align:middle line:84% and just immediately abandoned it. 00:02:57.670 --> 00:03:00.482 align:middle line:84% I mean, within a sentence, I was gone. 00:03:00.482 --> 00:03:03.710 align:middle line:90% [INAUDIBLE] 00:03:03.710 --> 00:03:06.680 align:middle line:84% Well, you can't internalize as easily. 00:03:06.680 --> 00:03:10.130 align:middle line:84% I mean, this is mostly a kind of internal external monologue 00:03:10.130 --> 00:03:11.630 align:middle line:90% in the voice of Harmony. 00:03:11.630 --> 00:03:13.693 align:middle line:90% I didn't read you any of Pepper. 00:03:13.693 --> 00:03:15.110 align:middle line:84% How the novel is actually laid out 00:03:15.110 --> 00:03:17.420 align:middle line:84% is in interlock-- is in alternating 00:03:17.420 --> 00:03:19.348 align:middle line:84% sections, one in Harmony's point of view 00:03:19.348 --> 00:03:21.140 align:middle line:84% and the next one in Pepper's point of view, 00:03:21.140 --> 00:03:22.190 align:middle line:84% and one in Harmony's point of view 00:03:22.190 --> 00:03:24.080 align:middle line:84% and the next one in Pepper's point of view. 00:03:24.080 --> 00:03:26.000 align:middle line:84% And they are describing what's happening 00:03:26.000 --> 00:03:28.340 align:middle line:84% as they go through their day, but they're also 00:03:28.340 --> 00:03:32.960 align:middle line:84% very internalized so that reflections and moods 00:03:32.960 --> 00:03:37.310 align:middle line:84% and feelings about boyfriends, present and past and upcoming, 00:03:37.310 --> 00:03:38.600 align:middle line:90% all are mixed in. 00:03:38.600 --> 00:03:41.095 align:middle line:84% You can't do that easily in a screenplay. 00:03:41.095 --> 00:03:43.470 align:middle line:84% You have to make separate shots for each of those things, 00:03:43.470 --> 00:03:45.860 align:middle line:84% and you have to distinguish between what has happened 00:03:45.860 --> 00:03:48.640 align:middle line:84% and what might happen and what's inside and what's outside. 00:03:48.640 --> 00:03:50.120 align:middle line:90% I just couldn't do it. 00:03:50.120 --> 00:03:54.350 align:middle line:84% I could reduce this novel now to a script. 00:03:54.350 --> 00:03:57.060 align:middle line:84% It would be a very reductive act. 00:03:57.060 --> 00:04:01.400 align:middle line:84% It wouldn't represent the novel very fully. 00:04:01.400 --> 00:04:03.360 align:middle line:84% I could make a dramatic adaptation of it, 00:04:03.360 --> 00:04:05.810 align:middle line:84% which would at least deal with the conflict between Pepper 00:04:05.810 --> 00:04:06.945 align:middle line:90% and Harmony. 00:04:06.945 --> 00:04:08.320 align:middle line:84% And it wouldn't make a bad movie. 00:04:08.320 --> 00:04:10.870 align:middle line:84% It would make it very uncommercial movie. 00:04:10.870 --> 00:04:12.760 align:middle line:90% So it probably won't happen. 00:04:12.760 --> 00:04:15.740 align:middle line:84% How do you feel about [INAUDIBLE] 00:04:15.740 --> 00:04:17.029 align:middle line:90% That's the fun part. 00:04:17.029 --> 00:04:19.850 align:middle line:84% I've always thought that's really the most fun part of-- 00:04:19.850 --> 00:04:22.430 align:middle line:84% really, the fun part of writing is getting the names 00:04:22.430 --> 00:04:24.710 align:middle line:84% and fitting the names to the characters. 00:04:24.710 --> 00:04:28.440 align:middle line:84% And sometimes you change around, but I think this time I really 00:04:28.440 --> 00:04:28.940 align:middle line:90% didn't. 00:04:28.940 --> 00:04:30.710 align:middle line:84% I don't think I changed a single name. 00:04:30.710 --> 00:04:34.160 align:middle line:90% I just went right to it. 00:04:34.160 --> 00:04:37.637 align:middle line:84% If you respond to a milieu like Las Vegas-- 00:04:37.637 --> 00:04:38.720 align:middle line:90% I didn't hear those names. 00:04:38.720 --> 00:04:40.100 align:middle line:84% I don't remember hearing any of those names 00:04:40.100 --> 00:04:41.210 align:middle line:90% while I was in Las Vegas. 00:04:41.210 --> 00:04:44.095 align:middle line:90% 00:04:44.095 --> 00:04:45.720 align:middle line:84% I get names in a lot of different ways. 00:04:45.720 --> 00:04:47.670 align:middle line:84% Sometimes I get-- I'll go to the library, 00:04:47.670 --> 00:04:50.090 align:middle line:84% and I'll just take one name off one book and another name 00:04:50.090 --> 00:04:52.048 align:middle line:84% off another book and keep on doing that until I 00:04:52.048 --> 00:04:53.780 align:middle line:90% get names that fit together. 00:04:53.780 --> 00:04:55.260 align:middle line:90% But this time I didn't do it. 00:04:55.260 --> 00:04:57.530 align:middle line:90% I just made the names up. 00:04:57.530 --> 00:05:00.225 align:middle line:90% [INAUDIBLE] Mm-hmm? 00:05:00.225 --> 00:05:03.494 align:middle line:90% [INAUDIBLE] 00:05:03.494 --> 00:05:04.378 align:middle line:90% 00:05:04.378 --> 00:05:05.420 align:middle line:90% Probably be a bookseller. 00:05:05.420 --> 00:05:08.568 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHING] 00:05:08.568 --> 00:05:10.610 align:middle line:84% I don't think it will cease to be fun altogether, 00:05:10.610 --> 00:05:14.180 align:middle line:84% but it definitely-- like any profession 00:05:14.180 --> 00:05:16.118 align:middle line:84% that you practice for a long time, 00:05:16.118 --> 00:05:17.660 align:middle line:84% you will feel different ways about it 00:05:17.660 --> 00:05:19.035 align:middle line:84% at different stages of your life. 00:05:19.035 --> 00:05:23.250 align:middle line:84% If you teach for 20 years or if you run a company for 20 years 00:05:23.250 --> 00:05:24.710 align:middle line:84% or if you plow for 20 years, you're 00:05:24.710 --> 00:05:27.362 align:middle line:84% not going to feel exactly the same about it 20 years down 00:05:27.362 --> 00:05:28.820 align:middle line:84% the road as you did when you plowed 00:05:28.820 --> 00:05:30.710 align:middle line:90% your first burrow, probably. 00:05:30.710 --> 00:05:34.604 align:middle line:90% 00:05:34.604 --> 00:05:35.104 align:middle line:90% Mm-hmm? 00:05:35.104 --> 00:05:36.586 align:middle line:90% I just read your book now. 00:05:36.586 --> 00:05:44.490 align:middle line:84% [INAUDIBLE] And I wondered how [INAUDIBLE] 00:05:44.490 --> 00:05:48.460 align:middle line:90% 00:05:48.460 --> 00:05:50.860 align:middle line:90% No. 00:05:50.860 --> 00:05:53.350 align:middle line:84% Those essays are all essays that deal in one way or another 00:05:53.350 --> 00:05:54.190 align:middle line:90% with Texas. 00:05:54.190 --> 00:05:55.880 align:middle line:90% And about four or five of-- 00:05:55.880 --> 00:05:57.670 align:middle line:84% I think five, if I remember correctly-- 00:05:57.670 --> 00:05:58.870 align:middle line:90% were commissioned essays. 00:05:58.870 --> 00:06:01.630 align:middle line:90% That is, I would be sent to an-- 00:06:01.630 --> 00:06:03.745 align:middle line:84% there's an essay about an old fiddlers convention, 00:06:03.745 --> 00:06:06.490 align:middle line:84% and I was just asked to go to the old fiddlers convention 00:06:06.490 --> 00:06:07.695 align:middle line:90% and write about it. 00:06:07.695 --> 00:06:09.320 align:middle line:84% There was an essay about the Astrodome. 00:06:09.320 --> 00:06:12.550 align:middle line:84% There's an essay about the movie Hud, and three or four others 00:06:12.550 --> 00:06:16.090 align:middle line:84% that I was just asked to go and write about just for magazine. 00:06:16.090 --> 00:06:16.810 align:middle line:90% I did that. 00:06:16.810 --> 00:06:18.310 align:middle line:84% I mean, I wrote about five essays. 00:06:18.310 --> 00:06:21.400 align:middle line:84% In the process, during the years those essays were written, 00:06:21.400 --> 00:06:22.642 align:middle line:90% I had written three novel-- 00:06:22.642 --> 00:06:24.850 align:middle line:84% Horseman, Pass By, Leaving Cheyenne, The Last Picture 00:06:24.850 --> 00:06:29.350 align:middle line:84% Show, which dealt, essentially, with my rural and small town 00:06:29.350 --> 00:06:31.150 align:middle line:90% experience in Texas. 00:06:31.150 --> 00:06:32.710 align:middle line:84% But by the time I finished, I had 00:06:32.710 --> 00:06:36.070 align:middle line:84% been living in the city for 10 years or more. 00:06:36.070 --> 00:06:40.420 align:middle line:84% and I wanted to look, in a discursive way, 00:06:40.420 --> 00:06:42.490 align:middle line:84% at the same body of material that I 00:06:42.490 --> 00:06:45.130 align:middle line:84% had looked at --treated already in an imaginative way 00:06:45.130 --> 00:06:46.430 align:middle line:90% in the novels. 00:06:46.430 --> 00:06:47.800 align:middle line:90% So I decided to do a book. 00:06:47.800 --> 00:06:50.230 align:middle line:84% And I filled in about four essays 00:06:50.230 --> 00:06:52.000 align:middle line:84% that I wrote specifically for that book 00:06:52.000 --> 00:06:56.170 align:middle line:84% and strung them together in some sort of reasonably consistent 00:06:56.170 --> 00:06:59.710 align:middle line:90% pattern about Texas. 00:06:59.710 --> 00:07:01.270 align:middle line:90% That's how it came about. 00:07:01.270 --> 00:07:04.640 align:middle line:90% [INAUDIBLE] 00:07:04.640 --> 00:07:07.370 align:middle line:84% No, I can't say that I enjoyed writing that at all. 00:07:07.370 --> 00:07:10.250 align:middle line:84% I find writing nonfiction very much different ball 00:07:10.250 --> 00:07:11.420 align:middle line:90% game from writing fiction. 00:07:11.420 --> 00:07:14.810 align:middle line:84% Writing fiction, for me, is a semi-conscious activity, 00:07:14.810 --> 00:07:17.960 align:middle line:84% which can't really be called intellectual. 00:07:17.960 --> 00:07:19.627 align:middle line:90% Something like this-- 00:07:19.627 --> 00:07:20.960 align:middle line:90% I'm not thinking about anything. 00:07:20.960 --> 00:07:24.620 align:middle line:84% I'm really simply attempting to visualize Harmony 00:07:24.620 --> 00:07:26.660 align:middle line:84% and Pepper and Myrtle and Jessie and Gary 00:07:26.660 --> 00:07:29.030 align:middle line:90% and what they're doing. 00:07:29.030 --> 00:07:31.825 align:middle line:84% It's an intense kind of visualization. 00:07:31.825 --> 00:07:33.200 align:middle line:84% Meanwhile, my fingers are typing, 00:07:33.200 --> 00:07:35.180 align:middle line:84% but I'm not paying any attention to the sentences that 00:07:35.180 --> 00:07:35.680 align:middle line:90% are typing. 00:07:35.680 --> 00:07:38.600 align:middle line:84% I'm paying attention to trying to get the picture in my head 00:07:38.600 --> 00:07:40.590 align:middle line:90% as sharp as possible. 00:07:40.590 --> 00:07:44.640 align:middle line:84% That's an emotional, mental activity, I guess. 00:07:44.640 --> 00:07:46.790 align:middle line:84% But to write an essay, which you have 00:07:46.790 --> 00:07:50.120 align:middle line:84% to put logical sentences one after the other, 00:07:50.120 --> 00:07:51.260 align:middle line:90% is a very different thing. 00:07:51.260 --> 00:07:53.480 align:middle line:84% And I wrote this at a place of 10 pages a day, 00:07:53.480 --> 00:07:57.560 align:middle line:84% and I can barely write two pages a day. 00:07:57.560 --> 00:08:00.650 align:middle line:84% It takes me twice as long about two pages of an essay every day 00:08:00.650 --> 00:08:04.260 align:middle line:84% than it would to write 10 pages of this. 00:08:04.260 --> 00:08:06.920 align:middle line:84% For one thing, I'm not allowed the liberty 00:08:06.920 --> 00:08:08.390 align:middle line:90% of being out of myself. 00:08:08.390 --> 00:08:11.420 align:middle line:84% And the great joy of writing fiction 00:08:11.420 --> 00:08:13.190 align:middle line:84% is that it allows you to make up things. 00:08:13.190 --> 00:08:15.770 align:middle line:84% It's not that you're using your own experience very much. 00:08:15.770 --> 00:08:18.080 align:middle line:84% It's that you're literally making up things, 00:08:18.080 --> 00:08:21.170 align:middle line:84% and it's like an actor escaping into a role, in. a way. 00:08:21.170 --> 00:08:23.570 align:middle line:84% You're allowed to escape into the various characters 00:08:23.570 --> 00:08:24.620 align:middle line:90% that you create. 00:08:24.620 --> 00:08:26.180 align:middle line:84% In an essay, that doesn't pertain. 00:08:26.180 --> 00:08:28.160 align:middle line:84% In an essay, it's you in your own head 00:08:28.160 --> 00:08:30.475 align:middle line:84% and making up sentences that make sense 00:08:30.475 --> 00:08:33.169 align:middle line:84% and that actually say something about whatever subject 00:08:33.169 --> 00:08:34.740 align:middle line:90% you've undertaken in the essay. 00:08:34.740 --> 00:08:36.690 align:middle line:90% That's a lot harder. 00:08:36.690 --> 00:08:39.690 align:middle line:90% [INAUDIBLE] 00:08:39.690 --> 00:08:41.429 align:middle line:90% 00:08:41.429 --> 00:08:42.346 align:middle line:90% Read the three novels. 00:08:42.346 --> 00:08:43.971 align:middle line:84% That's pretty well pretty well-covered. 00:08:43.971 --> 00:08:45.870 align:middle line:84% I just grew up in a small town in west Texas, 00:08:45.870 --> 00:08:47.730 align:middle line:84% a very small town, the one that was 00:08:47.730 --> 00:08:50.460 align:middle line:84% used as a location in The Last Picture Show, 00:08:50.460 --> 00:08:52.270 align:middle line:90% if you happened to see it. 00:08:52.270 --> 00:08:56.040 align:middle line:84% And my basic experiences this happened in the '50s, when, 00:08:56.040 --> 00:08:57.780 align:middle line:84% definitely, the movement was away 00:08:57.780 --> 00:08:59.670 align:middle line:84% from the land and the small town, 00:08:59.670 --> 00:09:03.210 align:middle line:84% and the cities were sucking people in. 00:09:03.210 --> 00:09:07.590 align:middle line:84% And therefore, traditions that were agrarian, soil traditions, 00:09:07.590 --> 00:09:11.160 align:middle line:84% were basically being replaced with urban traditions. 00:09:11.160 --> 00:09:13.860 align:middle line:84% And I was interested in that transition 00:09:13.860 --> 00:09:15.630 align:middle line:84% because it's a transition which produces 00:09:15.630 --> 00:09:18.420 align:middle line:84% a lot of interesting conflicts in families, 00:09:18.420 --> 00:09:21.120 align:middle line:84% in people, people of different ages, between generations, 00:09:21.120 --> 00:09:22.170 align:middle line:90% and et cetera-- 00:09:22.170 --> 00:09:24.330 align:middle line:84% difference between rural and urban. 00:09:24.330 --> 00:09:25.594 align:middle line:90% More or less, that's why. 00:09:25.594 --> 00:09:29.073 align:middle line:90% [INAUDIBLE] 00:09:29.073 --> 00:09:44.070 align:middle line:90% 00:09:44.070 --> 00:09:46.965 align:middle line:84% I'm afraid absolutely nothing, absolutely none. 00:09:46.965 --> 00:09:47.910 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHING] 00:09:47.910 --> 00:09:48.685 align:middle line:90% 00:09:48.685 --> 00:09:51.060 align:middle line:84% It's not the first time that comment has been made to me. 00:09:51.060 --> 00:09:53.503 align:middle line:84% I don't say that to scorn the comment because three 00:09:53.503 --> 00:09:55.170 align:middle line:84% other people have-- three other scholars 00:09:55.170 --> 00:09:57.100 align:middle line:90% have said the very same thing. 00:09:57.100 --> 00:10:01.270 align:middle line:84% And I didn't know about The Fisher King at that time. 00:10:01.270 --> 00:10:04.710 align:middle line:84% But if I, in any way, used that method, 00:10:04.710 --> 00:10:08.228 align:middle line:84% it was extremely subliminally, because, again, 00:10:08.228 --> 00:10:10.270 align:middle line:84% The Last Picture Show was a quickly written book. 00:10:10.270 --> 00:10:13.620 align:middle line:84% It was written in about five weeks in one summer. 00:10:13.620 --> 00:10:15.240 align:middle line:84% Again, it was a case of switching off 00:10:15.240 --> 00:10:18.750 align:middle line:84% a very long book, the book that eventually became Moving On, 00:10:18.750 --> 00:10:20.642 align:middle line:84% baffled by that book and stumped by it 00:10:20.642 --> 00:10:22.350 align:middle line:84% and realizing that it wasn't going right, 00:10:22.350 --> 00:10:24.450 align:middle line:84% although I'd done four drafts of it, 00:10:24.450 --> 00:10:27.240 align:middle line:84% I switched off to this little rather simplistic book 00:10:27.240 --> 00:10:31.200 align:middle line:84% and wrote it quickly without thinking about it at all. 00:10:31.200 --> 00:10:32.610 align:middle line:90% I don't even remember. 00:10:32.610 --> 00:10:35.040 align:middle line:84% That would have been in '63 or '64. 00:10:35.040 --> 00:10:38.310 align:middle line:84% Whether I had been reading Frazer recently, 00:10:38.310 --> 00:10:39.150 align:middle line:90% I don't recall. 00:10:39.150 --> 00:10:41.070 align:middle line:84% I'm sure I wasn't conscious of it. 00:10:41.070 --> 00:10:45.630 align:middle line:84% It doesn't mean that the connection isn't there. 00:10:45.630 --> 00:10:47.610 align:middle line:84% Yes, I had a very interesting discussion 00:10:47.610 --> 00:10:54.127 align:middle line:84% with a theologian who read the book in terms of the Trinity, 00:10:54.127 --> 00:10:55.710 align:middle line:84% and I've forgotten the whole argument, 00:10:55.710 --> 00:10:56.877 align:middle line:90% but it was interesting. 00:10:56.877 --> 00:10:58.710 align:middle line:84% When I looked at it, I could sort of see it, 00:10:58.710 --> 00:11:01.500 align:middle line:84% but I certainly didn't think of it at the time. 00:11:01.500 --> 00:11:02.000 align:middle line:90%