politician. i woke up at 4:00 in the morning and my wife was wide awake. and i said, susan, what's up? she looked at me, staring and then she stared up in the ceiling, and she said so help me god, i just read pete dexter's book. [laughter] >> i said it couldn't be that bad. she said, honey, let me show you the part where a dog vomits up a tattoo that has the u.s. marine corps seal. [laughter] >> i said, could you still make out the insignia. she said yes, yes. i think after hearing pete talk, the only thing that all of us

can say up here is, thank you, booksellers, we greatly appreciate it. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

today via my jokes so we can move this florida i think. i am very honored to welcome yet another amazing group of authors to the stage into bookexpo america in general. i know you are all hungry to hear what they have to say and i am sure the lunch is probably not satiating your appetite entirely so we will get them appear immediately, i want to thank their publishers and introduce them. you're host is ken auletta with the penguin press, lorri moore from knopf, daniel pink from paquin river had, and mary karr from harpercollins, and i would like to give all of those publishers a sincere round of applause as they allow these great office to come cso thank you to all the publishers.

[applause] the all -- haven't done it is my repetition so thank you to all of the publishers. [laughter] the mike is yours. >> thank you. hi, it's nice to be here. my name is ken auletta and believe it or not they ask me to speak first about my book, but before i do that i thought i would tell you a true story, actually a publishing story. we was had eight literate candidate for president another one also from the state of illinois, as -- adlai stevenson. he was accosted by one of his fans when he ran for president in the '50s and she said, governor, i admire your speeches so, they are just so superfluous. [laughter] and ever gracious stevenson ignored her comment and he continued talking to someone

else, but this woman persisted and she said, governor, will your speeches be published? and stephenson just kraepelin said in, now. and she said, well, perhaps they will be posthumously. [laughter] perhaps, said stevenson. she said, good, the sooner the better. [laughter] i do have a book coming out while i am still alive. this fall. and i will try not to be superfluous in 1998i went to the redmond campus of microsoft and interviewed bill gates for a book i was doing at the time. and i said to gates, i said, mr. gates, anything about the future what are you worried most about? and he rocked gently back and forth in his chair and he sipped his diet coke which he reached for behind him and to refrigerate, he did not offer

may 1. [laughter] not a surprise. and he didn't say what i thought he was going to say, i thought he would say, i worry about netscape, i worry about apple, i worry about son, i worry about some competitors and even the united states government which was going to sue him the next year for antitrust violations but that's not what he said. peace and i worry about someone in the garage who is working on at some new invention, some new technology that is going to disrupt microsoft. well, that year in 1998 to guys were in a broad working on the disruptive technology -- they were the google guys, larry page and saturday. and they came with an idea, they said the internet misinformation available. the way that we can improve search make information accessible. and they did what all engineers i have learned in two and a half

years of reporting this book do. and what they did was they ask one question -- why? they said and why can't we digitize all the books ever published 20 million of them and make them available? what and publishers love that? hello? [laughter] they said why can't we make all newspapers and magazines available? and what for free. why can't we pick youtube and make jon stewart available for free? why can't we do advertising that is targeting and instead of charging a customer for our 5 percent as media buyers do, we can charge may be 1%, wouldn't that be cool? and wouldn't it be cool, why wouldn't we instead of selling software in a package the way microsoft does, why couldn't we give it away for free in what is called a cloud computing today? or telephones? why can't telephones be freer than they are now in more open

to other services clacks? but as smart as engineers can be they are not always wise. and i was struck in my second interview with one of the two co-founders, he came in the room where we were about to do in interview and he said, before he sat down he came in on his rollerblades any had his gym shorts on which she often does and he came and said i don't understand, he said, why don't you just published a book for free on the internet? and i said, didn't stephen king tried that? and backed away, that is true, and i said by the way, who would give me in advance so i could come out here 13 times as i did and you would pay for the meals when i do interviews with people? and bayh hotels and travel and all of that? and i said by the way, who would

added my bookracks and he would do my index? and you would legally market the book racks and by now he is ready to change the subject. but i think it is revealing that an adult and certainly was to me that people at google, the engineers and it is an engineering culture are a people who don't think of the consequences necessarily of the things they're doing. they just think about and efficient way to do something, anyway to do something. the store with an assumption that oftentimes they always media companies to do the kinds, are inefficient, wasteful and in need of change particularly by engineers who can engineer a new system. it seems to me that one of the things i came away with after two and half years of reporting is that i kept asking myself

why. a similar question -- why is it that traditional media and by traditional media i mean everything from book publishers to newspapers and magazines and television and telephones and microsoft and advertising, why is it that traditional media did not ask the why question more often? why is it that they didn't think about how do we get ahead of this digital way that was cresting and is changing our business? and is a little late to do that. some of them try, but it is the real problem because that way has crashed into a fair number of media. now, you see an end to make an argument that book publishing is not as effective. i can give a worse news and you could be in the newspaper business and then you would feel like you're drowning. as many of my colleagues do, but

in the way the world has been in gold. today about 70 percent of all the searches in the world are done on google. we don't say, google has become a verb, we google, we don't say we're searching for something. and google is already digitized 10 million of the roughly your estimated 20 million books ever published in history. it's double click is the largest advertising service agency in the world. google news add verdes 25 gao's and daly, 25,000 books and magazines. youtube has 100 million visitors a month. it is the largest video site on the internet. if you live in the third world and you cannot afford to build an infrastructure, if you have

access which they will increasingly you can google information in classrooms and instead of not being able to afford to textbooks if you have a little cheap net books and navy are subsidized by the aids foundation or someone else, you have an ability to bring learning to those classrooms in the third world. google and the web inevitably democratized information. they take the choices out of many of your hands and out of the hands of network programmers are newspaper editors. and put the choices in the hands of consumers this grants enormous power to silicon valley engineers. this can be scary because as i said that they may be brilliant but they are not always wise. in and approve of that are the needless battles that a company like google and many of the silicon valley companies have had it with traditional media,

being sued by the book publishers and the authors guild, being sued by viacom currently for taking information and they feel pirated by youtube, threatened with lawsuits by newspapers and the associated press, and yet if you go as to the valley as i have you'll hear people tell you that the instant that is the most transformative technology in history. and every time i hear that i say, what happened to mr. edison? if you think about it, without thomas edison there is no internet. there is no computer. there are no light bulbs, there's no television, no radio, no air conditioning, no railroads or subways. but i think what is different if the internet is not the most transformative technology in history, what is different about this age is the speed of change.

and think about it -- it took to reach 50 percent of americans, it took the telephone 71 years. it took electricity 52 years. it's a television and 30 years. it took internet 210 years. it took facebook for years to reach 200 million users. so the velocity of change really mean something to all of us because it makes the people who run companies and the people who write books and the people who sell books and promoting books, it makes all of us insecure because it things changing so fast that a become scary. this much is certain. google engineers and silicon valley engineers will not stop asking the question why? they are by nature destructors,

that are not collaborators. they assume that the always of doing this, many of your ways of doing things are inefficient and wasteful. so traditional media has to start asking the same question, why? and you either have to figure out how to ride that digital way with or you are going to crash into it. i learned something else in my two and half your journey to this other planets. i learned that those who whine about google inevitably become a defense of. pipeline google or the internet -- by blaming google or the internet in misdiagnose what ails them. there are two ways to approach an internet company like google and the digital wave. merrilee or optimistically. leaning back, or leaning forward. those who lean back i would

argue played defense, striving to protect their existing business model.@@ú@úsñ÷ñst3ñ >> it is my pleasure to introduce lorri moore, she is a distinguished professor of english at the university of wisconsin, a wonderful short story writer, a novelist. she is a want -- she has won more awards than i can account of the stage although she told me not to mention nobel prize.

[laughter] just kidding, folks. she has written a new novel, "a gate at the stairs", about the awful of fence post 9/11. lorri moore. [applause] >> thank you. and as the low novelist up here, i just have to tell you, i am usually not even a really dress at this time of day. [laughter] and for items that have actual zippers and buttons i usually wait until after lunch. [laughter] and so when i discover that for this lunch and i actually would have to get out of a terrycloth and the lord, all the land good things that just rapper ragin and i don't mean to use them for dresses but those are good, but what i understood that our have to retire myself with actual proper buttons and zippers i

thought, well, there goes the of the real mistake. but you are the ones we writers count on to tell the world had disappointing we are as people, that writers are disappointing as people and so please just read the book. [laughter] so here i am carrying the message. in the words of the new zealand writer, janet frame, i am as a fiction writer a fetch and carry wanderer from the slightest peerless adderall to a secret save inner world. indeed, it circumstances courage is needed to be among people, even for fibre 10 minutes. and i've actually been asked to speak for 15, so we are in trouble. [laughter] if i can actually speak well in public i never would have become a writer, i would have spoken on platform after platform because i have a lot of a really strange

opinions that i like to share. [laughter] it is so much less lonely than sitting in a chair at homograft and a soft loungewear of a somewhat mentally ill which is how i usually live my life. [laughter] but here i am and this is the bait-and-switch of the literary life. since there is no q&a as part of this program, i actually collected in a van some questions from the audience and so i thought i wouldn't read in and i have them on cards and i thought i would read them to you and attempt to answer them. okay, here is the first one. the answer is not on the back. [laughter] it has been 11 years since your last book. holy christ almighty. what the heck have you been doing?

[laughter] you disorganized time wasting ding-dongs. [laughter] okay, we're going to move on from that one. number two, this is good. how do you do it? [laughter] how you do it? a divorced working, with no child support or a family money, without a penny not earned by your own tired hands. in a university professor, is single mother of a teenage boy, the guidebook to that which is not yet been written because why do mother and son is still my phase throttling jesters behind each other's backs. you are a short story writer, a novelist, a revere, sas, how can all of this be done by a single human being? [laughter]

especially someone receiving the most appalling e-mail's from one's ex-husband appear at [laughter] e-mail's as to be instantly deleted without being man, i hope you are learning to do that -- just press the delete button for god's sake. don't even open them. e-mail's that would make any ordinary human completely homicide of a -- homicidal. how do you do it? [laughter] [applause] i think this question are very much for a notice saying, but ito speak about my personal life. [laughter] number three, what is with the cover of your new book lacks? in seems to be a stairway to know where with fire at the top.

why didn't you just call it, stairway to know where with fire at the top? [laughter] is it an existential thank like beckett's? yahoo! okay. is it intended to be some real? sure. is it a farm field and a heavenly done the both an early anonymously images and will it become clear to me after reading the bookracks yes. [laughter] short answer, i like that. number four. why have you quoted from an opera ride on the epigraph page? isn't that pretentious? [laughter] i have an answer here for that, one of the most beautiful pieces of music to my mind, is madame butterfly as last area son just before she gives her son away to

pinkerton who in our house is better known as the your time, so yes, opera can be very high the looting. before butterfly sings eshoo calls for her handmaiden, suzuki, and this was so much at the back of my mind when writing this book than that when the main character suddenly purchased yourself a motor scooter i knew it has to be a suzuki. [laughter] these and other sorts of conjunctions and connections that really get writers excited. [laughter] and they are part of the serendipity involved in forming a world from words that one finds all around. in naming one world and writer discovers another one underneath it. okay, that's my answer, i cheated on that one. in -- number 5a, which you say that the theme of all your work can be summed up best boys will

be boys? [laughter] i think actually nothing juror has ever been written then boys will be boys. more said our thoughts, but actually if that is the theme of everything i have written and i actually would not need a drink right now. so i am just going to move on to the next question. [laughter] this is an actual question and that was mailed to me, this came in through -- this came from the post office. [laughter] if i met you and got to know you, this is actually what it said in -- would i be afraid of you put in a good way? [laughter] would i feel a kind of rejoice saying uneasiness? i have no idea. [laughter] i don't now.

okay, why is your novel about a 20 year-old girl or woman, whatever word you want to say? are issued getting along in the to the first aureus about 20 year-old? [laughter] okay, this is the essay question and i have a response here. here's the thing about being 20 years old. it is actually the universal age of passion, it is the age at which nature and form come together and in your individual passion and she is in its final shape and expressions, when later in life when you're older you feel furious, it is a theory of a 20 year-old. when you fall in love it is the love of a 20 year-old, is articulate, it is this role, it

is platonic. is the pure form of the emotion. when you observed the hypocrisies and injustices of the world and to feel shocked him betrayed by them, you're actually being 20 again and get you are just shy of being able to drink. [laughter] how perfectly completed and poured in at the same time. after 20 when you can drink, the brain starts to deteriorate, that's not good, so that is one reason why i'm working with a 20 year-old character here. 20 is also press actually in the scientists have actually proven this with fractions of statistics, essentially in as the halfway point of life which means in an ordinary life all the years that have come before your are 20 go by as quickly as all that come after, so 20 is

the midpoint so when you're looking at a 20 year-old you're looking at someone halfway through their lives. there's also actually a more personal reason perhaps that my novel is about a 20 year-old girl, see i am old enough to say girl now. and that is that i may have fallen victim to a family curse and now here is a family story about that. my grandfather more and when i was younger, that is what we call our grandparents, we didn't do this gramm mckinney and a grab by dick thing. it was grandfather more, it was the son of an itinerant baptist minister, his large family, parents and eight children and moved around a lot and i don't know whether this was a sign of being a good itinerant minister or a bad one but at any rate

they moved around whenever they hit a college town my great grandmother would try to stick your kids in college now matter how old they were and as results my grandfather attended the university of missouri in knickers when he was a trauma, and he graduated when he was 15 in. he was dabble of his mother's side, and 16 u.s. then sent off to yale or he earned two master's degrees by the age of 19. he then went to harvard and then in the relatively new field of psychology or william james was still the star professor my grandfather earned a ph.d., so much to do, so little time. [laughter] at 24 he was a professor at dartmouth where he founded in psychology department and after that was done and he had published his study of the origins and psychology a pleasure and pain, and after he had three children with his

adoring wife and after have gained a small reputation as an academic innovator and receive the invitation to tour europe he was offered a the presidency of a small women's college in saratoga springs. this is where he stayed for the next 35 years, he played the organ a church and was a gifted pianist and gave concerts to the college community. although totally bald before u.s. 30, like all those graduate degrees, he was still fantastically handsome. i remember that as a kid it. he was fantastically handsome like ed harris only atoll. [laughter] and he was much loved by a student at the college whose names and faces he would never eyes before they even arrived as freshmen and. and so he would greet them by their names without ever having met them before. as he walked across campus,

which flattened the heck out of them but also freaked that out. [laughter] as retirement loomed, my grandfather try to figure out what he might do in those years up ahead. something doable that he had not already done. my grandfather wanna -- my grandmother excuse me, she want to spend time in greece. they would do that, but my grandfather wanted a special project. he had only succeeded at what ever he had turned his hand to but, of course, his successes in the larger scheme of things did not really merits that great a place and they were carried in there had been a kind of scattershot restless small pond quality to them. but then it came to hammett -- he knew what he would do in so at the age of 70 he retired and set about -- writing a novel.

he had met many novelists during his time as a college president women's college for 35 years. he knew about 20 year-old college girls. there was his protagonists, there was his point of view. but a 70 year-old man was writing a novel about a 20 year-old college girl and constantly running back to his hotel room in greece to work on it did not please, my

grandmother one bit. [laughter] when they finally got back home to upstate new york in a finally finished it he took the manuscript personally by train to new york and laid it on the desk of various publishers, one by one they all rejected that. i am not sure how many rejections there were in total, but for someone who had gone to college when he was 12 and would never failed at anything, this was an unimagined apollo. he revised the book and tried again and still rejected, he showed his novel two his adult children and asked for advice and they were not encouraging. he had never before felt that anything and so probably he did not know how to fail and when he died my grandmother founded in that novel and along with my uncle and my parents they burned it in a roaring fire in the

fireplace. you do not know this was going to be so sad, did you? [laughter] so an accidental honor and my grandfather i have put the idea from the fire and it my own this by the family curse or perhaps because of it, because what our families for but to curse you? [laughter] and there's a little bit of fire on the cover, you can see there. literature contains a more intimacy than live, it really does. fiction is a distilling of life, life is a corn field, but literature is that shot of whiskey that has been distilled down. life is air and one does need air, one needs to go out into it, but literature is oxygen. it is the thing in the air you are looking for, the essence itself in novel is a very fragile thing but again, you are the people we writers think of

when we finish typing the last page. you are go-between, the ones we so hopefully imagine handing our books to some searching reader and saying, not here, this is great or even the more bullying, you are going to allow this. but just maybe here, maybe you'll find something interesting in these pages. a novel is a kind of social conscience, both in good conscience and a bad conscience and in this alone is a vulnerable construction but also a dream, assemble delicately with language in place between covers. etkin to bear up under much authorial blogging even if it is a sash of a diamond dress. it will wilt under too much critical thinking our review or supplies of any sort but at prius in the care of sellers, it is always at home and a store

where it might be given to someone as we now and give it to you may find something interesting in these pages. thank you very much. [applause] >> i think we see why how frustrated chairperson road why is 11 years we have to wait for your next book? [laughter] our next speaker is also a best seller, daniel pink, his work has been in many august publications. his second book, a whole , would cover those whose fear engineers because of their will to go to the world because it argues that the right side of the brain matters more than the left in determining success. his next book, "drive", also

plans a human mystery, what motivates us? daniel pink. [applause] >> all, right thank you to all of you. before i began we have a quick sense of the audience, how many of you in this audience today are booksellers? raise your hands. okay, to everybody with a hand up, i want to begin by saying thank you. i want to begin by thanking you for everything you do for working your butts off on behalf of people like me and ken and laurie and mary. there is a lot of talk up their even at this conference about the this and i that but let me say a plane, there is no publishing industry without booksellers, there is no publishing industry without booksellers and for what to do in a very very very tough climates i am extremely grateful not only as an author has a

reader, as a father, and a citizen so i am truly grateful for what to do. [applause] i want to pick up on something that lance said, an illusion i think some of you caught. before and twos the so very noble calling of writing a business books, i worked in in the equally noble calling of writing speeches for politicians. i was al gore's chief speechwriter for two years in the mid-1990s and those of you who know me and have had the good fortune of working with a number of you, because of that experience as a political speech writer i have a very rigid view of what constitutes a good speech. a very rigid. i'm so delighted many of you are nodding, because i believe every good speech in general, a good speech as in the windowless basement of the java center in particular.

[laughter] always have three key ingredients -- in in a good speech anywhere any time. they are: brevity, levity and repetition. [laughter] let me say that one more time -- brevity, levity and repetition so i will be brief, china to be serious, and i will repeat the important stuff all over and over and over again. [laughter] now, this afternoon i want to tell you about my new book "drive" -- "drive: the surprising truth about what motivates us". let me say that again: "drive: the surprising truth about what motivates us". [laughter] and i want to begin telling you about this book by telling you about to experience, to experiments that should have changed the world but did not echo the first experiment took place in madison, wisconsin at the university of wisconsin where a fellow in 1949 named

carlo, well-known psychologist, had something called a private lab for he was experimenting with the behavior of primates. one day in 1949 he decided to do this experiment on how primate's learned so what he did it was of a fashion and the lambert puzzle with hooks and clasps and things like that and to pull off the pin and left hook and open up the collapse, a pretty easy for you and me, kind of challenging for a 13-pound monkey. so he says i'm going to teach them how to do this puzzle, he puts the puzzle in the cages and almost immediately something strange started happening. the monkeys started playing with the puzzle. they started playing with eds, with focus, with determination, with what seemed to be enshrinement and before long they are solving the puzzle. now, he is completely wiped out over this, what is going on here? we're not reporting them with anything, not applauding them

are giving a fraction, this is totally weird because back then in the field of psychology you basically had the view that there were two main tribes that powered the behavior of primates -- including these less harry primaries called human beings. we responded to biological drives, we did things and drank too slight arthurs, a to quench our hogger, we reproduced to satisfy our carnal burgess. that is what was one drive. second drive was we responded to rewards and punishments and our environment, tried to avoid -- stimuli into positive stimuli, but what these monkeys were doing was not that is so if you read these papers 50 years later you can almost hear him scratching his head -- wait, there are not like in their thirst, not pointing their sexual drives, at least we hope not with these puzzles. but they're now getting any kind of reward. what is going on?

and he sent a, maybe there is another drive. maybe there is a third drive. maybe those monkeys are doing that task for his own reward, maybe there are doing it because they like it because they find it gratifying because they find it challenging. this is a huge insight. and he writes these things saying there is this other drive out there but no one knows about it or written about it, it is not this biological or reward and punishment drive, this is a big deal and he writes how we need to rethink the theory of motivation, we need to close down these outdated john caris of how to think about motivation. and then he drops the whole idea because it was so controversial, it ran so a valid to everything that every psychologist and behavioral sciences was writing about. it would be like -- i started thinking about this -- you would be like -- copernicus and i know you guys kind of think that the

sun moves around the earth, but i am pretty sure it is the other way around. but i'm not going to go there because it is not a good career move. [laughter] so he drops that an extraordinary. 20 years later there is a second experiment that should have changed the world but did not, a young ph.d. student in search of a dissertation topic. he has read harlow's works, has an mba from wharton and he things based on his studies that we have gone motivation wrong so he does this incredibly ingenious experiments for he has another puzzle called a sum of puzzle which i this kind of a cute to puzzles with seven pieces you can put together and he does this ingenious experiments in years when he does: he brings people into a roman and he lays out the certain drawings of how the puzzles can be configured and he lays out all the pieces of the puzzle and over.

this room at this table he puts a copy of time magazine, a copy of the new yorker, and a copy of playboy. it is 1969. [laughter] and natalie for those of you born after 1969i should point out that time, new yorker are things we used to call magazines. [laughter] and here is what he found a, you put people in a room and he says, i want you to do the puzzles and then he does something really ingenious. after they do to puzzles he leaves and he says one have to do is put them into the computer to see what the next puzzle is going to be for you, this time of the room straddling mainframe so he leaves the room but he is not really leaving the room. i feel like that guy, he is replacing the coffee with boulders crystals.

[laughter] he is not really leaving the room, he is going to an adjoining room and watching what they do when they are left alone and here's what happens. the people who are not getting any kind of monetary reward when they are left alone they play with the puzzle because it's interesting here and here's what happens the people that got a reward the first time when left alone and not getting a reward they play with the puzzle because it is interesting, they like it, it is challenging. the next time he says i'm going to give you a dollar for every puzzle you complete. they get really interested in a dollar that was basically worth $6 today so you may $24 of beer money for doing these puzzles, they get really interested and when he lives there still working but then they go to the third session with the same people who were really interested on day one, really interested on day to come on day three when he says we don't have any money left no reward, there are no longer interested in the puzzle.

they spend less time plan with the puzzle during their free time than anybody else, so he says, the rewards can dampen motivation, they can take something interesting and make an uninteresting. we think it leaves too high performance but it doesn't, this got him fired from a business school but he did not leave it alone and instead he and a whole range of other scholars over the last 40 years have basically developed an alternative theory to motivation and that is what this book "drive: the surprising truth about what motivates us" -- let me say that again -- "drive: the surprising truth about what motivates us", is about my first book was about how people work, the move from the organization man to the self-employed. the second book was about what people do at work. .. @@ú@ú least touchy feely

person you have ever met and it's not a touchy feely nicy-nice thing, this is the cold, hard empirical truth. there are 40 years of science i've read for the book that indicates that the way we run our organizations and our schools, the way we run our own lives is off, we have the wrong theory of motivation tiny book

lays out what the better theory is and why rewards often deteriorate performance, and talks about when you should use these rewards and talks about the three elements of really intrinsically driven behavior and then it talks about how they apply in work, in schools, and our own lives, and now, one -- couple lass things. who is the book -- why now? why the book now? well, don't you get a sense that the wheels have fallen off the wagon? don't you get a since that the wheels have fallen off the wagon, something has gone wrong and if you look back at the decade, especially here in the u.s., it is argue automobile this is essentially a lost decade. and, the reason for that, i think is that we have neglected sort of the full humanity, what science tells us, the full humanly is and what terrifies me, a little bit, is that if we look at our schools, for instance, we are talking about high stakes standardized tests and giving kids pizza and ipods

and money for studying and getting good grades and basically using the same kind of reward scheme we used on wall street. to motivate or kids, and when in fact, it is empirically flawed, and wrong and i think we can do a lot better. one other thing, before i wrap up. talk about sort of where books fit in in the grand scheme of things, i'm not a narrative writer like these folks here, i write a different kind of book and seems to me as a reader, there are a certain kind of book i want. you have big idea books, books that lay out this grand theory, then you have books that are change your life books, okay? and they seem to live in very, very different worlds. very different worlds, the folks who are doing the big idea, theoretical change your life books don't dane to tell you what you should do based on their grand theory, we don't do that. the folks doing the change of life books, i mean,... some of

it is basically in the ground rule of exhortation. but i think the books that really matter, i want to read, the books that the audiences i talk to all over the country i ride an e-mail i get from people, people want books that are animated by big ideas and help them change their lives and one reason i think a hole new mind has sold so well, than in part to your word of mouth and your great work has sold so well for so long, year after years it does better and week after week and the reason for that is that it has a big idea but this book, whole new mind has 70 tools and tips and take aways to help people transform their lives and drive is the same, a big idea, with the wrong theory of motivation and the scenes proves it and we have all kinds of tools and tips and take aways to help people do better at work and school and do better on the job. and that is the kind of book i want to read. but there is no chance that anybody is going to read any of

my books, or any of these folks' books, without all of you, the book sellers, so for that, i thank you for your intrinsic motivation to do what you do each day. [applause]. >> thank you, dan. in baseball terms our last speaker is a 5-2 performer, mary karr is a college professor, writes poetry, memoirs, fiction and is kick-ass funny and her first memoir, "the liar's club" was on the best-seller list for the better part of the year. and it is -- it described her miserable childhood, am i doing okay? have i got you? her second memoir, cherry, told the -- of her extraordinary adolescence and her new book,

lit, tells how she copied her past and became the writer she is. mary karr. [applause]. >> oh, you know, i always feel like when somebody talks about how bad my childhood is i should be should be an igor of a person and i should look a lot worse. you know, for those of you who red "the liar's club" or "cherry" you know i don't think of myself as a dekensian -- dickensian or fan and i didn't gro up in rwanda, i grew up whited in a country that privileges that with teeth that came in straight despite my lack of orthodontics. and those of you who didn't read those books, there is a story i like to tell to acquaint you a little bit with my family.

i made a few bucks, i was redoing my mother's kitchen, and a tile dude pries off a tile and holds it up and there is a perfect circle in it and he says to my 70-something gras gray haired mother, why ms. karr it looks like a bullet hole. and thinking he's being wicked and my sister says, isn't that where you shot at daddy? [laughter]. >> and my mother says, no, i believe that is where i shot at larry -- over there is where i shot at your daddy. and now that is the story i like to tell to explain why i write memoir instead of fiction. because who could make this shit up! [laughter] larry at whom my mother shot, was my daddy's gay pill.-popping nurse and my mother's paramour for a period of time and my father had drunk himself off a bar stool and had

a little prince valiant hair cut and a poison hinge with a hinge on it where he kept his tranquilizers, when he got nervous. and nervous in my family gets spelled with a capital "n". my second book ends, just as i'm leaving high school, "lit" begins as i'm driving away from this house, in the backwater in texas where i grew up, with a tribe of surfers and drug dealers, this is in the 1970s, and if you remember the 1970s, you were not there. [laughter]. >> we had scooped out the inside of a surf board and filled it with all manner of mind altering substance. and in fiber glassed over that, and set out to seek our fortune. and i had a great idea at age

17, this is really truly a fabulous idea, i'm sure, at least a few of you have had it before, which is: i can take all the misery i had in the house, here's the house where high daddy drank himself off the bar stool and drank himself to death was paralyzed, and incontinent, bedridden for five years with bedsores and my mother and she's sleeping with his nurse, larry, and i think, i can get in a vehicle, and drive away from these people, and that's -- and that's the end of the story. right? i know these people are nuts. i share dna with them and i don't have to live there and i'm going to get into the car and go, capital a away. and that is the end of all of my problems, right? i wish it would work that way. i mean, my idea about being a writer in fact, was that you could -- i could recast the

story of myself. there was a period in this 8th grade when i had a kind of ts eliott phase and used the word indeed like if you asked me stuff and i was going to be somebody who wore a head band or something, you know, i was going to -- i was going to sachet down literary lane and seek my fortune. albeit with a few mind altering substances to tamp down any of those nasty demons in the back of my head. the drug casualties in the golden state, what they say about california they'll loose mash wells roll west... [laughter]. >> and you got out there and my boy, talk about white people, i had never seen so mean people -- white people who were not missing fingers or toes or had scars, nobody was burnt up anywhere and people had all their teeth and i -- you know, i was glad to get there on the one hand and the other hand i looked around and thought, where has all of this been?

you know, where have they been keeping this stuff, and i knew this was not my place, that they had not carved out a spot for me there. eventually, you know, the drugs got scary, i was living in a house, you had to call it a crash pad. is watch even a house with the scabby dishes in the sink and people i knew were starting to go to prison and so what do i do, shave my legs and tie a sweater around my next and decide i'm going to go be a coed. and i'm going to explore higher education. by the end of grad school, i come across this 6 ft. 5 inch harvard grad, a poet, and can quote more shakespeare than anybody not hired to learn it, played all those waspy sports they didn't have in texas because we was playin' football! and, the next thing -- and i'm

telling you, he looked like something you win at a raffle. [laughter]. >> when my sister met him, she said, he should have just walked out with his hand -- took one look at him and it was all over for him, that was it. and next thing i know i'm driving through these big, scrolled gates, up this long winding drive and there are the stables and the tennis courts, and the rose gardens and i -- swimming pool and i say, i'm going to long island, right to meet the family, and i say, is this a subdivision? this is a true conversation. and he said, no, this is my house. i said, why didn't you tell me about all of this? and he says, about what? about all what? which makes him the perfect man for me, right? the average well-bread american wasp can ignore reality way better than any drug addict. [laughter].

>> rich people... rich people can ignore reality. let me tell you how well these people did. they had a dog named tiger, they had had for 60 years, a golden retriever. how you might ask, we would have asked in my home town, how is this possible and when tiger one got frail and sick and went to live with jesus, they got tiger 2. and after tiring 2 came tiger 3. and, so these people would get an idea in their heads how things were going to be and get into the groove and they would bear down on that. [laughter]. >> now, coming where i come from, the house with the bullet holes and you know, some people might flinch a little, walking into this environment and i thought, oh, my god this is the promised land. okay. okay. so first i sit down at the long glossy table and looks like a

bowling lane, right? and with the old man down at one end and the woman and the irish maids better educated than i am standing with the silver stuff and i'm not even making this up, this is true. and polo trophies all over, and i look -- i mean, i am faced with the silverware that weighs a half a pound apiece, a fork and all of the stuff and i think, i am a clever girl, right? i went to college, and so by watching them i -- like a chimpanzee i can figure out what item to pick up when and i'm like those people in dance studies, i'm like, owe they'll go for that one -- in dan's studies and they'll go for that one, i'm ready and at one point there was another seminal point in the dinner when we ran out of asparagus and the old man says, to the maid, go back and ask the cook for more asparagus and, yes, sir and goes to the pan tray, way beyond the

pantry in the back of the house, big industrial kitchen and pretty soon you hear the danish cook bellow out, tell him if he ate look a normal man it would have been enough asparagus! no one's face alters a whisker. this big icy fog rolls down the table. and nobody, nobody makes eye contact, nobody laughs, nobody says anything. and i think, these people have found the solution. [laughter]. >> this man, sitting across from me, is the anti-venom to the snake bite of who i am. now you would think that with my mother who married 7 times, i would have a little help with my wedding. right?

i mean, i didn't mind paying for it. i new i'd have to pay for it and i could handle that and generate income, i was my daddy's daughter and he taught me how to work and i can john rate income and can pay for it and -- but my mother was like one of these vietnam vetsed and sees this flower arrangements and throws herself on the ground and screams, "income." and so we -- plus, she decided, mother decided to fall off the wagon, at my rehearsal dinner! [laughter]. >> this is also true story. my sister, my cyst and i had threatened and bribed and comingalcoming cudgled her into not drinking and we got her a valium prescription and cable television and wanted her in the house and medicated. and quiet. right? well, my mother gets -- so, where are we, in the beauty shop, i have them close done the beauty shop and we're going to

the ritz carleton in boston where my father-in-law has had a tab since he was in law school. so i'm going to take us all to get our hair done, the kind of bridal thing. my sisser is flying in, me and my mother and i'm lying the shampoo thing and i smell mayor want. and i think, mother... and then i shake it off, shake out off, no, no, no, no, no. there is no marijuana here, my mother has no marijuana, this is boston, you know, this isn't happening to me. and about an hour later, mother waggles out, she's got her hair jacked up into a kind of topiary shape... like you see in the driveway of the people i'm about to be married to. [laughter]. >> and she looks like a transvestite. [laughter]. >> i am not going to lie, she liked the shoes and had the

slutty shoes and her eyes are glassy and iraq, my god, mother, no! so at the dinner, she says to my father-in-law, she's a painer and studied in new york at the art students league in one of her other incarnations an stoez my father in law, she'd like to paint him in the nude. [laughter] and, quote, fix anything you need fixed! [laughter]. >> this kick-starts what my sister and i later refer to as mother's "flashdance" period. [laughter]. >> my mother, my mother, my mother... is a shadow stitched to my feet. i thought i could out run her. but, i am a lot like her. it turns out. i have, for one thing, i have a little bit of an appetite for drink.

i have a taste for it. i have a talent for it. i could out-drink that big 6 ft. 5 inch lacrosse playing individual. and so what happens, once i'm married to this guy and i give birth to this little blue idea slab of white child. looks like i'm hired to take care of. and use the most radiant creature i ever saw and blinking up at me, and my first thought is, you know, i think a beer... i haven't had a boar in nine months, i think a beer would help me breast feed! [laughter]. >> my mother had suggested this to me. that a beer might be what i needed. and if one beer is good, why two are better and three beers and so on and here's what lit is

about. lit, lit, lit, lit. god danmn it, picture bic lighted, lit, lit, lit, harper collins, thank you, it is about, how do you become a hots when what your mother taught you, what you are hard wire to do, involves -- when facing a problem, your instinct drives you towards alcohol, and firearms. these are the two major modes of solution i have been schooled in. but you know, here's the problem with these people, you are kin to. every crazy idea you have comes from them, right? >> you know, everything that you don't like about -- but, everything i knew, those of you who read "the liar's club" and "cherry" know everything i knew about love and beauty came from

those people. the stories i make my living telling now my daddy taught me how to do that. taught me how to shoot, gut you a coon and skin a snake and other things that are not useful but taught me how to work hard and show up on time and how to tell a story. my mother taught me how to read t.s. eliot, shakespeare, why bessie smith was as good as picasso. and the ep graph of the book is from the odyssey. the odyssey, remember the odyssey, the first book in our western civilization, there is gilgamesh and the hebrew bible, et cetera, et cetera, the odyssey, and, i want you once again, since we thrive on this, raise your hand if you are a book seller or a librarian. okay, how about a teacher? book seller, librarian, teacher, let me tell you, you are the

keepers of the flame and in terms of technology, i am still a big fan of guttenberg, call me a dinosaur, but, there is no better technology for me than a book i can write in, fold down the page of, scribble up, loan out, get back, and that looks back at me when i look into it. for me, literature saved my life. book sellers, librarians and teachers, saved my life. reading saved my life. i mentioned this odyssey because the passage, i quote from it is the ep graph for the book, okay. odesius, you know the story, spends all decades, sailing from island to island to island and what does he claim, looking for home. he's trying to get back home, to his wife and his kid and wants to go home. and at one point he's laid up

drunk, in a ingle, with this beautiful witch, and all his pals, his companions, you think of them as surfers and drug dealers, if you like, have been turned into pigs. and he is drunk as a monkey and says, passage home? question mark? never. and that's the epigraph of the book. by the time he got home, the only -- only -- the dog was the only one who knew him, and i had to go home, to leave home. i had to embrace my mother, in order to become a mother myself. i had to look at all of the lies i had been told, in order to figure out what the truth was. at the end of mother's "flashdance" period, she actually got sober.

larry, she took tleer a detox and larry didn't make it. by the way but mother got sober and stayed sober more than 20 years. and, when i was trying to get up the sauce -- off the sauce i got extremely nervous and at one point she invites me home and my son is a toddler at this time and now he's 22. looks like something you would win at a raffle! so she begs me to come home and says, come home, baby, i'll help you and take care of the baby and you can like workout and like you can read and go to the library and write and get some work done, and i'll help you. i knew it was a trick. you know i'm like the charlie brown running at the football, over and over again. i know it is a trick. you know, but i can't help it. so i go home and the first day she does okay. and watches him, i come home and he's got a pulse, and the bar for the babysitting event is low and i come home and he's okay. and second day she says, don't go for a run, let us come with you, we'll go to the park with

you. so i'm like okay. and the second day we all go together and third day, she says i don't want to babysit. i just don't want to! and i was so pissed, i was jonesing for a drink and my skin was crawling all over my body and i said, what's wrong with you, you promised me and swore you would babysit and she said, honey i just don't do kids and she had four. and i said, okay you don't do kids. mother. you do not cook. you don't clean. i pay your bills. you haven't had a job in 40 years, what mother exactly do you bring to the party? and she stopped for a minute and looked up and she said... i'm a lot of fun to be with. [laughter]. >> and xiechd that's true, you are. and that's what i hope "lit" is, a lot of fun for you to be with. thanks a lot. [applause].

>> this is supposed to go to -- do q&a. >> mary, that was fun. i neglected to mention that pat conroy couldn't be with us today but his book is available for you, his publishers making it available. do we have -- mary suggested q&a, is there time for that or do we just break? >> [inaudible]. >> anyone wants to leave or ask questions, let's do it. questions. any questions? >> is this on? click -- there is a button on these, does anybody have a question, you can go if you need to go. i don't have my glasses on so wave your hand if you do. >> i... i don't think we have provoked any questions, people want to go to the next thing. thank you for what you do and thanks for coming. [applause]

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