>> from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." charlie: terry macdonald's ear. his career spans more than four decades. he has edited some of this country's most influential magazines, including esquire, rolling stone, sports illustrated, and has worked with many of our greatest literary talent. he chronicles his long life in publishing and in the world of letters in his new memoir. it is called "the accidental life and editors notes on

writers."d he is a friend and i'm proud to have him here for the why did you decide in what was the point for this particular book? was it one you always knew you had to write because it involved the ideas of writing and the people, writing, that you care most about. it felt like i would always write this book but it didn't at the beginning. i went through files i had carried with me of 13 different magazines. i found all kinds of stories, photographs of the relationship i had with these various writers and i thought the best way for me to show my own writing would be to write about these writers. i started telling those stories and adding in things about the

media business from the peak of the new journalism all the way to now, which made it a it about money so it became about that and what you have to do to be a writer but funnily, it turned into a book about writers who became my friends. charlie: does one stand out more than anybody else? >> george, hunter thompson. those guys. .lso jim salter it's a long list for me. charlie: this is a book about writers and their work and working with them. editing is what i wanted to write about but it's also about friends for it is about that also. what follows is not strictly chronological, it bounces a little. so did i. [laughter] terry: i did. charlie: you call it an accidental life.

like the guy who made me an editor, his name was bob cheryl in my 20's. always a said you have got to watch out for the classic career path in journalism. you are stuck on a beat, work your way of. he said the accidental life is where you have to take chances and get fired. that defines me. i've never had a traditional life at all. terry: that is true. charlie: you chose ezra pound. terry: i wanted to be very specific about these writers because it was in the detail and the specifics you learned when they were really like i think. charlie: is there one common denominator they share beyond curiosity and talent? terry: no. [laughter] i have thought about that. i think the most attractive thing they had was unawareness of their talent and a pride in

a which -- and they all had great work ethic. that would be it. they worked like crazy. charlie: everybody i know who is any good at anything works harder than you ever imagined. terry: they work in different ways. charlie: you said the second best answer and editor can give is no. terry: yes. the worst thing for a writer is when the editor strings you out and doesn't answer you. it is a horrible kind of humiliating hell. that undercuts every bit of confidence you have. charlie: tell me about bob cheryl. terry: we used to call him the other bob cheryl because there was another who was famous for a book called "saturday night special." book, the other bob cheryl, said this book about handguns was so powerful, you should hold

it up to your forehead and learn how to report because it was such relentless reporting. to the other bob cheryl, distinguished from that, had come west. a little underground newspaper we said was like the village voice for left angeles, which it wasn't. heorked for him there and was the one who listened to my ideas and would tell me, maybe you should be an editor. we went around and around about that. charlie: why did he say that? liked my ideas, we used to drive around southern california a lot and i had this car i used to drive him around in. i had able slagging convertible. convertible.en i have been reading esquire since high school and he had come from esquire where he had

first done some of his genre cracking stories and dubious achievements. he was a real force at esquire in the 1960's and still a contributing editor. terry: was harold hayes there? he was. i never knew him. i never got to work with him. charlie: also a great editor. terry: brilliant editor. charlie: clay was the one who put shopping and politics in the same. no one had thought to do that. he thereby invented the city magazine. that is what we have now. he insisted on detail. charlie: insisted on detail. terry: yes. charlie: and loved the defining profile. terry: he loved that, the high-end glamour of it, loved putting up a check, going to that restaurant. he had great style and that drew

not only writers to him but celebrities who wanted to be covered by him. he had great access. charlie: can you make an argument southerners have anything special in this world that we are talking about? terry: they seem to have a lot more charm and style in my business. there were many -- the southern editors are famously successful. miss.ent to duke, ole charlie: hunter thompson. terry: yeah. charlie: tell me about the man you knew. terry: well, he was misunderstood i think because he had a persona that he loved so much that he had trouble taking it all. veryivate, he could be courtly, sentimental even and a very good friend.

charlie: that is what some people say about trump. corley and private but has a persona he can't take off in public. terry: hunter was never a bully. learned abouts i hunter was by observing and being drawn in with his friendship with george clumped in very few people recognized this but they were friends for a long, long time. they recognize each other right all. they have broken onto the scene at the same time with their books. him a couple with months of each other. 6'3", welloth hunter athletes except

was stronger, george was a better athlete. they both hated wine, loved cocaine. george used to call them the chemicals as in "do you have the chemicals?" charlie: they were both 6'3"? terry: they were. charlie: they died very differently. one in his sleep, one with a gunshot wound. terry: yes. a story that is difficult for me . it has to do with when i called hunter to tell him george had died. i had -- a sarah had called me that morning and told me she had woken up and there he was next to her in bed dead. she said to me "he just looked so good." so i called under to tell him and i told him what i knew and i heard that grinder of that cocaine to he had begging on the

table and more silence and i waited. you." said "screw and i said "i know." charlie: defined george for me. hunter was a frequent guest here. charlie: the lesson of george was that you don't leave anything to chance. certainly not your work. and equally not what you are going to do when you're not working even if the work and the life are the same thing. by that i mean he orchestrated his going out, going to parties, giving parties, meeting this person, talking to that person. he did it with such a high joy that it was impossible not to be taken in. madeanners drew you in and

you think you were in on some of the secrets though you weren't. this was funny sometimes because george could not remember names so when he saw someone that he knew he knew but didn't know their name, he would say "there whoever int man" and the party was greeted by that was just so proud. one-timed, i remember george greeting -- one time, i remember him grading a pizza delivery guy with "there is the great man" and there he was. charlie: richard ford. very muchhard ford alive and still working. he has a concentration on his work and his ability to translate things that are becomeked to things that

telling in terms of the way you live your life is what i believe .rought him we are the same age and we have a lot in common and we always try to have an exchange. terry: take a look at this clip from richard ford's interview on this program. charlie: this is what you said. extend this to strategy of extending you, having a character talked you about things that are important and willing to try and reward you." that is what you said about riding in 1945. charlie: extending means what? >> there were many things known so well that they weren't ever seen very well. extend you to notice

things that you think you already know as a way of saying in an almost moral way, pay attention. i want to, for instance, expand your view of certain kinds of characters. if i had characters in a book who are people repair machinery and farm land and you think to yourself "these people aren't to write a want story in which because of the action of the story, that they are moved to eloquence. and i might extend you to believe you have more in common with someone then you thought you did. it isn't just in art or allrature, this takes place

the time. i always compare it to these seven moments when somebody has to move a volkswagen and they find themselves able to do some thing they might not have ever been able to do before. i remember watching that and thinking to myself that is exactly right and i need to talk to richard about that and i called him and i believe we worked together more frequently after that interview so thank you. [laughter] charlie: now i want to show you hunter thompson on my program talking about hemingway. the previous interview was from 1997. 1997,ith hunter is from june 13. charlie: what writer has taught you the most? who have you learned the most from?

>> may be the most important lesson i was trying to learn , i was tempting my fate in figuring out if i could get away with it. what i learned from hemingway mainly, the rest lesson from him , what he taught me was that you can be a writer and get away with it. and that was very important at the time. it wasn't like i was playing around. i had to be a writer. and that helps.

you find that it isn't really a choice, that you made the commitment a long time ago. charlie: what is the great thing you miss that you didn't do? >> i always wanted to edit joan didion. i never got to do that. she is my favorite writer. charlie: as a magazine writer? terry: she started in magazine. she started at though. charlie: and made the transition from east to west seamless. and back again. and i'm from california and i grew up hanging around gas stations like she talks about and her voice and the way that voice developed hit me with a kind of wonder and i try to think about that voice and find other writers with the unique voice and marching through the other writers.

dwayne carter says terry has got it down on paper and has done it better than anyone anywhere. live up to that. terry: i don't know. that is very kind of him. charlie: this is a story about writing, editing, friendship, about storytelling. mcdonnell. what a pleasure. back in a moment. stay with us. ♪

charlie: marlon james is here. he is the author of "a brief history of southern killings. " the 700 page novel is a feat of storytelling. it was narrated by over a dozen characters. ethic in was called every sense of the word, sweeping, mythic, over the top, complex. optioned by hbo for a television series adaptation. i am pleased to have marlon james at this table. marlon: thank you for having me. have youpleasure to and congratulations. you came about seven years ago to the u.s. looking for a

teaching job in minneapolis. knowing you would do what? was this in your mind? marlon: no. when i moved to minneapolis, i just wrote my second novel set in the 18th century. i hadn't thought about that before even though i was haunted by that story from way back in 1991 when i was still in college, i read this article. timothy white wrote a definitive biography of bob marley and wrote this curious postscript when he went back to the assassination attempt and that was the first time i read anybody talk about this man and what happened to them. he still didn't quite know what happened but when of the things i think of as a novelist, i'm attracted by mysteries. i will never solve them but i like playing around with them. it still took me around over 20 years to get back to it but the spark was from that. charlie: in between, you wrote

other novels. marlon: one was set in the 1950's in jamaica. it is about to preachers fighting for this village. one is an alcoholic, the other is possibly demon possessed. was kind of ael slave narrative about six women who plan a slave rebellion in secret, an all-female rebellion in secret and then we got to this one. charlie: you wrote you had a hard upbringing and thought about killing your self at 16. that is stunning to me. marlon: growing up in jamaica berger --amaica's of acute homophobia, it is not that nothing necessarily had to happen to you for you to have this sort of feeling of dread. charactersu have gay

here. what is interesting about it is you didn't come out until you were 43. marlon: 44. [laughter] charlie: but you knew by you were 16. marlon: before that. i'm not really sure why. i think a huge part of it was just finding avenues to disappear in like for a long time, that was church. that's a great place to disappear in if you don't want to be your self. that knocked off 10 years. before i knew it, i blinked and i was 40. there is always some way to sort of escape it, deal with it. charlie: you connected as a writer, influenced by dickens. who else influenced you? charlie: certainly toni morrison. toni morrison is a huge deal.

marlon: when i was a deep in church, some of the novel "shame" i read and i had these big rivals with the leather binding around it and i would slip my book inside it and the preacher is saying we are all going to hell and i am laughing reading the book. when i first read that book, i was so appalled by it. guy, and am a dickens a net messing with narrative like that never occurred to me. reading it, it gave me permission to write in a certain way. if similar way with toni morrison. i grew up in a very british colonial education. the idea that books like those existed never occurred to me. charlie: you eventually left the church. what happened?

just disillusionment? marlon: disillusionment, change of geography. for biggeras looking answers than that. jamaican church can be very sort , a lot of praise and worship, not a lot of intellectual thirst. -- lie: is it easier charlie: marlon: and believing that. thinking i am sustaining myself that way says not something necessarily that i ever confronted in jamaica. standards for moving was i

just wanted to be somewhere else. just --my country but i that was all. i think years of coming into myself and just wanting more out of life i think made me start to think about what would i want, who am i, and where do i want to go. coats, what do you think of his work? marlon: i am in awe. i just think he gets it. he doesn't get it. i have been following him for a while and even his article on preparation is the best thing -- reparation is the best thing said about it. people don't realize the acute nature of jamaica and i was doubly unaware in america.

our racial mess is a different kind of mess. we are far more subtle. it's a more endemic. we had it -- had a very british racism in jamaica. we didn't have to desegregate the school but you didn't have to have everybody is trying to get theirir skin and families light or and lighter until we are full free. you get up and write? how do you go about writing? marlon: it has been a different thing for each book. with my second novel, i got up at 5:00 in the morning and wrote until 9:00. with this, i wrote more midmorning until midafternoon and then i am done. charlie: you just exhausted yourself. marlon: i would stop regardless of where i was and what this book, i was working on a

character a day. it ended up being this kind of book. in the first novel i wrote where i had to let go of my idea of what an novel should be. beingt novel, despite written in apartheid adheres to the classic idea of an novel, the arc, crisis, resolution. multiple characters was not the original idea. , the novel doesn't end, it just stops. of all ofto let go that and at one point, i just ind myself i will leave it until my editor takes it out and that is how i got there. thaned up taking out more he did. even after he approved it, i took 10,000 more words out. charlie: because you wanted to

make it leaner? that onees, in a sense of the problems of a multiple narrative is you have a lot of characters seeing the same thing. sometimes they see it in a different way but after the fourth character talks about a killing on orange street, we get the point. that and a lot of it was trimming the fat line by line. until i ended up with something i think worked. charlie: is it hard to distinguish your writing between history and memory and fiction? try to i don't think i distinguish them. one of the great things i think about writing novels, even historical fiction, is i still kind of reserve the right for invention as a writer. a right to fantasy, to make things up. this was in many ways my

responding to gaps in history. there are things in this story we will just never know, including the names of some of the men who tried to kill marley. when you began, did you say i am a bart -- about to star writing the great jamaican novel. >> i did not start to write a novel. i started to write a novella. macdonald,n and ross really classic short crime novels. when did it change? >> i got to dead ends with these characters. they came from chicago. about myting it previous novel that i thought this one voice is going to carry the whole narrative and i kept running into dead ends.

mine, rachel is there. what you think it is one person's story? that was the turning point. >> it does not have to be anybody story. >> or it could never be one persons. charlie: or it could be marley's story. happenedrley thing because i reread frank sinatra has a goal. an astonishing essay. under the circumstances where just by hovering around, circling the literature and the people he bumps into. you can describe him, which is what happened. to the point i didn't even need his name. the bob marley has a cold kind

of novel. he was becoming too influential of figure. there are pictures on the wall. that is how much the cult of personality becomes ingrained. there are lots of pictures and african-american homes of martin luther king. idea that people in the ghettos and the slums of jamaica could think for themselves and even to the point of forming their own government was unthinkable.

the right-wing and left-wing both hated that. much of a unifier, i think. and he was disrupting that way too much. reasons, some the side may have wanted him to become a martyr or the races influence. the only person on the level of marley i can think of -- i can't think of another artist where so many foes -- forces are working against them at once. different days of negotiation with some of the dangerous men in the country. , they were smoking weed. marley is is on

because ofas event the sanctuary in kingston. and these killers violating that. you show violence and sex in a rather graphic detail. was that the reality you felt and wanted to say? before that it think violence should be violent. danger of sliding into pornography. i tell my students, risk pornography. get close to it. because it's not just a matter of being visceral. violence or real

violence, it may stun the reader but it ultimately doesn't turn them off from the narrative. if the response was, that was so bad i stopped reading and never went back. as different from that was really shocking but i finished the book. that is a very fine line that you always have to walk. i think. charlie: writing female characters. hard? >> writing all characters are hard. charlie: no less or no more? you struggle with them early on? affirming? affirming you are doing the right thing? >> affirming -- i think this is the loosest novel i've ever written. two things of never been.

i still consider myself a victorian novelist. i still believe in the nuts and bolts, the annoyance of telling a story. that a novelist in my head came to the page intact. and to be rewarded for that is a hell of a thing. it means i can be myself as a novelist. i don't think it needs me. but there are so many exciting voices. we don't just mean anglo characters.

they've been revolutionizing literature for years. [listing names] we have a novel from the virgin islands. jamaica has a bunch of new writers coming out. what a? i'm leading the 20th century behind for a little bit. i'm going to africa and the 11th century. charlie: what is it about that? >> i'm having this argument about a black hobbit. it was the year when the casting was announced for the hobbit film, and we were having the discussion we always have about diversity. and i was in an argument with someone. if the shire was multiracial, nobody would've cared.

but my friends response, lord of the rings is based on celtic mythology. it is european. i'm like, lord of the rings isn't real. i'm kind of tired. keep your hobbit. it made me think about the rich, mythical, and historical tradition of africa and the great african empires of east and west africa. the folklore that is there. there are monsters, there are witches. and it had nothing to do with scandinavia but they were pillaging and plundering. do an invented world. charlie: marlon james is the author of the book of women.

thanks for being here. >> thinks for having me. charlie: back in a moment. stay with us. ♪

charlie: julian barnes is here. he has said of his writing, if there is a single theme running throughout his work, it is the elusiveness of truth.

the subjectivity of memory, the relativity of all knowledge. book, the prize for 2011 his new novel is called the noise of time. ofis a fictionalized account the life under stalin. i am pleased to have him at this table again. let's talk about serious stuff here. what does lester mean to you? >> it is incredible. my football club, soccer as you call it, never having won anything. we finally won the premiership. it's not even david and goliath, it's a tiny little figure. it is bigger than that. it has comic sidebars to it.

a lot of has been famous for two things. discovered. and the city won the premiership. inery enterprising publisher britain, there will be lots of books about it. has been used in richard the third. beating ye manchester united. charlie: this is a quote from you. "i have not was been a leicester city supporter. there was a time before i could read or knew how to tune the wireless to the voice of raymond on sports report. but from the moment i became sporting lee sentiment, the age of five or six, i have been, as

they don't much say then, a fox. i did initially supported second team. glasgow.end of that was because might invent mind believed they were called patrick. my middle name is patrick. such is the strange, irrational adhesiveness of fandom. when i was about 40, i still instinctively checked the results in my sunday newspaper. but apart from this, i have been entirely monogamous. " >> that is part of most fans lives. you get inducted into supporting a team at a very young age. presently don't understand people that say, i am supporting x this season but thinking of supporting y next season.

the most important thing about being a fan is the suffering and the loss and the pain. very good way for preparing to support england because they know very often. charlie: other people have written about it and they may have come close. of the editortory of bloomberg here. tell me. he has for 30 years lay down a big bet. on leicester city. every time he bet whatever. and this year, he didn't. had, it would've returned $100,000. >> it was 5000 to one. quite a few people took that that. with about six weeks to go, when the team was having a bit

of a wobble, the bookmakers came were to win if they it, you get 10,000 pounds, how about 4000 pounds now? and a lot of people accepted the money. some people stuck it out to the end and got the big payout. charlie: the noise of time. have a suffered more? >> probably more than any other composer in the history of western art. he suffered and endured the weekly, monthly, lifelong presence of power in his life, telling them what to do. --rlie: and so much of it you tell the story of sleeping by the elevator. in fear that the police would come for him and he did not want his family to know. >> he had a wife and a tiny baby girl at the time.

know he iscertainly been taken away but he didn't want the door broken down or the predecessor to the kgb slumping into the apartment. they might have taken his daughter away because political sinners often had their children reeducated, taken away, given a false name. he had this terre battue's daughter might grow up not had notthat her father composed a note of music. he might've been killed or sent to a labor camp. as it was, members of his family and his wife's family, associates and friends were taken away at some point. i am telling the story of the collision of art and power. and who wins and who loses. how the artist fights back.

term, as long as the artist has been killed, it wins out. we remember the name of mozart. we don't remember who the archduke of whatever was. charlie:we don't remember who te archduke of whatever so what isf the humiliation? >> it comes in different ways. and it comes in different forms. remember is that soviet union, all art was controlled to the tiniest degree by the state. composer, unless you remember -- you are a member of the union. the music had to be vetted by a committee. if it didn't pass, you didn't

get paid. there was interference with what you wrote. and when the higher echelons got interested. it was a world hit in 1945. the met had the american premiere here. in cleveland, south america. stalin thought he knew about music and got interested and went to see it. his life changed and he was always somewhat in danger. thelie: after he heard music, he allowed him to travel? >> within the soviet union. and again, it was premiered around the world.

he knew he had talent there but the talent could not be let to go the same way. it had to be directed. if properly directed, who would write real soviet music? they certainly didn't think he should write operas because it was snobby stuff. he did write a lot of music. did things change when khrushchev came to power? >> people started coming back from the labor caps. -- camps. he became vegetarian, which is a wonderful word. instead of being like man eating tigers. still different

sorts of pressure. they wanted to corral you into their way of thinking. did he denounced trayvon ski? evinski?on s >> he did announce him. he just thought, well, i will read the first page and i will sit down. translator read the english version and idly followed it. he found himself denouncing stravinsky.ouncing in exile in california at the time. and who he thought was the greatest composure -- composer of the 20th century. here he was having to denounce him. coming to this, did you

decide that you wanted to explore power and art? >> the novelist picks up where the biographer and historian stops. in told take you further the person. did you feel any pressure after the prize to produce something to be considered as good or better? >> i didn't. i was lucky enough to win when i was in my 60's. had i won in my 30's, it might've put more pressure on me. i am and i know what i do. charlie: and you know your audience.

>> i do and i don't. some books work in some places and others work in other places. shares themes, as you truth, it isry in a different locale. charlie: this is what some of the critics have said. brilliant, funny, poignant, savage. gleaming with flair, this elegantly composed fictionalized meditation offers a fresh gloss on a musical genius's collision and collisions with power. >> thank you for reading that. charlie: they said it. i did not make it up. the idea is that we can hardly imagine what it's like, and the sacrifices that this great

musician had to make. and it is too easy to say i might have done different. >> that is one of the themes of the book. it is easy when we look at a different regime in a different time to say, he should have done this or that. or i would have done differently or i would've been the hero. we imagine we would behave better if our countries invaded. sorry about the white house and all that. but the rebuilding was good. , we would suddenly become heroes. they collaborated and a think we

and all made from humanity it is his cowardly as everyone else. point if youional are living under a regime like stalin, he should have been a hero or he should've thrown the bomb or pulled the trigger. that, you're also condemning your entire family, friends, and associates to the death camps. unless you wanted to be dead and you wanted the family to be .aken away life and work have been most meaningful? in your sense of your life? euros, hemy great said no monsters and no heroes.

this is something that your and in modern life, the days of gods and heroes. when they died, the monsters came back. and we can't live without monsters, unfortunately. my heroes, some would be literary and artistic. he was also a coward. so he's a hero because he's a coward or despite? he recognizes cowardice and is not condemn it? >> i do not condemn it for a moment. you would have to think you are morally superior and i don't think anyone should claim that.

because he was an ironic person, courage is easy. you have to do the one thing. but life of being a coward is a lifetime commitment. it requires a sort of courage. charlie: the book is called the noise of time. ♪

john: with all due respect to donald trump, we heard about your minnesota ballot troubles. you betcha. we have a good show. after a week being hammered over her family's foundation, hillary was calling bs on donald trump's rhetoric to reach out to voters.