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Love, Language, Literature · Q & A, Hosted by Jay Nordlinger

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Hello everyone and welcome to Q&A.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Jay Nordlinger and our guest today is Mark Halprin, the writer.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: Writer of what?
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: Of novels, chiefly, I would say, and short stories, essays, pieces about defense policy, etc.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think I've ever seen any poetry from him.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: If it exists, I bet it's good.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: One of his novels is Winter's Tale.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: Another is A Soldier of the Great War.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: They are quite famous,
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: but don't sleep on others,
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: including Freddy and Frederica,
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: Paris and the Present Tents, and My Beloved in Sunlight and in Shadow.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: Not that I have a favorite.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: I really don't.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: His latest novel is Elegy in Blue.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: I'll hold up the cover.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's a wonderful cover.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: Elegy in Blue.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: and i'd like to give credit so i just want to say that the jacket art is
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: by derek reist and the jacket design is by eli mock you might call it
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: a mock-up ha ha ha but uh there it is again hello mark hi jay let me just say
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: that derek reist um is a i think a year perhaps a year older
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: than i am maybe two years
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: We Were In College Together I Didn't Know Him I Discovered Him Not Only
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: After We Were In College But After He Died So He's No Longer With Us
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: And He's I Think Very Underappreciated His Paintings Are Really Beautiful He's
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: Wonderful The Way He Captures The Light In New York
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: and his paintings have been scattered to the winds this is something
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: that will probably happen to us all i mean it will eventually even the sun burns out
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: but i i wanted to have that on the cover as a as a homage not an homage
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: as people say because we're not cockneys but as a homage to him mark
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: about poetry i'd like to know have you written poems and also does
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: Does poetry mean anything to you?
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: Does it play a role in your life?
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: I have, you know,
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: in high school and before high school and then high school and then in college,
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: I majored in English,
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: which I wouldn't dare to do today, but I did way back then in the Dinosaur Times.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: It was going in 60 years ago and had to read a lot of poetry, of course, and I was tested in it.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way,
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: I was unable to graduate from Harvard unless I took and passed a test in the Bible.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine that today at Harvard?
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: Not going to happen.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: Also, you had to pass a swimming test too.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: Swimming, which is, by the way, a Jewish thing.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: Jews are required to teach their children to swim, at least in religious Jews.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so...
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: I read a lot of poetry then and even in I had some time in graduate schools
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: in comparative literature and had to read it then and certainly have read it
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: in many languages but I'm not it's not something
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: that I take too naturally I've written three poems in my life oh yeah
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: and two were published no actually I've written four
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: which is not much of an accomplishment but I've written four
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: the first one I wrote was I wrote on my ration book when I was in the army and I had
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: an all night guarding gig as they would call it now hold it did you say
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: Ration?
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: Is that related to ration?
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry, I didn't quite get that.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: You say potato, I say potato.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: Let's call the whole thing off.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: I say ration.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: I say you get your rations.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: Not Eurasians.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: Sun-made rations.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: No, that's something else.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: There were three or four published here and there.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: One actually...
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: was published in the Wall Street Journal on a full op-ed page.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: And it was called Table of Inflation.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: It was about Martin Van Buren's dining room table.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: Now, how many people can say that they've published a full page poem in
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: the Wall Street Journal about Martin Van Buren's dining room table?
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: But I guess that's my most widely read published poem.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: Mark I mentioned in the introduction your book A Soldier of the Great War
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: and I was thinking about it and it was published in 1991 and its protagonist is
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: a man named Giuliani and in 1993 a man named Giuliani was elected mayor of New York
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: and got to be nationally famous and this is sort of a quirky question did this help
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: that book hurt it somehow
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: Or is it just immaterial?
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: Is it irrelevant?
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: It became immaterial.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: But when it happened, I started writing that book in the early 80s.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: We were at the American Academy in Rome in 1982, to begin with, and 1983.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I was full into writing it.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I never heard of Rudolf Giuliani.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: and by the time then it came out in 91 so I mean it was almost 10 years before
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: before he became known and when he when when
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: the book was out luckily it was out I mean he he was the US attorney at when
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: the book was published but I but not too many people had heard of the US attorney
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: for New York and then he began to make a name for himself
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: and I I even I even was able to duck under the wire with a paperback
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: But when he did become known,
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: I thought, oh, well,
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: people will think that I named it after him if they come to the book
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: after it was published.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: But of course not.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: The Giuliani were a great famous Roman family.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: And they came from the Caesars, essentially.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: And the Giuliani family was aristocratic in Italy for a thousand years, more.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: Mark, and the title of your new book is Elegy in Blue.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I looked up the word elegy to be sure I had a grasp on it.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: A song or poem expressing sorrow or lamentation, especially for one who is dead.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: For whom or for what is your elegy?
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's such a beautiful title, Elegy in Blue.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: But it's very sad.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: First of all, you know, an elegy is, I would think, sad.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: And blue is sad, to be blue.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's a song that goes, I'm so blue.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: And we sing the blues.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: What does the title mean?
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think your first question was, for whom?
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: And it's for Claire.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: who is the,
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: if you haven't read the people who haven't read the book,
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: which is most people in the world,
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: Claire is the heroine of the book,
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: the wife of the protagonist who is killed in a terrorist incident.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: The whole book is about her.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, the introduction of the book says she knows very well for whom this is written.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: And it's for my wife, although my wife is quite alive.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: But in the book, Claire is killed.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: So Elegy in Blue is meant to put one in mind of Rhapsody in Blue.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: And you take care in the first few pages of your book to talk about Rhapsody in Blue.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: the work for piano and orchestra by Gershwin.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it's very wise of you to do this.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: I wonder,
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: was there a time when you would not have had to do this,
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: when everyone would have related the one thing to the other?
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, for sure.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: Again, that's what I was talking about.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: There was a common denominator.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: People had cultural references.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: They knew these things.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: For instance, United Airlines adopted Rhapsody in Blue as their theme song.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll bet you that most people didn't know what it was.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's beautiful and it was apt and it was great, but they did a great job.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: But I bet...
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: many people had no idea what they were listening to Mark it seems to me
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: that this book is shorter than your usual book not quite a novella still a novel
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: but short and I would say dense not in a bad way meaning sluggish or turgid but rich
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: and I was wondering did it take less long to write than the others or about
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: the same amount of time or even more
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: I think it took I don't remember how long it took me because I have a habit
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: when I finish a book I write the actually the time the date and the day of the week
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: and the year of course when I finish
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: but I never I guess I'm superstitious I never write it at the beginning when I start
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: so I never know how long it's taken me except for a very rough estimate
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: but I this must have taken less time because it's shorter however
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: Every book that I write goes through about 12 drafts.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: And that takes a long time.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: It takes a long time.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: And did you read this one out loud, as is your habit?
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: What I do is, sometimes when I'm editing it, I will sort of...
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: say it, but quietly to listen to how it sounds.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's very important.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: I want it to sound right.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: I want the meter, in a sense, to be right.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the meter is not like poetry meter.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's not strict, but there's meter to it.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: Of course.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: There's music, rhythm, phrasing.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: Mark,
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: Does it annoy you when people like me who know you well read your books and find you in them?
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: There's so much of you in this book.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: I think it it it affected the way I read it and it made some parts all the more painful.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: I am
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: I sometimes wonder when you leave off and the fiction begins and is there some blend
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: or real life versus fiction it seems to me a blend but I wonder
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: if your friends read your books with different eyes so
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: to speak certainly this one well you know I believe that it was maybe it was in
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: the reverse
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: Faulkner's Revers but I don't recall because it's a long time ago that I heard this
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: but there was one book in which either Faulkner
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: or maybe it was I don't think it was Truman Capote but somehow I associated it with
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: the South where there was a the writer as a young person was told by
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: an older person maybe it was Eudora Welty I don't know
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: The person to whom the young writer turned for advice said, write what you know.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: You see?
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: Write what you know.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: And of course,
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: that's one reason why a lot of modern writers don't do well
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: because they don't know anything because all they've done is go to writing school
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: where they learn how to write.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: And they haven't lived a life of
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: which has many aspects but of course you write what you know
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: if you know it it's very easy to to then bring it to life because you know it
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: if you don't know it then
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: then it becomes purely fiction.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: So I think of it as anchoring the fiction.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, it's never literal.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: All first novels it is set are autobiographical.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: I wrote my first novel called Refiner's Fire and people said, oh, it's so autobiographical.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's just all about you.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, no, it's not.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's not at all.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a bit.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: I had no idea.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: Looking back on it, I haven't reread it.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: I never reread anything that I've ever written.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: but remembering it I realize now it's totally autobiographical
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: and I didn't even know it so now I've accepted that I've accepted that
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: because I've had a you know I'm going to be 80 next year and I have a lot to draw
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: upon so what I do is I draw upon it
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: and I change it I fictionalize it I make composites I adopt it but
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: when something upwells from you from your own experience and that you feel deeply
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: and it wants to be on the page.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: You allow it to be on the page.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: You may have to go in your subsequent drafts.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: You may have to change it this way and that way in order to fit the book or whatever.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I'm certainly, in this book, there's a lot of actual experience in it.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: Mark, I've mentioned before,
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: and including in our podcast, I think, I don't know that there's ever been
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: Anyone Who Has Loved New York New York City More Than You Do And As The Book Is Said
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: In New York
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I Think You Know Walt Whitman Loved New York Ed Koch Loved New York Boy Does
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: Mark Halperin Love New York And You Write One Hymn After Another To This City
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: Where I'm Sitting Now But You've Not Chosen To Live Here Which Interests Me
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: since you know New York better than any New Yorker.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: That just interests me.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: You're a New York writer who doesn't live in New York.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, when I was a freshman in college,
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: I went into the stacks of Widener Library.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: Widener Library is the best library in the world.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: The Library of Congress has more stuff in it, because the Library of Congress has everything.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: Widener Library is curated, and it has more things from the rest of the world too.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: When I was an undergraduate,
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: it was one of Harvard's more than 100 libraries, but it was the chief one.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: I wandered in there as a freshman,
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: and I was wandering through the stacks,
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: which are spectacular,
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: and I came across the New York section,
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: the history of New York,
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: which is divided up into the history of New York State and then New York City.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: and there were stacks and stacks and stacks of books about New York City.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: I did okay in my freshman year,
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: but I was certainly disadvantaged by spending so much time sitting on the floor
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: in those stacks, taking one book after another.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: I was just magnetized by the history of New York.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: And then, of course, I mean, I lived there for so long.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: I was born there.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: And my parents were born there, died there.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: My first child was born there.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: I met my wife there.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: First wife, then my second wife, who's my present wife.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: And it's my city.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that's my home.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: But in 1986, we lived in Brooklyn Heights and we had just had our first child.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I was coming home and I was walking on Columbia Heights in Brooklyn Heights.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: And in front of our building, there was a car.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: And the car was bouncing up and down.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: and there was smoke coming out from it.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I had my baby daughter in my arms.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: I was carrying her.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I went, I looked at the car and the reason there was smoke coming out of it, it was hashish.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: And the car was bouncing up and down because there were two transvestites in it having sex.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: And this was in front of my building.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so I had my child in my arms and I thought,
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to bring her up in a place where when we go home,
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: we see that in front of the door.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: My father and not so much my mother because she was an actress,
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: but my father had extremely what you would call bourgeois values.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he was a very traditional straight-laced person and so do I.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't like libertinism, you know?
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: I don't like drugs.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: I don't like public sex like that.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: I don't like that kind of environment.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: And at that point, we had to choose where to bring up our children.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: So we chose to leave and we did.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: We've lived now in the country and where we live is in the mountains of Virginia,
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: in the Blue Ridge.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's extremely rural.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we're surrounded, we have bears, we have herds of cattle.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: We have,
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: if I look out my window,
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: I cannot see any work of man for, we can see eight miles that way.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: And if you go to a different part of the property,
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: you can see 30 miles this way and 30 miles that way.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just, you can't see anything made by man.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: Nonetheless, it's memory.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I have New York in memory because that's my emotional home.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: You know what else you love, Mark, as much as anyone loves it, is seawater.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: You love the sea.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: And you're always talking about New York as watery.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: And your previous novel,
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: your novel before Algae and Blue,
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: is The Ocean and the Stars, subtitled A Sea Story, A War Story, A Love Story.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: But you don't live on a coast.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: You must have the sea in mind quite a bit.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I confess without...
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: I hope I don't seem like an investment banker, but my...
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'll tell you,
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: when my father was in the war,
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: in World War II,
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: of course,
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: and he was in North Africa,
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: and he was in London during the Blitz, and he was in India.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: And when he came back,
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: as you know,
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: being in any kind of war,
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: even if you're not in the thick of it,
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: is very stressful and taxing, and it changes you.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: When he came back, he resigned his commission,
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: and he took my mother and they lived for a year in a shack in Amagansett
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: which is out on Long Island magnificent beaches even now and
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: then it was pretty much empty I believe it's an elegy in blue yeah well it's in
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: a lot of books actually yeah yeah true yeah and they lived there for
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: a year he worked on a sword fishing boat
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: and he would trade his share of the swordfish for tuna and vegetables
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: and other stuff and bring it home at night to eat and also he dug clams
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: and he surf cast and my mother picked berries and he also had a small wage from
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: the boat so they lived that way for a year in a more or less a cabin on the beach
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: and then because of that
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: We Had A Place Out There So I Grew Up Out There As Well As In New York And That Was
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: The Sea And The Coast Etc By The Way I Went To A Naval Auxiliary Camp When I Was
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: A Kid Which Was A Really A Military Type Of Camp Where There Was It Was Like
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: A Baby Annapolis And We We Sailed And We And It Was Right On The Water
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: In Orleans Massachusetts And
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, New York is on the, anywhere you look, there's water.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: There's the Hudson,
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: the East River,
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: and then as I make a point in this book,
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: in Elegy and Blue,
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: there are places that channels and inlets and creeks and the sound and the Hudson,
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: the East River, the Harbor, the beaches in New York City, bays, big bays.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: People don't know that there are places in New York
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: where there are hundreds of houses where if you if you just the house is literally
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: on a dock and you can walk from your living room step down get onto your boat and
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: within 10 minutes you're in the open ocean and that's in the city
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: of New York people don't realize that because they visit Manhattan it is
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: a maritime city by the way you say all that
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: Just That In This Book And So Beautifully As You Just Have Here's Something
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: In My Notes Mark Man Do You Like Women I Mean All Men Do
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: But Man Alive Do You Like Women Especially One Of Them
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: Of Course You Write Almost Idolatrously About Women You Love New York You Love
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_01: The Sea
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: But Holy Smokes Do You Like Women Yes I Do I Put It This Way I Appreciate Them Now I
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: Have
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: I have a friend who shall go unnamed,
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: obviously, who thinks of women as in the same way that a fox thinks of a hen.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's a prey, essentially.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: You have to trick them.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: I think I know this guy.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you do.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: You have to trick them.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: You have to seduce them.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: You have to attract them with money and benefits.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: You have to do this.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: You have to do that.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: and one thing he and he has great difficulty in doing this
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: because he's always frustrated what he doesn't understand is when I say
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: to him you don't have to do any of that you have to appreciate them you have to
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: if you fall in love with somebody if you under if you if you see the wonderfulness
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: of somebody that's all you need to do and
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: that will I mean I don't know what his ends are but uh
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's how one should approach it, and it goes in the opposite direction, too.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: In the relations between the sexes,
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: you have all this kind of, well, here we have, by the way, a flock of wild turkeys.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: We have a herd of deer.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: We have 30 deer on our property.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: or more, but we see them sometimes 30 at a time in the field in front of the house.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: But we also have turkeys and they can be 25, 30, 40 turkeys, wild turkeys.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: and they do this dance.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: The male puffs up his feathers and dances around and they go in circles
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: and they flap and they do this and that.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what my friend does, essentially.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: But you don't have to do that.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: If you love a person, you fall in love and you appreciate what she is.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's really all you have to do.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I do.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: If there's a spectrum
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone Says And I Believe There Is A Sexual Spectrum
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: Where You Have Heterosexual Here And Same Sex Attraction There
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: And Just Completely I Bump Up Against The Wall You Got
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: A Double Portion Triple Portion
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: Mark this my my next our next topic relates to
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: that very thing your books always involve I'm thinking
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_01: of themes I say always can be expected
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_01: to involve justice courage physical courage moral courage manliness
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: and I've been writing quite a lot about this the past 10 years in particular.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I have two great prayers.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: Well, many,
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: but two are that we recover a proper sense of patriotism and that we recover
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: a proper sense of manliness.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_01: So often what passes from manliness today in my opinion is just bravado,
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_01: aggressiveness, chest thumping, crudity, vulgarity.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_01: That's not manliness.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: And people think acting like a jerk
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: on social media and so on makes you a man.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the reasons I appreciate reading Mark Halperin is that it brings me back
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: to what sort of manly virtue and valor is.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know if you have a view so dim as the one I just expressed.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: but I guess I guess I don't have a question to ask you
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: but I just I can answer it yeah good good good this is a will be something which is
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: a transient but right now I just refer you to Graham Platner yeah and that's that's
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: a kind of chest-thumping kind of or for instance now and the White House
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: The White House lawn is going to be the scene of a gladiatorial contest.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_01: Sounds like a parody.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: I discovered in the Army, a lot of people won't like this, tough.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: I was in the Israeli Infantry and in the Israeli Air Force, and I was a cop for 10 years.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: These are things that
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: I was a cop for 10 years and even before that I was an auxiliary cop
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: in Massachusetts to help get through graduate school Anyway,
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: actually it was after graduate school but I was still at Harvard Anyway,
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: I've had a lot of exposure to things like that
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I found out very early on,
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: and it was confirmed again and again and again,
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: that the quiet ones are the ones with the courage.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why, for instance, Pete Hegseth
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: Says in uh he said uh we want warriors and they they changed the the uh the name of
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: the department of defense although not actually because it it requires an act
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: of congress and there is no act of congress that changes it to the department
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: of war they call it the department of war it actually is still the department
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: of defense yeah and he talks all about warriors and being tough
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: and he had pull-up contests push-up contests and all that kind of stuff um
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: and that's uh
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_00: That is such bullshit It's just dreadful I can't imagine George C.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: Marshall Or Forrestal I have a friend who's a university president In Canada
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: And just yesterday he sent me an email And it was about this book
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: And he said I wonder If I
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: would have the courage to do what the protagonist,
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: the hero in this book did, if I recall, to do that.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I wrote back an email to him and I said, I know you would, because I know you.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure you would.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I said,
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: because what you want in that situation,
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: I said, if we were going to, if you and I were at point to hope,
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: in Normandy in World War II.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: I said, I would want you on my side.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I actually said to him, not Graham Plattner or Donald Trump.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: You see?
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way,
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: when you talk about manliness, it was Harvey Mansfield wrote the book, Manliness.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I always thought it was because his name was Mansfield.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe they used that title.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, sure.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: The blowhards Usually cut and run And what I wanted to say is The Department of War
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: And Warriors The great thing about The American way of war
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: What has enabled the United States when we did prevail and win in wars,
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: when we were something else than what we are today and have been for quite a while,
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: unfortunately, was that we are the citizen soldiers.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: we're we're not warriors we're soldiers and we're and and we're like cincinnatus
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: or george washington when we're done we go back to our fields yes you know and we
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: and and we and we don't walk around like for instance in you've heard of
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: the uh musical a funny thing happened to me on the way to the forum yeah that
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: with zero mustel who by the way
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_00: I knew all my life until he died.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: He was a family friend.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: And he was just as crazy in real life as he is on the screen.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he was always on and he was just like that in real life.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, that was a musical starring Zero Mostel and Jack Guilford and a lot of other people.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a soldier in it called Miles Gloriosus.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_00: Roman soldier and he He appears on stage and his chest is all puffed up
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: and he says I Meles Gloriosus I Conqueror of Thousands I Destroyer of
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: the Meek Oppressor of the Turk Must Hurry Back to Work and
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: then he says he says stand aside I take large steps you see that type
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's not the American soldier.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact,
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: when I said to my friend who was the college president,
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: who, by the way, was an expert, he was an arms instructor for the Canadian Army.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, he had that background.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_00: And yet he questioned himself because he's modest and good and intelligent and thinking.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: I said, well, actually, I did say, just as you said, I said, you want...
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: George Marshall and uh did I say someone else did I say George Marshall before
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_00: but George Marshall was one of the people as opposed to to uh uh Graham Plattener or
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: or or or Donald Trump uh yeah now these I I'm I'm what I in in
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: the book what I think is Jay that uh martial virtues
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_00: are good if they can be controlled and contained and very carefully calibrated
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: and thought about and rationed.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: And people tend to reject them.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_00: If you have them, then you're a Graham Plattner, but that's not so.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: If you have them, you're like my father.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: who did extraordinary things in the war and yet never even talked about them.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: You hear that a lot.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_00: The veterans, they don't talk about them.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: I had to squeeze it out of him.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: I had to practically torture him to get the details.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_01: Mark,
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_01: I was writing about music the other day and I said something about American music
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_01: or American music on concert programs.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_01: I thought, no, wait a minute.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_01: there's American music and there's music by American composers.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_01: That's not necessarily American music.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_01: Take Aaron Copeland.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_01: He wrote some obviously and straightforwardly American music and some things
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_01: that you would not classify as American music, 12 tone music and so on.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_01: It was just, Copeland was an American by nationality.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_01: I was thinking about you.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_01: Is Mark an American writer?
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_01: he's a writer who is an American is he also an American writer I believe you are
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: in most instances yeah I think I am in the same way that in that I'm a hybrid
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: of course I have been rejected as a Jewish writer because they say I'm too much like
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_00: an American writer and then maybe I'd be rejected as an American writer
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_00: because they say too much as a Jewish writer but you take Gershwin
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: And he was both intensely Jewish and intensely American And I can't help that
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_01: because I'm both So was Copeland Yeah,
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_01: so was Copeland So were a great many You are Halprinian in a word Mark Toward
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_01: the end of his life
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_01: So Richard Strauss wrote orchestral tone poems He wrote some chamber music,
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_00: not much Excuse me, yeah
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_01: lots of operas other things and he told Hans Hodder
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_01: the great bass you know I like my songs best and uh you've written lots
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_01: of short stories lots of novels and other things and they're all your children
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_01: so maybe you don't play favorites but
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_01: and do you love your short stories I mean it'd be
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_01: How can you say you love your own stories,
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_01: but your novels,
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_01: particular novels,
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_01: do you have a pet or two or three,
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_01: or they sort of equal children and creations of yours?
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_00: If I can be objective at all about what I spend my life doing,
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: I would say that what I do best is short stories.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_00: But there's no market for them.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_00: The market disappeared.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: In the early 80s, I came out with a book called Ellis Island and Other Stories.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_00: And it was, as the French say, a succès fou.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_00: It was really, really successful.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_00: It was on the cover of the New York Times Book Review, and it was only my
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_00: my second book you know and it did extremely well and it sort of started
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_00: in New York anyway in limited sense it started a craze for the short story but then
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: that just disappeared it disappeared what happens is it comes back every now and
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_00: then
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_00: But it's gone now.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_00: There's hardly a market for the short stories.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_00: In fact,
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_00: I saw a news article about some former Condé Nast executive who was starting
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_00: a publishing venture for the short story.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, oh, isn't that nice?
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, because maybe,
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_00: I could have a way to publish short stories that are not published in
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_00: The New Yorker, which is ideologically filtered.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_00: but you know maybe there's another market but in fact her short stories were going
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: to be on TikTok and they were supposed to be about popular culture and it was
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_00: an internet thing it was not not really something that um but anyway uh
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_00: because there was no the market
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_00: for them disappeared I've only made three collections of short stories and um
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_00: the last one was in about 2005 it was called The Pacific and it is
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_01: in fact my favorite book of my books that is my most given book
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_01: the book I most frequently give and some readers of mine have told me that
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_01: the same is true of them um but you though are a switch hitter or or multipurpose
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_01: or whatever the right term is and that you do both so well novels and short stories
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_01: and I'll tell you something um
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_01: Alice Munro once said,
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_01: M-U-N-R-O,
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_01: short story writer,
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_01: Canadian, won the Nobel Prize, a brilliant woman, possibly a genius.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_01: And she was asked once, at least once, why she didn't write novels.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_01: And she said, you know, I've tried to, and I could write a novel.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I could write a story at a novel's length.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_01: But when I tried it, I realized I was just padding
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_01: a short story and my natural arc seems to be a short story she didn't put exactly
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_01: as I have but but close she said I just I was just padding I I couldn't do it uh
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_01: but you can so you're so you're a double threat at least which is not that's
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_00: the term I was really searching for double threat I can tell you that um
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_00: When I was an undergraduate,
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_00: I took a course on Irish literature with a professor named Kelleher,
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_00: Professor Kelleher, and he had a stutter.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I admired him so much because his profession was to lecture and tutor,
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_00: and yet his stutter was absolutely crippling.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_00: But he got up there each time
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_01: and he would he would go through an hour public speaking was central to his job
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_01: and profession
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_00: and career that's right my gosh what guts what guts tremendous tremendous courage
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: to do that and he did it you know for decades and he was the harvard professor
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_00: of irish literature
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_00: and I remember once in a lecture he said,
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_00: and I won't imitate his stutter,
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_00: but he said that someone asked somebody,
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know whether they asked him or whether it was a famous Irish writer,
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_00: whoever it may have been, maybe Sean O'Feline or I don't know.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_00: And he said that
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_00: someone said i think it was actually professor keller who's
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_00: who was asked this why do the irish write mainly short stories and not novels
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_00: because they don't write that many not then you know through
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_00: the 19th century yeah i mean you had ulysses and you had finnegan's wake
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_00: and you had this this that but mainly it was short stories in place and he said
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_00: and poems he said it was because
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_00: the national life had been truncated.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember that he said it was truncated.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_00: You would come out with something and it was stopped
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_00: because there are always these crises and the rebellions and this,
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_00: that, and the other thing.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_00: And he said also,
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_00: National Life wasn't great enough.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_00: Britain is an empire throughout the world.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_00: France is with its empire, with big continental armies, et cetera, et cetera.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_00: Ireland, he said, he may not have used these words, was little.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_00: So it was little.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_00: So it didn't, National Life didn't afford the novel.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_00: Very interesting.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_00: And now as far as Alice Munro, and by the way, my editor at Knopf, when I put
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_00: I had my first two books were at Knopf was her editor
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_00: and I don't I don't I've never read her so I don't know
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_00: but I'll take your recommendation at face value I think what she said was correct
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_00: and that is that you really don't need to write more than a short story
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_00: if you can convey and you can everything in a novel
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_00: in a short story, it's wonderful to be able to do that.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_00: On the other hand,
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_00: what a novel can do in a short story can,
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_00: is pull you in and keep you engaged for a long time.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_00: And there's value in that.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_00: In that, it's sort of like the difference between
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you lose yourself in it more.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_00: And the short stories is like looking at a beautiful painting.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you look at a Manet or a Monet or a Raphael or a Caravaggio.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_00: You see the painting.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's magnificent.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's a work of genius.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's great.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_00: The short story is like
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_00: going to a country or I mean sorry the novel it's like going to a country or being
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_00: in a war it lasts and you live it more yeah you're living it more than if
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_00: a short story watching it or looking at it uh and it's also like the difference
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_00: between you know a symphony
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_00: In a symphony it draws you in and you're captive as you listen to the whole thing
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_00: and it changes you more than a simple song which can be just as beautiful
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_00: or more beautiful or a section of a symphony but when you're brought into
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_00: the symphony you lose yourself more so again as I hate to repeat myself instead
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_00: of observing your living
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_01: Mark, you long have had a motto that comes from Dante,
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_01: and it's printed at the beginning of your new book, Belgian Blue.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_01: Tell us the meaning of that to you.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that means, in translation, love moved me and made me speak.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_00: or maybe it's makes me speak and that's when
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_00: when uh uh Beatrice is uh encounters Dante when he's about to descend into
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_00: the worlds she encounters him in Virgil I believe
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_00: and she said why is she there you know because he's loved her uh in the abstract
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_00: because he never you know he couldn't marry he just saw her once
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_00: he loved her the way that people
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_00: in medieval times loved Madonna you know it was devotion it was chivalric and
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_00: And why is she there for him?
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_00: And she says, love moved me and makes me speak.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's why she appears to him,
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_00: to guide him,
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_00: more in the heart than Virgil,
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_00: who guides him morally and actually through the journey that he takes.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way,
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_00: the motto for my next book,
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_00: which I just finished the second draft,
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_00: and it's a novel and it's much longer than this one,
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_00: is Beatrice in Suso e Dio in Lei Guardava, which is Beatrice looked up and I looked at her.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_00: And what happens is,
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_00: this is in Paradiso,
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_00: second canto, the light of God is shining on Beatrice and then it
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_00: goes to Dante because you only see things because light illuminates it.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_00: And the light rays that hit something then bounce off it and they come to you.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_00: So what Dante,
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_00: the theology behind this and the depth behind this is that Dante
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_00: in loving Beatrice is loving God.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_00: You see, that's how he gets... And you love...
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_00: He Loves Beatrice It's Almost The Same As Loving God Because It Is Also Loving God
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_00: And That Is The Medieval Chivalric Anyway Idea Of Why You Love
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_00: A Woman Why Dante Loves Her Is Because It's Almost The Same As Loving God
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_00: But Anyway That's The Motto Of The New One
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_00: but but as far as the I've used this motto in for many books
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_00: because what it says is this is why I write this is what I'm doing this for for
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_00: because of of motivated by love of one thing or another of beauty of of a person of
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_00: Country Of Virtue Whatever It Is It's Motivated By Love
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_00: And That's Why You May Notice That I Don't Have A Lot Of Evil Characters In
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_00: The Books There Are Some But I Don't
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_00: delve into them that much, not interested in why they're evil.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yes, that's true enough, including in Elgean Blue.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_00: Not interested in why they're evil, just want to essentially get rid of them.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_01: There's a phrase from Coleridge, I believe, to describe Iago, motiveless malignity.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_01: Just bad, just bad.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, Hannah Arendt wrote a book called The Banality of Evil.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I've always thought that there's something really bad about that because evil is not banal.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's evil.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_00: It isn't any way banal.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the people who are evil...
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_00: might be in themselves banal,
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_00: but evil is such that, I mean,
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_00: for instance,
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_00: her point was that,
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_00: for instance,
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_00: the people who ran the concentration camps were,
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_00: sort of very straight-laced bourgeois people who would,
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_01: come home and have... Maybe it's the banality of the evildoers is more precise.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the evil itself,
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_00: you can't dismiss it or water it down by saying that it's banal,
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_00: because it isn't, because it's so terrible.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_00: Evil cannot be banal.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_00: Always disagreed with that thesis.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_01: Ladies and gentlemen,
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_01: I am Jay Nordlinger,
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_01: who has done Q&A with Mark Helfrin,
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_01: whose new book, his new published book, there's a book
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_01: Sort of completed and waiting, right?
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_01: Is Elegy in Blue?
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_01: What can I tell you about Mark Halperin, everyone?
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_01: The other day I accused him of being an intellectual.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_01: He said, I'm not an intellectual.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_01: He said, I'm an artist.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_01: He said, I'm an artist.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_01: He's certainly a literary artist.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I was joking, you know.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_01: uh well it was still true joke or not so mark what can i say i love you i admire you
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_01: and in my life you are a bfd and those initials stand for big and
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_01: the last one is deal so uh i but can i say something
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_00: before we go you've never been stopped go ahead baby okay um
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_00: I just want to say that I'm very disturbed,
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_00: I have been for years now,
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_00: that people don't appreciate the language, the beauty of language.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_00: They haven't been educated toward it, especially in the last decades.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_00: They've been educated even away from it.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_00: you know they they they've told they're told them for instance
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_00: the minimalist movement uh and I guess it started with Hemingway but even he wrote
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_00: with biblical cadences but the the new minimalist uh don't and even that is like
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_00: a uh something entirely different from what we what we have now and
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_00: when I was writing speeches for uh politicians and uh and I did a lot of that
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_00: never got paid one penny ever was never it was always volunteer there was only there
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_00: were only two people who understood that substance and style when they fuse make
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_00: a product which is greater than the sum of the parts and the one was a president and
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_00: the other was a senator but most of them
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_00: Although they sometimes knew,
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_00: well, there's something special here, but they didn't know what it was.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_00: They couldn't identify it.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_00: And if they tried to interfere with it,
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_00: they could really screw it up because they just never understood that.
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_00: And what is lacking in this literary culture,
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_00: as far as I can tell, and again, I'm pretty ignorant of it, but I have osmosis.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's like I'm saying I have a disease, but by osmosis, I know this.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_00: is a concentration upon and appreciation of the beauty of language,
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_00: which in itself lifts things in a way that without it, they're not lifted.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what I try to do.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_00: And in this book, certainly I have tried to do it.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_01: You give ideas and feelings wings.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_01: So long, everyone.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_01: Till next time.