possible without publisher support and the publisher partnership we have built. so this morning we have four excellent fathers brought to you by four amazing publishers. i'm going to go in order almost, we have a joe scarborough hosting the event this morning for the crown publishers, we have a richard russo with knopf, gail collins with little brown, and pete dexter from grand central publishing. please join me in welcoming -- sync and their publishers for making this possible this morning. [applause] and so with literally no further ado, please enjoy the delicious breakfast and feed your body but more broadly feed your mind.

please welcome joe scarborough to the platform. [applause] >> thank you for having me here, i'm excited. i was told you were a very, very conservative group. [laughter] so i'm trying to remember my favorite dick cheney anecdotes'. [laughter] just to tell you a little about myself, iran for office for the first time in 1994 and i am from northwest florida which is also known and are parts of the redneck riviera, l.i., laura alabama. [laughter] americas albania -- the names, on and on, but a republican had not been elected there since 1872 and i think vahagn the last one and they send up to washington, so when iran i could

not run as a republican. i could not go out and run the party line and that was a damn good thing since the republican lock -- republican party on the national level was trying to kill my candidacy every step of the way. but i got up to washington d.c. and i was fascinated by my experience up there. i write about it in my book that actually -- you know, the door opens up and the president delivers his state of the union address and he walks down the center aisle. and i know we have congressman alan here also who can tell you that when you first get their one of the most surprising things about being a member of congress is that the only thing that is a missing in that i all that separates republicans and democrats is a checkpoint charlie. a lot of republicans just never ever go over to the other side and talk to democrats and

democrats don't go over and talk to republicans and you ask why and they say because and i say fine. but it was fascinating as somebody -- i was a bit liberated when i got to washington since my political party the republican party tried to kill me politically rather first campaign in. i was able to do whatever i wanted but there were several times that newt gingrich started to threaten me and say get in line or else and i said it or else what? did a campaign against me -- is62%, please campaign against me, so it gave me the freedom to team up with the democrats won i wanted, though after democrats what i wanted, and when i found was that sort of independence even though i am a very conservative guy but that independence from partisanship

to having to apply as a republican with every single thing i did actually worked very well with voters. the voting the way i believed my doing what i believed, not calculating of what party leaders would think, and so i am reelected 72%, got reelected 80% next time and nobody ran against me the last time. and so when i got on tv i got that all these great lesson i learned and congress, i am going to bring to tv, and then, of course, i got to msnbc and i was told that i was a token conservative. i still am the token conservative at msnbc. and so i would get calls from other to second-floor at 30 rock saying you need to be more conservative.

[laughter] i remember the call, and give me more, more. my god, what you want me to do? pass outcome of all at the mouth -- i can't give more, but they wanted more. they want this balkanization i saw in congress on tv and i worked at it but my wife would meet at the back door on most nights when i come home from my prime-time show and would just drive me and shakes her head and said, you jackass. [laughter] and then turn around and go to bed. [laughter] i would smile because i knew that she had a very good point, i was, in fact, a jackass and i played one on tv. [laughter] so in 2004 after playing a jackass on tv for a couple of years i wrote a book called rome was semper and in a day, and in this book i decided to tell the truth about the republican

party, and that a promise less government but, in fact, was spending as such reckless rates and beginning -- forgiving the promises we made to get elected in 94 and i predicted the republican party would lose control of congress and that our economy would be racked. by this terrible stewardship. conservatives hated that message, even though it was a very conservative message here, i was, once again, in this political dead zone. that i saw that we -- we started a radio show and on a lot of stations that have a the limbaugh and a mark of nine who, my god, i think he sold more books so far than the gutenberg bible. i didn't see that incoming. but we decided that we weren't

going to choose sides and i was glad to be conservative and say what i believed and callers did not really get that either. into that about a month to figure out that you to run in talk radio show with having a hyper partisan year in and be applied that to our tv show also "morning joe" when it started and is working. the remarkable thing happens when you let people, on your set and you don't scream at them and call them a marxist or a fascist. they want to come back. [laughter] and they tell their friends, you ought to go on the show. and so now we are honored to have great calmness and authors like gail collins and a lot of pulitzer prize winners to come on and we disagree, but it is a civil tom. it is a civil tone.

i have gambled, i am a conservative guy, not as much as my dad who thinks nixon got framed, but i'm a conservative guy. [laughter] but there's just not the hyper partisanship there, i think that will work and i think that can work in publishing the type of political bug that i have just written. i took the gamble on tv and it worked, i did the gavel in politics and work and i went to take the gamble again because a lot of conservatives were injured by book now come up to me and say, you know what, you're right, we screwed up. i think, of course, there are still some i would say specifically to ones who are trying to kick colin powell out of the party and keep rush limbaugh, there are some that still don't get it, but the bottom line of the book is, my book, is that the conservative movement needs to reexamine what they have done of the past

quarter century. the terrible mistakes they have made and they need to reconnect with the true meaning of conservatism. not conservatism as the five of the past quarter century, sans lee atwater ran george h. w. bush's campaign in 1988 where i really think this new brand of a republican as a began, but the type of conservatism that edmund burke wrote about 200 years ago, it conservatism that was reaffirmed by russell kirk, by bill buckley, and i love the bill buckley, he was asked in 2005 when he said about george w. bush and when he said it about the iraq war and the president's plan and the second inaugural address to end tyrrany across the globe. there's a conservative restraint

concept -- and tearing across the globe. buckley said sadly we conservatives are supposed to be restrained by reality. and we haven't been. conservatives are supposed to conserve whether it is taxpayers' dollars, whether it is military power. my god, the military adventurism, the belief in export democracy to four corners of the globe, that you can send our troops everywhere, and again in president bush's words -- and tyrrany across the globe. that is not a conservative concept -- that is a radical concept. the type of spending that occurred over the past eight years -- not conservative, radical. entitlement spending. medicare and medicaid are going to go bankrupt and collapse, going to destroy this economy if we don't do something about it.

george w. bush's solution, let's add a $7 trillion medicare drug benefit plan to this already crippled system. not a conservative idea, a radical idea, and finally the type of hyper partisanship that republicans have engaged in for too long and as i write in the book that i was guilty of from time to time myself, we conservatives made to look in the mirror and a understand that if we believe unlike edmund burke and russell kirk that conservatives are supposed to maintain social order, that we can run around preaching radical prescriptions to every single problem that is out there. and in this aspect i do use the example of ron reagan. conservatives always talk about reagan, ronald reagan, the world

was radically different speaking of radical in the '80s than it is right now and what i tell conservatives and americans in my book is that all conservatives love talking about reagan's legacy, but they only talk about the ideological legacy of ronald reagan. and they don't talk about reagan's temperament. that's the real lesson on reagan. and not cutting taxes were beating the economy is or doing whatever, it is the temperament that reagan had that would allow he and tip o'neill to bash each other's brains in during the day on political matters and then at night sitting around in the oval office cotulla irishman drinking whiskey, telling stories, certainly exaggeration those stories and line, and never taking a personal.

colin powell also told me a ,h0i george shultz and they're screaming and yelling -- and a ranking just sat there smiling and is looking over powell's shoulder while he was talking. so the general said he had to lean in more, mr. president, we

cannot have the leaders and went on and on -- reagan finally stopped him and went like this and colin powell told me he stopped immediately because when the president does this to stop talking. he said, colin, i put some acorns out and vartan last week and looks like the schools are starting to pick [laughter] and general powell sat there and he turned to me and he said and i immediately ran out of the room, picked up the phone, called my wife and said the coming jesus christ, what have i gotten myself into? [laughter] but what paul figured out and so many other people figured out about reagan was that the screaming and yelling and the accusation, that was just a side bar and in the end for reagan he believed it was about her

getting his policies enacted and he was not going to get engaged in this nasty back and forth. i think that is one of the reasons president obama right now is doing as well as he is because he has not found the center of american politics ideologically, he has found the center of american politics temperamentally. and that if you want to win the elections coming if you want to win at auctions, that is a helluva lot more important than getting every single issue right. so anyway, the book is "the last best hope", it will not only change your life it will change to the future of american conservatism and politics. so anyway, dick cheney and i were out fly fishing. [laughter] he said you have to take a back like this and i said, god,

you're so great mr. vice president, will you run for president one day? let's bring up richard russo, he has written a wonderful book that old cape -- "that old cape magic" and i will turn it over to him, he has some great dick cheney stories as well. [laughter] [applause] >> thank you. that having a morning show of my own i have to write mine down, i hope you don't mind. [laughter] of that old -- "that old cape magic", my new novel was supposed to be a short story otherwise i wouldn't have even begun it. my previous novel, bridge of sighs, had left me drain, the needle on my creative gas tank and bouncing off the e.

somehow i hadn't known that you couldn't write a book about despair without feeling just a little bit of that particular emotion yourself. i had imagined that lucy lynch, my protagonist, was the haunted one year ago he and out i would have to make his solitary journey halfway across his own personal bridge of sighs you're gone nothing but darkness and loss awaiting him on the other side. before finally turning back on the advice of a dead man. he and i were not exactly psychic twins after all, but as it turned out we were not so different as i thought and by the time i finished writing that book and mentoring with that, not only was my gas tank empty, a suspension was shot, i will travel line and, by satellite navigation system inoperable. even the radio had cracked out.

and that was just on the creative side, my mother had just died after a long illness and both of my daughters were to be married within that year. only a fool would begin a novel under such conditions. on the other hand, is in writing as a discipline, taking time often seen migrating 98 either. writers are a lot like athletes in that rhythm is paramount to our success. we're always trying to find arab am, trying not to lose it, you can't think about hitting a baseball, you have to hit. by the time you have thought about it it's already in the catcher's glove. novelist you have time to think, of course, but thinking the particular kind that novelists engaged in does have a rhythm to it and add the hard every them, all of them, is repetition. the paradox is that writing is hard work but not writing makes

are harder and what sane person wants fact? anyway, what i had in mind after bridge of sighs was a short story or maybe a screenplay, the kind of work that would allow me to get my reps in coming to keep moving, keep secretive blood circulating from a leisurely stroll along literatures by path while i dealt with my mother's passing and that i got my daughters were two little girls anymore and that it might life, the life that my wife and i were now looking at was a lot different from the one we have been living. literature is a bike path is not i realize the way short-story writers or screenwriter's for that matter characterize their journeys but there's no point in arguing, i was tired coming to me that much. so i began a short story about a man named jack griffin who is on his way to cape cod where he will first attend the wedding

and sack and scatter his father's ashes here go nice symmetry maybe a little close to home but never mind. twenty pages in and out, nobody gets hurt, the batteries to continue my automotive metaphor will get recharged. for a while is seen as of all might actually go according to plan which just shows you how spectacularly wrong you can be. at page 17 and remember thinking that another four or five pages should do it. better yet, i knew what was in those pages, but then a siegel unexpectedly approved on port jack griffin and yet as practically blind his mother with whom he had just been speaking on his cell phone and both jack redden and i were visited by a simultaneous sinking feeling.

a week and 15 pages later i was pretty sure i wasn't writing a short story anymore, and leaves not a publishable one. and novella then, i thought. giving that sinking feeling in name. a novella, that most unpublishable of literary art forms. [laughter] without meaning to, i had somehow wandered off the bike path. still i console myself i wasn't exactly on the interstate either, and i stayed well over to the right and didn't mind that other sportier vehicles with a deep throw the engines were blowing by me and my chances are i would still be okay. in another 50 pages, 75 topps, it should do this new track. i had a couple of pretty funny scenes in my courtesy recent wedding my wife and i attended where we had been assigned to the leftover table. [laughter] you know the one i mean, right?

every wedding have such a table with the people who don't fit our put. excuse me, or the people who don't read our put it -- the ex-husband, the old middle school math teacher, the mother of the grooms half-sister. [laughter] table 17i called it. aware that it might be a compelling metaphor for what? i wasn't sure, but no matter because this was of a strangely -- this was a truly strange part, for some reason i wasn't feeling quite so exhausted anymore. it passed for it now for our five months 150 pages, one of the two weddings, use any measurements you wish. griffin's mother has now died, surprised, and he is now back

heading toward the cape with to earns in his car instead of one. his once rock-solid marriage crumbling before his eyes, his beloved daughter is ready to disown him despite the fact that he has cleaned out his entire retirement account to pay for the wedding, and his wife's younger brothers both marines are threatening bodily harm. whereas i am now feeling pretty good in. [laughter] y? because it has occurred to me that i've i can somehow coaxed another 75 pages out of this material that i will have something that could be bought off on and on winning public as a novel even if it wasn't. [laughter] really, you have no idea how this possibility cheered me. [laughter] even better, whenever i was working on now have found a rhythm of its own and sell, by god, had i. maybe you don't notice, but when

a writer locates his lost mojo the very next age in the process is full-blown strutting hubris. [laughter] withheld, i thought, turning on my blinker in merging with the other traffic, why not put the pedal down and see with this baby can do. and just that quickly, i am leaving in and out of lanes like jake in elwood blues on a mission from god. when i hit a bump the bus to praise you started working again and now i am saying, at the top of my lungs. when the rhythm stars to play, and dance with me, make me sway ♪ [applause] and around pager 300 now i catch my first glimpse of the true destination shivering magically on the far horizon that like

pilgrim monument and provincetown. is still a good distance off, by a stray shot, a dead spring to what i am now guessing correctly as it turns out will be page 375. ok, not a typical richard russo town, but so what, i have lost control of a short-story and instead of crashing and burning i have embraced a shifting of eight and coming out of this whole thing with a book. how lucky was backed? well, a little over a year later with galleys and handed it feels less like loch now than it did then. now it feels more like skill, but not of the literary variety. the particular skill and referred to is self deception, the writers best friend. because truth and honesty will let you down every time, by counseling caution, wisdom.

when what the novelist requires is if not sheer barking lunacy then gentle guile, purposeful deception, duplicity. novelists are not card counters, they don't need to be reminded about the odds. that are professional liars after all so it shouldn't come as any surprise that they themselves often need to be lied to and who better to lie to a novelist than himself? 21-degree or another, south assumption is a necessary part of the novelist's game. every morning when you wake up you tell yourself that you know what you are doing and what ever book that you're working on when the truth is that it is bigger and more complex and often more demoralizing than you imagine when you began or you wouldn't have begun. writing a novel i suspect is

rather like what women say about having babies -- if you could remember the pain the first would be relaxed. and so you don't remember. the novelist kids himself at every turn, his logic laughable, after all he says to himself he has another novels, has antiquarks he was up to those tasks, why shouldn't he be up to this one? that is known as a rhetorical question. he is not interested in the obvious answer. in truth each book presents its own set of unreasonable challenges and riddles. the fact that he has all the last set of riddles doesn't mean he will be able to solve this one, this might be a genuine rubrics cuba. he could work on forever, it could defeat him. in fact, when he thinks about it he is overdue. and rather than admit this, he tells himself that everything he needs is at his disposal, he has

all the time he requires and he has experience and@ art that you might imagine. i even suspect that provided is not complete self assumption isn't even the enemy of living. how many times in our daily lives to refine the courage to begin in odious task by telling

ourselves that we will do just a little comic twist off the cap, see what bubbles up with the rim? they say you can't kid a kidder, but you can. over and over and what a good thing too. kidding myself i wrote a book that i didn't think i have any. the novel helps me to come to terms with my mother's loss from with the fact that our children or children any more which seemed to imply that my wife and i weren't either. jack griffins, misadventures' also confirmed to ugly truths that i have long suspected. first, that you cannot escape your inheritance from a genetic and other, and a second, it even more terrifying you probably can't even escape your in-laws. [laughter] not a short story, in other words, and definitely off the

bike path. thank you. [applause] >> thank you so much, rick. i am glad the segal's target was dead on. [laughter] and also i've got to say that as a hell of a wedding where a pulitzer prize winning author is put up the leftover table. [laughter] i don't get invited to those type of weddings. next author we're going to introduce is gail collins and has been on the show quite a bit. i was just telling her backstage at my favorite line in the 2008 presidential campaign, of all the lines that were in it, so many people wrote some allies

about the greats -- and this was at the point where barack obama had been beaten by hillary clinton in pennsylvania and ohio and west virginia and all of the political commentators were talking about how it was the angry white male that was not ready to vote for president obama. gale noted that what a surprise in this most transformative of campaigns were an african-american is running to make history against a woman who is running to make history, that in the end is still comes down to the white male. i guess it's sort of.com but she has a written a remarkable book called "when everything changed: the amazing journey of american women from 1960 to the present".

and just reading about it, it is stunning some of the things that i had no idea about a year ago that if you are a woman in a generation ago, if she was divorced would have to get her father, a new issue is successful and the four days to cosign on a credit card and so many other things that we have come a long way. but i'm going to be fascinated to read to the entire book because again i am a big believer that hillary clinton's campaign in 2008 was every bit as transformative as president obama's. but without further ado, gail collins. [applause] >> thank you, it's great to be here, this is so exciting. thank you, joe. it this is really my first time out with this book.

i'm very excited to talk about how it came to be. i'm beginning to think about myself and the first time. this really all began in 1999 when of the millennium was approaching and i was working at "the new york times" which was preparing his millennium coverage and those of you who read the times known that when the times decides it's really going to cover something there is no stone unturned, you really go at it all the way, so we had a staff prepared on diseases over the last thousand years and the war's over the last thousand years and religion over the last thousand years to my dogs over the last thousand years and trees and everything coming and the magazine decided they were going to do entire special issue on women of the last thousand years. i had written a book called the millennium bug and i was a woman so i was really way up in front for the nominees for writing the

introduction to the millennia women's issue and it turned out though it was strange land although i had written a book about the millennium i have not written much about women in it. it with a very weird when i thought about looking back. i was obsessed with whether or not they have forks in the year 1,000 family did a lot of lists of best and worst of the last thousand years and looking back at the other day our worst wedding of the last thousand years since we are talking about weddings here come it was in the 12th century in belgium when the bride of the blessed oto protested her upcoming loss of virginity by cutting off her nose in the middle of the ceremony here and so a lot worse than being at the leftover table. [laughter] anyhow, i had not thought about women, not about the trajectory

of women, and as i wrote this essay for this big monster him on a stake out we were doing, i really really focused for the first time on the fact that the historic attitudes towards women and the difference between the genders and that women were less intelligent, women were weaker and women belong in the, and men had control of the publisher of religion and business and politics and all that stuff would have been with us since the beginning of western civilization ingrained in the core of our societies and that that enormous long progression of a century after century and is it in my lifetime. all this stuff was shattered all i was alive and all those billions of women who had traveled through world and it knocked me out. i still to do and i think about

that cheers me up and through almost anything so i thought that was above and i want to write about in some way and after the millennium in felt recovered question of working on a book that was going to be the story of what happened to american women from the 1600's to the present and it was called america's women. i had the best time writing it. there's so much i had no idea about. once i found this recipe for a victorian kitchen for how to make a basic cake and it was like to take the sugar, you take the eggs and butter, and then be for three-quarters of an hour -- atomic everything i wanted to know about victorian housewives for ever. [laughter] there was some much stuff like that and i would tell the book in terms of the big stuff that was happening, the big historic moments, the colonial periods,

the immigration, susan b. anthony, suffrage, rosie the ritter, but then also on the bottom the story of how regular women live and how their lives changed as all these things happen. and a very big believer when i see a picture of the signing of the magna carter or the first thanksgiving or joan of arc in the field or whatever -- i always want to know where the people went to the bathroom and what kind of issues they have and whether it comfortable. of those things to me, the thing about history. so we had a two-story sort of running right along the other and i wanted to do that -- what happened with this book was a wonderful book to write, i was so happy to do it, but you have all had the appearance of taking history courses, the survey of world history or whatever and you get great information that

but by the time you get to world war ii there is no more time, it's the end of the year. i went to all of my education and never found out about how world were to get started, just never got to it, and i sort of happened with this book. by the time i got to world war ii i was sort of ad of time and out of pages and out of energy. and so as a great moment showed up i wound up and said everything changed, it wasn't that great and that's in the end of this story. i love that book so much but i knew i was going to have to to a second book and actually pick up and talk about that thing, about how that thing happened that everything changed that we had no for all those centuries. so that as this book and its stars in 1960 in manhattan with a secretary named lois few is

expelled from traffic courts downtown for attempting to pay a parking ticket while wearing slacks. there is a picture of her in the book, she is the tightest and best groom the person wearing slacks and entire history of the world but the judge was so overwhelmed with horror at the idea of a woman going into public coming into his court wearing pants, that he just went nuts. he started spewing every possible metaphor -- no pants, pat resco, pedestal, is sort of memories -- and minimize everything about 1970 which was keeping with the year 1,000 mccain to the way people lived and where they regarded women. and then to find going back that most women that were there in 1960 especially were particularly knocked out by the credit thing, that you couldn't get credit in your own name, and

the times which was a great source for information on this kind of stuff i must say found woman who had to go to a mental hospital to get her husband to cosign the lease on their apartment because they couldn't just trust the woman to direct. there was a great story about this poor woman who later became governor of her -- she came to new york wine to be a journalist and i think in 1960. she had gone to the washington post to said, no, we're not going to hire a woman this year. she went to the providence paper and i said, no, we had a woman once and she was raped in the parking lot. so then she went to the new york times, my paper. i would like to be a copy editor, and they said, well, no, we don't have a job like that for you that there's an opening for a waitress in the cafeteria, which rely to apply?

shea became governor for a month,. >> for an editorial board meeting. when at the guards at the front walk up to her guards and said hello, governor, how are you because the version of the guard was a governor and she was his wife. time goes on. i tried to write this book the same way as to the other one in the sense i wanted to be a book both about the great triumph on the top and the great feats on the top and also the fabric of the lies of the women on the bottom -- the lives of the women on the bottom so we researched and rate reached about 130 average women who had not been part of any great movement and talk to them about their lives were like and what they knew. so at the top we had a dera and revisited the whole women's liberation movement which was so much fun two go back.

i remember the great glory moments in the hideous moments but there were some money semi silly moments that i have forgotten the one woman told issue is that antioch and had it wanted to go to the women's meeting so she walked in and little freshman and they gave her a mirror and told her to take off her pants and examine her vagina and then examine her neighbors with china to learn more about reproductive systems and get more comfortable with one's body. that was going on all over the place for a short time and there was something written at the time the says it makes you look back missed thousand when the women got together for lunch in the afternoon and it was all about bridge repaired [laughter] but no more. so we went to the top and has such a good time talking to women, especially the women who filed suits, went to court, amazing working women that are

trying to support their families and rich told that they could not have a promotion because women could not have jobs for you have to move@,ñ can, they're all under a washcloth having sex. i thought it was about vashon but it was not, as it turned out. [laughter] there is an african-american woman who we interviewed who had wanted a barbie desperately and

at that point had only way to barbie's so your grandmother finally bought for one am paid to their black but it turned out if you paint a barbie blackshear will start to tail almost instantly so she called a suntan barbie reared [laughter] she kept it for the longest time. and some of these stories, there are great moments in women's history, we found our about very small minds. when women got the bicycle it was stupendously liberating because they have never been able to move around before because there has so many clothes on. when the twist was invented it was the first time in the history of women really that you can dance by yourself without having to hang on to a guy come up with them not being as good dancer as you anyway. when pantyhose came along it was a huge liberation for women who had all these girls and nylons encumbering down and one of the women who talked about this said that her mother was so horrified

at the idea that this new convention at the pantihose if you got one run in one like you have to throw the whole thing out, so she required her when she got a run to cut off offending leg but to keep the rest and eventually when she got enough of a collection she was required to put on pantyhose with one leg that was done and another pair with the other leg. i see somebody over there nodding -- apparently this happened a lot. [laughter] and who knew until now? so we took the book all the way to the present, went through after the defeat of the era and at the very strange social issues that we went through over the last 30 years, the time we're talking about a of date rape and the celebrity retrials. i'm sure you kind of remember. when i went back and looked i haven't realized it but the center of the rape consciousness began with general hospital. i had not thought about general

hospital soap opera for 100 years and there it was -- the story of luke and laura add general hospital was one of the most transforming of commons in the '80s. everybody was watching it, everybody was fascinated, all listed as one watches the dormitories and so on. i hadn't realized until i went back -- by the way i was at a gym the other day amazingly enough and i saw general hospital on the tv. luke is still there -- she is a 130 years old and he still is in this place. [laughter] the way they got together is matt luke raped laura on the floor of a disco. you can go on youtube and find this thing, and that was the beginning of the rape consciousness of that time which i have forgot all about but i was so happy to go back and revisit general hospital. so i took us through the end and with all of all of the women, the little women and their triumphs and tragedies as we went on. one of my very favorites was a

doctor we picked john because in minneapolis she was working -- i asked if she could find somebody who went to medical school telling medical school stories but it turned out that this woman for personal relationships , textbook of personal relationships throughout the last 50 years, she had been married and decided very late in life her husband on a garage that she was going to go to medical school and really struggle to get through it because she had three sons at home and finally she got through. at the end they have the graduation and it was quiet and dignified and when she got up to get her diploma and really, her oldest son got up and screamed -- way to go, mama! it was a moment of her life, the great transformative moment but, of course, she divorced her husband is only after that. [laughter] then when everybody was starting to shack up in cohabitating was going on, she lived with another

guy and they were buying a house together but then she came home from residency was not after 16 hours and he was sitting with his feet up reading the paper and he said, what is for dinner? [laughter] that was the ana. and then she took up with a woman who she lived with for quite some time and they finally parted right about at the point where the book ended. her last, into our researcher was, i want a new partner, i don't care if it is a man or a woman which is not a republican in. [laughter] [applause] so the part following these women has been such a delight for me and if you pay me back every moment i had working on this moment and i must say just as we were going to press i got a note from the researchers saying, judith called in and she is engaged. it is a guy and he is a democrat.

[laughter] everything and happily and i hope the did it -- i hope the book did. i'm so happy to be here with you all day and thank you so very much for having me. [applause] ..

>> okay. the first note i got was a thanks to the booksellers. my publisher gave that to me. [laughter] >> i didn't know this was for booksellers until she said that. [laughter] >> you know, i don't want to thank you that much. we had six novels now and you've sold 11 copies. [laughter] >> but thanks. [laughter] >> i've been thinking somebody was reading to me that the day after "spooner" comes out, who is that guy that wrote -- this guy can't write a line but -- da vinci code. [laughter] >> dan brown right after i am and he was thinking, you know, if you had some extra covers.

[laughter] >> i don't think -- oh, we can put them in bibles. not bibles somebody will take home and read but like the kind that everybody puts in hotel rooms or swears on. i mean, you could stick "spooner" in there and nobody would know. [laughter] >> i'd be so happy. [laughter] >> well, what we've got here today is one of these situations -- i lived my whole life with two contrary kind of conflicting fears. one of which is that everybody is going to do their homework, which is what happened today. [laughter] >> the overwhelming fear is that i'm going to actually do the

homework and that day we're going to go in and the teacher is going to say, you know, just as a special present, you guys don't have to turn in your homework. [laughter] >> now, when that happens, i'm ready for them. [laughter] >> i was listening to laura richard and gail, first of all, it's a real pleasure. i've never met richard before. but back when i won the national book award, there was about, oh -- i think it was about a week and a half when people paying attention to what i said. [laughter] >> and i got asked a lot and i'd never passed up a chance to say, you know, you've got -- richard hadn't won the pulitzer then. i say, you know, you got to read this guy's novels about new york 'cause they're just -- the "new

york times" asked me a year ago or something for the -- my best book for the last 25 years. and i said, "straight man" and that's not -- well -- the guy at "new york times" laughed but i said, no, i'm sorry serious. to me the first thing a novel should do is entertain. that's the most entertaining book ever written as far as i'm concerned. [applause] >> it can still bringing tears to my eyes and strangely myself i find myself up here with gail collins. now, there's another columnist for the times named maureen dowd, i got that right, right? okay. maureen dowd hit -- you know, when she started the columnizing

i was still doing a little of that myself. i was up in this island where we live in the puget sound writing a syndicated column. and i didn't have very many papers but among them was one of the seattle papers. so i'd heard about maureen dowd and then forgot her name and picked up the paper and read a column by gail collins and then wrote my column that week and said maureen dowd is the best columnist in the country. [laughter] >> and then i can't remember the name of the p.i. -- what does that stand for "seattle post-intelligence post-intelligencer", yeah, they

fired me that week and picked up maureen dowd. [laughter] >> there's a compliment in there for you somewhere. [laughter] >> thank the booksellers. [laughter] >> you know, here's where this once led. sophomore year of high school when i had this science class we're supposed to have a project, you know, a whole quarter's project. the night before i went outside and dug up a spade of dirt, got 11 earthworms out of that and put them in a little scrapbook and scotch tape. and i called it nature's string

beans. [laughter] >> this guy wanted to get real technical and he said, you know, besides torturing these poor animals to death, you know, nature already has string beans. [laughter] >> so i'm sitting here listening to these people who did their homework talking about their books, and i was thinking well, what's my book about and i can't tell you what a novel is about. but i thought quickly, as it came to me i could tell you some of the things in it alphabetically. [laughter] >> we have two asthmatics, one of which is the protagonist mother and the other is a bulldog. [laughter] >> and they're violently allergic to each other and they meet at a party in south dakota of a meeting of the great books club. and kill each other.

we have two burials at sea that don't go well. [laughter] >> there's a cattle prod -- this is not mrs. dexter. this isn't to be confused with anything that mrs. dexter might have to mr. dexter along. [laughter] >> that's what my book is. my book is the study of innocence and evil. maybe not. okay. i've got dogs in this novel, i've five or six dogs. i've got a depressed dog. i've got a deaf dog and the star dog of the book is a recreational eater who -- who ends up eating a little piece of -- i'll get to do so -- but i

have a neighbor that i don't like. he's@ú3t absolutely the opposite of any other business i've ever been in, which is that, you know, the bosses, the guys who gets to the top are usually guys that have cut the most throats but in my

short experience, the guys on top have always saved me from the throat-cutters or else i would be doing something else. i've got a fence. [laughter] >> it's a good fence but it doesn't make good neighbors. [laughter] >> i kind of cheated a little bit. i had a degloved finger and a guy went to a zoo and he was petting a polar bear. h. is just sitting here all by itself with just h. [laughter] >> if i can -- i. -- i have a lot of i's, intercourse, of course. in one experience of sexual intercourse, mrs. dexter takes this opportunity just before the

yodeling starts which will be my which is my y's, she takes that opportunity to inform me that we're about -- we're going to be parents. now, i don't know if she picked that moment to tell me because, you know, it's demonstrates cause and effect. there was a "redbook" magazine lying around department with 10 things to whisper in bed that will drive him crazy or something like that. j there's a jaguar in there which is anybody that's ever owned one will tell you is a piece of [beep]. [laughter] >> k, there's a kindergarten teacher. 21, 22-year-old kid just out of college who wanted to teach

kindergarteners because she thought 4 and 5 years old were cuter than the second and third graders. more innocent. and she catches the protagonist of this novel at a very, you know, early stage in his career. she doesn't understand the kid who's 4 or 5 can, in fact, get erections and the kid keeps putting glue and if that pair in his hairs. and i'm getting a little excited just talking about this. [laughter] >> something like that gets in your head when you're at 4 and it just never goes away. [laughter] >> my wife gives the best shampoos in the desert. l's;2 i don't have to tell you

what i feelanñ them. the first time i was ever invited to speakñ to one of thee things and it was "philadelphia enquirer" literally luncheon. the=ñ room was this size but it was completely full people mostly there to hear margaret truman. margaret shows up, doesn't say hello or anything. she reads this awful thing and then at the end of it she holds it up like the head after somebody cuts the queen's head off and the room jtu erupts and then she get up and walks out when it's i'm supposed to talk and half the room walks out with her. and so i don't know really what to do, but like today, this is not my strong suit preparation.

so i open the book i'd just written which is called deadwood and, you know, i've been accused of fudging this but it's absolutely true. i don't mean me, of course, i'm talking about the character in the book. but he opens the novel "deadwood" to a section where a guy named charlie utter is talking to woman of the night named loraline who has no last name and they are looking at the a little spilled seemon on the floor and he's playing with her a little saying -- it's like a polywog and you can see them alive in there and she said i hate to see anything hurt and at this point actually it was on the point of the word wx"gasm" those who weren't following out to margaret truman -- there's

nobody in this room younger than margaret truman at that point. [laughter] >> there's this living aneurysm at the -- at the exit doors. these people are hitting each other to get out first. [laughter] >> that wasgate x5rmob, though. there was a bad mob that was -- and they had more than( umbrellas. they had ball bats and tire irons. so as these things go, we'll call that the bad mob. we're at the m's already. n, neighbors, they could not be improved by a good fence. outcast. i have a kid name lemoncats whose father throws him in kind of a high school kid, one of those kids that's it from the

day he first starts school. everybody is picking on him at the playground. so finally his father makes him go out for football in high school to make a man of him and it's one of those deals -- i mean, i've never been on any athletic team that didn't have, you know, an outcast. i keep saying. i, keep in mind, this is a novel. it's not a memoir. at any rate, this guy would practice and he gets caught doing that and the coach lifts him up and head butts him. the kid still had his helmet on and then makes him run laps when he won't get up. it turned out this poor kid's

got -- he ran laps with a broken femur and. i'm telling you too much. i've got an outcast. p, our protagonist had some kind of psychological problem when he was early. i don't want to throw this -- has everybody finished breakfast. he pissed -- he would break into houses -- this is a little hard to explain. at any rate, he would -- he would actually break into houses to piss in people's shoes. [laughter] >> and he gets very -- he got where he'd only do black shoes. and he -- but then he starts putting them in the refrigerator. and the newspaper gets a hold of this. calls him the visitor. [laughter] >> and the visitor had all the

houses in vincent heights, georgia, locking their doors at night. the kid, of course, can't read. he's only about 9. [laughter] >> so it's his first brush with celebrity and this is something he really likes. so even though his poor stepdad tries to have a man-to-man talks with him about this and he goes along with it, there's that other pull always. he still can't go by a house -- and he gets very good breaking into things. q, we got a quack. there's a number of quacks in here. most of them operate on our protagonist one time or another. once leaving him conscious on an operating table while they drilled screws into one of his

legs. i'm telling too much of this story. there's no reason for me even to buy a dan brown book now. [laughter] >> i got an $8,000 row boat, which is involved in one of the -- you know, the burials at sea in which he goes out in the sea and sinks. i got septic tanks. i've got two septic tanks. really, septic tanks are pretty interesting -- it's just like when you have a bad child and a good child. and you bring them up. you treat them the same. you give them the -- you know -- they get all the same toys and you love them, you know, and you treat them as well as you can and you nourish the way you're supposed to and one will turn out great and one of them is just awful.

oh, i'm not going to get into that. you've still had breakfast. tattoos. you very rarely -- this particular book has a guy in it -- what's the marine corps motto. [speaking latin] >> and he has that down his leg and it's more proof to our protagonist of america now that he can read that it's of america's crying need for more copy editors. we got a ukrainian body builder who lives next door, one of the bad neighbors. wives, you know, you want to start especially with someone might misunderstand this book as being more autobiographical than

it is. but we will just say one of them is at least 25 years more patient than the other. you've got x-rays which are always bad news. yodeling as we went through before. [laughter] >> and, oh, right here, zoos where not the protagonist but the father-in-law is finally arrested because the protagonist has driven him out of his head. we've gotten to the z's. i feel like too much time. am i still happily married over there. [laughter] >> it doesn't look like it. no. [laughter] >> you can't do anything to me

in front of witnesses and i'm not leaving. [laughter] >> so thank you again for your -- thank you to booksellers as deb said. [applause] >> there's a great line in tootsie where bill murray is talking about the type of play he likes to write. and he always loves when people walk out of the theater and say, what the hell did i just see? [laughter] [applause]

>> you know, pete, i work around-the-clock. my wife and i have 47 children of all ages. and sleep comes very rarely to us. dtqi sv wife decided to come to manhattan this weekend because i needed to stay up here to do this. and we were excited. we got a babysitter to come up. we've got an apartment on the upper west side. it was going to be a magical weekend. and so i went to sleep at 10:00 friday night. my wife, because it was a special night, took an ambien thinking i'm going to get seven hours of sleep. instead, i woke up at 4:00 in the morning and this is such a true story but i have to say