>> i am the editor of the book and main editor of the book, and my role is actually this front end. we dreamed thumb e idea with the hip of jeff, who is a public affairs author and with my colleagues, editorial colleagues, we sat down on thursday evening, from 4:00 p.m. and looked at all of the commissions coming through the web site and decided how we were going to select them and arrange them with the -- within the book and did that on thursday and friday we saw how they had all run out. the pages looked like. and we moved a lot of material around and found we were a little short and a little long. and that sort of happens when you design pages through a database, and... but in the end, we at about 4:30 yesterday we ended up with 144 pages and we have proof read them at least twice. it was a proof reading job from hell it turned out, because not only are we doing it in the convention center with a lot of

dis track but many of the sequels are variations on a theme and it is difficult to keep track of whether you have seen it before. but -- >> and the web site is up and running, correct. >> the web site is up and run, and we closed -- had to close contributions to the book for the printed book on thursday, just because, for the sake of the project, we wanted everything to take place within 48 hours, so we said, thursday, 4:00 p.m., it is shut for the purposes of the book but you can still if you want contribute on the web site. bookthesequel.com:

compressing what we do and doing the things all the things necessary for publishing a book. >> and we want to show the website, bookthesequel.com bye public affairs and you can see the website. susan weinberg and goliath, thank you very much. dan baum, former staff writer for the new yorker, traveled to new orleans in 2005 to cover the aftermath of hurricane katrina. his book chronicles the lives of nine residents. the junior league of richmond hosted this event at st. christopher's school in

virginia. it's 45 minutes. [applause] >> thank you very much for coming. i'm from new jersey. i talk fast. i mean no disrespect by it and i am going to go through a lot of stuff and i would really appreciate if you have questions that you'd not hold them until i am done beating my gums. if the question occurs to you put your hand up and stop me because that works much better one linear story with beginning and middle and end with one cast of characters. i covered the flood and marlene's for the new yorker and i had never been to new orleans before. i had been there for one night to interview somebody and fly out. i've been a reporter a long time. and i was sent down there right after the levees broke and, you know, when you are a reporter

you get very focused on the event, the f-ing and this was a big eve zandt. so i am in that and the boats and you remember the video from that i was in and out of new orleans that year afterwards writing about the recovery and when you are doing something like that you get focused on the thing its fema and the national guard and this program and that. but what started to happen to me six months into this is i began realizing this even as big as it was is not the most interesting thing about this city. this city is manifestly weird. [laughter] i don't know if any of you have any experience and new orleans, but i used to live in mexico and it's a lot more like mexico and it is like the united states. in such fundamentals as the way people in new orleans relate to

time or relate to money or relate to envision, it is just nothing like the country that we all live in. and it was not settled by the english the way the rest of the united states was. it was settled by the french and spanish, and they just did things very differently, and what has remained they're a city that in the context of kind of modern go-go american capitalism is just like a city sized act of civil disobedience. new orleans just does not play by the rules we play by. for example, we and what we call the real world are very future oriented. it's the american thing. we are dreamers and skiers, chasing the horizon, planning for tomorrow, working today to make tomorrow better. and new orleans the future does not exist at all.

people there just don't think about tomorrow or think about leader today. it is all about living in the moment and it's about enjoying this minute right now. and that is not a world view necessarily conducive to getting things done. you know, new orleans is not a high achievement kind of town, never has been. the economy has always been kind of rigid and the infrastructure is falling apart, but people who have been to new orleans and spend time there either state or spend the rest of their lives thinking about how they can get back there because life minute to minute is very pleasant and money doesn't mean the same thing down there that means to us. certainly race, which is kind of the american obsession. everything refracts -- everything is viewed through a racial lines like it is in the united states but it refract

deferred to the custis concept of black people and white people doesn't really exist because unlike the english, french intermarried with their sleeves to create a mix class buffer class they thought would free press sleeve rebellions, so you thought you'd have not just black people and white people but everybody's a little bit of both. huey long used to say i could buy every white person lunch for a quarter, and that gets very complicated. i know black people in new orleans -- people who identify themselves as black who look like i do so you never really know who you're talking to and were liens, and so about six months and to report on the flood and the recovery i started realizing this place is fascinating. this is weird. this is different.

and what i wanted to write about was the city, not the flood. i was tired about writing about the flawed and recovery. so my wife with whom i work and i began thinking how can we write -- we can't write about new orleans. i don't want to write a history of new orleans so we began looking for one story that would throw a rope around everything we wanted to say about the city and we have all kind of ideas, and for awhile we thought about there was a dead body kind of a character in this book that gets carried around all day today the levees break by a police officer. and he carries this dead woman around all day and we thought maybe we will focus the whole book on her, her life and death and follow her body and that will kind of show what happened after the storm and that didn't work. i could never find her family and they were squirrely about

participating. and we kept looking for one of narrative that would do the work we wanted to do and we couldn't find, so we finally settle right -- i had about eight people in mind. we're just going to write a book about these eight people and we will take a chance and we will count on the reader to stay with us and what this book is it is these lives and you get a little chapter about one and a little chapter about another and it starts and 1965 and we will trust the reader to stay with us. and so we have these eight and then we realized if we add one more we would have secured title, so we added one more and we tried to do something of a cross-section of new orleans, black and white, rich and poor, neil and female and in between we have one character who begins the book as john and ends the

book as joanne at the story's pretty interesting. and the other -- the other chance we took, the first chance we took was we were going to tell these stories, nine stories instead of one story and that's challenging. the other thing we are going to do is tell each of these stories from inside this person's head. so instead of narrator kind of looking down and commenting on these people, we tell ronald's story from inside his head and frank's story from inside frank's had and joanne's story inside joanne's hand in trying to write their chapters somewhat in the way they speak and this turned out to be really fun because the way people speaking in new orleans, you think i talk

funny, people in who were lean stock really funny and they talk funny based on what neighborhood they are in. i do all my interviews on a laptop, and the one thing -- i can tell you this: if you're thinking about the writing life the one thing i would really teach you to concentrate on an addition to grammar and syntax and usage and vocabulary is learn how to type fast because of all the skills i've got, fast typing has turned out to be the most valuable. i can sit with a laptop and tight as fast as anybody can talk so what i end up with are these transcripts of the interviews. i don't use a tape recorder. i just sit there and tie placate mo-fo. [laughter] and what i would see leader is that for example in the ninth word some people will say we are going to meet their 3:00, whereas uptown they will say we are going to meet there at 8:00.

it's not a big difference between people use prepositions changes in different places. if you try to learn a foreign language you know prepositions are always the hardest thing. what do i use here. and new orleans the prepositions change. little syntax changes that showed up in the transcript of these interviews i could then use in their riding of these chapters, and i'm hoping that the hope was when you are reading a chapter about julian or joyce yorba linda or wilbert, that your -- it is like the a telling the story. it's not first person except for one. about two weeks into the flood, two weeks into the crisis, i -- the city -- they were evaluating

the city forcefully at gunpoint because new orleans is full of people who've never been out of new orleans and have never met anybody outside of new orleans and were terrified of the fault being taken out and they needed to get everybody out because there was no power, no food. they needed to completely evacuate the city, and i turned myself and at the convention center as an e vacuity to see what was happening to these people because they were not telling them. there were just putting them on planes and flying them out. and i met this guy named anthony wells at the convention center, and he is in his mid-50s and he is i guess the way to say he is the problem, he is an economically useless individual. he has -- you know, in the american context she's this in

and out of jail, in and out of drug use, the kind of guy he would be telling a story and suddenly he would say he shot me! look! and he would pull up his shirt. but in another society there would be room for anthony wells, and in new orleans there's room for and many wells because he's this great storyteller and raconteur and even though he has shot people and been in and out of all kind of terrible things there is a sweetness and wisdom to and the new wells and certainly the which read anthony wells, and i really came to like this guy. i was a little scared of anthony wells got to say, and i would go back and forth to tennessee. he was evacuated to knox fell

tennessee which is just like the antinew orleans and he was a draft up there and he finally makes it back but anthony's chapters in the book are written in italics and it's just anthony talking in first-person because i had started writing anthony's chapters in this kind of close third person which i did with everybody else. but realized his chapters lit up when he started talking so i talked to my editor and we decided just get out of the way, just let anthony talk so his chapters are just trimmed transcript of our conversations, and he's just great. really in a way if you don't have time i know you are all taking these tests if you don't have time to read much of the book just foot through the book and read the italicized. if it is not my fighting it is

just anthony talking and it is great stuff. it is a great kind of history of the last 50 years of new orleans told through the sky's blease -- i's voice. another challenge writing a book like this i guess the word is fictionalizing, it is kind of a dirty word in the nonfiction the world because there is this tension when you're writing nonfiction how much of what you are riding is the absolute gospel truth and especially people who come out of newspapers there is a belief that if you are calling it nonfiction everything has to be documented. it's got to be able to stand up in court and it's got to be the absolute gospel truth. this is particularly a problem and new orleans because new orleans is not what you'd call a

fact-rich environment. [laughter] the stories people tell are more important than what happens. so i am getting this orally from these people so who knows. but i would go around and try to verify as much as i could, and so if somebody's talking -- obviously i wasn't there. this book starts in 65. there is a scene in a barber shop in 1964, these guys sitting around talking. well, i don't know when he picked up the year and trinket. i don't know exactly what color the short -- i would do as much as i could and tried to talk to as many people who were there as possible look at the police and i -- one of my writing tools is a little digital camera, i will go and shoot pictures of everything. if i am in somebody's house interviewing i will shoot all the stuff on the walls and i will even do things like say can

i use your bathroom and as i will go to the bathroom a will go through the kitchen and open up the refrigerator and shoot a picture because you never know what little detail, but physical detail is going to make your seem pop and sometimes what people eat is very telling about who they are and their social station in life and especially in new orleans you find interesting things in people's refrigerators. so i would do that and recreate these scenes 1974. it was a newspaper in 1974 if they are talking about a football game you could find out who was playing and who one. you can recreate scenes that you didn't witness. there's a lot of documentary evidence that you can use scene.

in a friendly compelling manner you have just got to i don't even want to say make it up, you have got to use this documentary -- all material that you've gathered and rebuild the scene out of that. i get a lot of credit to my editor at spiegelman's, a young guy who knew where that line was. i've got to tell you that when my wife and i handed in the original manuscript, we had wildly fictionalized scenes. we had made things up so if frank told me -- frank is the parish quarter -- if he told me people had given him grief for trying to get a black guy into the new orleans medical society

in 1965, then i created a scene of somebody giving him grief. and what my editor said wallace look, there is a line up to which people will accept it and that line moves over time. it is said the truman capote established the line with the book cold blood. he wrote that in the late 50's and early 60's about a murder in kansas and he called it a nonfiction novel and a really was a pioneering book of creative nonfiction where he researched all this and then he wrote from inside the murders heads and we created scenes and a really made a splash when it cannot because it was a whole new way of doing nonfiction really using the tools of fiction to make fiction, life and all plus who do nonfiction al kind of go back to that. it's kind of a totem we go back

to and what my editors said was look, truman capote and established the line and the line has moved over time and the public is willing to accept more and more creativity and more and more interpretation and fictionalizing if you want to use that term and nonfiction but the line is here and you guys have gone over here and he dialed us back and basically said any scene that you might have to have happened. within that seemed i am going to count on you to do as much research as you can to flesh it out and make as many of the details true as possible but if it happened you can do it, but you can't make up the scene that didn't happen to represent a phenomenon that somebody described like giving grief over trying to get a guy -- so i went back to frank and asked can you give me scene where someone gave

you grief and he could and so we cut that out and cut a lot of stuff out. one of the pitfalls when you write nonfiction is that all nonfiction writers want to do as much of this as they can because it's fun. it's fun recreating scenes and it's fun using the tools of fiction and nonfiction, and it's fun when you write it and to put it out there and we all want to do it and kind of racing to win after predators dewitt, and the pitfall is they always give your nonfiction book to another nonfiction book writer to review and a newspaper and i see it all the time the reviewer takes the writer apart comegys fictionalizing, making stuff up and you can tell what the review were is singing. i don't get to do this why should this guy get to do this and so that is what we expected in their reviews was to get dinged for recreating the scenes

but obviously i wasn't there for and i think it is a tribute to my editor, chris jackson that not a single reviewer did that. we got away with it and i think we got away with it because chris really knew that the standard is did this happen? if it happened, go ahead and flesh it out, but if you are not sure it happened or it didn't happen you can't do it. now, that said, new orleans being new orleans, there is one scene, for example, that i know did not happen the way it happened, and it's one of these characters, it's this very well the doctor who in 1967 has this depressive open if anyone might and realizes that he has been this rich, spoiled by and he was

raised poor and become very rich and become a self-centered playboy and he needs to abandon all that and serve the poor and he runs for parish coroner and sets him off on being the corner of new orleans and he'sind of a wild man, great man by the name of frank minn your id and he describes this deep if any. he absolutely was sure it happened in 1967 because he knows he just sold the rate wars and hadn't yet bought the sailboat and he knew, he was absolutely positive it was 1967. he also knew for absolute certainty that the precipitating event that set off this dippers crisis was hearing peggy leasing is that all there is? which was not released until 1969. so i go back to frank and say we have a problem here. you were sure it's 1967 that this happened but it couldn't be because the song wasn't released until 1969 and frank said well

what can i know it was 1967 because this and this and he stands up behind his desk and he sings is this all there is for me just to demonstrate is that -- and the this is a problem. then i thought no, it's an opportunity. and i'm just going to write this the way frank told, and i own up to this in the introduction in the book. i say this very important moment this kind of a pivotal moment could not have happened the way the book portrays, but this is the way frank explains his life to himself and therefore i'm writing it this way because this is frank's story, and that's risky. maybe because it's new orleans, it works. we got away with it, people

accepted. when you're doing interviews you get into this and it's probably not just new orleans when you get into this thing what are you hearing? are you hearing fact or is everything coming through a filter? obviously everything is coming through a filter. when you read my account of these people's lives is coming from multiple filters. it's coming through their memory. it's not only how well their memories function but with the choose to remember. it is people talking about events 30 years ago have reordered their memory to explain their present. so what they are leaving out and what they are over emphasizing, what sticks with them and what

doesn't, with the choose to roe and emphasize, that is a powerful subject filter. then they tell it to me and then i go and try to interview as many people involved as i could and then i'm getting their point of view, then i'm going to old newspapers and old television shows and books and documentary evidence and putting that as an overlay and then i'm writing it with my own sensibilities and my own agenda. so the term nonfiction is not synonymous with gospel truth, and i would challenge anybody, even people who are not kind effectively be leading they are using the tools of fiction and nonfiction, i would challenge anybody to absolutely document

what they are writing. what they are riding is the truth. what i am always telling underwriters and colleagues who are also reporters i am always saying we are not writing leviticus, we are writing stuff that is fleeting, it is going to last a while. you take your best swing. you've got a certain amount of time, certain amount of money. you do your best and you've got to own up to that. this is the best you can do with the resources you are a allotted and that helps me in my riding. is their anybody here who aspires to the writing life? who likes riding and thinks of himself or herself?

good, good, good. is it fiction to which you aspire or nonfiction, journalism? >> [inaudible] >> poetry. i know not a thing about poetry though i admire it and i am just now starting reading poetry and really starting to like it. you know, until about a year and a half ago i would say be a newspaper reporter. but nope. [laughter] by the time you get out school there won't be newspapers. though journalism will still exist. for me it is just the most fun imaginable white and i just can't believe that you get to bye definition go out and learn about the coolest stuff going on in your town talk to the people who've got the coolest stuff

going on then you go back and write it and then they published it, they put your name on it and pay you. it's like where's the downside? i have enjoyed it so much. there is this thing teachers to, i don't know if your teachers do this, but teachers give writing students this hideous a sign at all the time of write something about yourself. i don't know if you either write about something that you did or write about something that you love or write about some moment where you were increase. i hear teachers doing this all the time and it's the hardest imaginable thing to give to the beginning right terse is an assignment to write about themselves. it's hard enough to confront the reality of yourself privately to do it in print for people to

read especially a teacher. one of the things they often tell young writers and other thing i hear all the time is right about something you know about. write about what you know, so if you are a sports fan right about sports. if you are into that, right about that and tom wolfe why just learned was a graduate of this school and for anybody who writes creatively i don't know if you guys have led the right stuff or any of his nonfiction this guy is a giant of creative nonfiction. you've got to read the right stuff. if you haven't you have got to read that. it's about the early days of the space program and it's so much fun to read what this guy does. he argues it is much more

constructive to tell young writers to write about what you don't know anything about than to write it would you do know about because it is the act of going out and learning about something, you know, you bring no preconceptions, no half-baked knowledge and have the fun of learning about something entirely new. people in new orleans when i was working on this book i wrote a daily online column for the new yorker's website about new orleans, and jewish guy from new jersey, i've never been to new orleans before. i'm hardly an expert but people in new orleans really liked my blog and i realized it was precisely because i didn't know squat about new orleans so i would have to get up every morning and find something to

write about. and i would go right about i saw a sign of a guy and that sells alligator meat and kunes, he has this little broken down house under the bridge and when you want to eat muskrat and cahoon and turtle that's where you go to get it. so i would go down and buy some turtle meat and piece of alligator and right about that encounter and then the next day it would be writing about the factory that makes these little fried pie is that everybody in new orleans loves. i didn't know anything about new orleans. i didn't have a store of knowledge about new orleans so i would have to go out and learn something fresh about it every day. and people, and i think if i were -- if i were teaching an english class and writing class i would be saying go find something you don't know anything about and go to the

radiology department at the hospital and write me a piece about radiology. what? i guarantee you would find some great little human trauma, some great little thing to write about that is how i would encourage people who want to write, find something you don't know anything about. take notes, learn how to type faster. yes, sir? >> [inaudible] what made you want to make non-fiction versus fictional stories? >> the need to get paid. [laughter]

>> nonfiction you can sell a proposal and then get down advance against royalties while you are doing the book. fictional you have to write the book before you can sell it so you need nine months, a year, a year and half, you need to have that much money to live. i don't. so i have got to do it this way. i have an awful, all of s have novels and our computers i've got about three of them, have got one that is further along than others. fiction in a way you think well that is easier. you get to make it up. right? but in another sense, nonfiction you have got the story told for you and you have got the characters. the trick is finding -- and the

trick is in the interviews. i am a pretty good -- i've become a pretty good interviewer, and what i find really blows open an interview and makes interviews work is two things. one is asking questions that are absolutely none of your business. like really get down personal questions. early in the interview, right, like stuff that polite people don't ask. and what i have found that does is rarely will somebody say that's not your business certainly new orleans. but even outside of new orleans if you are polite about and you do it right what the person does is the kind of sit back and they

are shocked the you would ask such a thing. and then you can see them say that's the level we are going to be on and they kind of degette. again you've got to do it right. every now and then you get the door slammed in your face, but when an interview gets really good it's when you are -- when the interview is where you are down on such a deep level they are using you like a shrink and they are working stuff through and to giving stuff out while they are talking to you. especially after katrina people were traumatized and there was a certain amount of let me get my story told because hurricane season is when to come next year and who knows if i will get my chance to tell my story again and there was a certain amount of trauma processing going on

and then the new orleans thing but i have even done this elsewhere where when you really get down with somebody instead of just reading them for their story which a lot of reporters to. the kind of rape people for their quotes and kind of trick them into singing stuff and then they've gone off. maybe i'm getting old. i will do that with the bad guys but ordinary folks, i'm tired of asking people questions they don't want to answer. i like making people want to answer the question. bringing people through an interview so that they are benefiting from the interview. so it's kind of like being the best of both worlds, i am like a shrink instead of having to keep all of these secrets gets to put it in the book and tell these people's secrets.

yeah, so interviewing is -- i find it works best if you think about this interview as how can i help this person to figure out what it is we are talking about? i want them to end the interview knowing more about what we talked about than they did when we started. it's something you learn over time and if you work at a newspaper you've got to get the story in by a decline in 15 minutes and obviously you can't do that. working for the new yorker, you could, and sometimes just spending time with people there were a lot of times when an interview with somebody would consist of not talking at all, just sitting on the porch with a 12 pack of but light -- budlight

, watch the sun go down, all right. see you tomorrow, get up and go. then the next day interview would be that much better because you have made some kind of investment. now, that said, it is a little shocking for people to later read all of this stuff in print. this happened to me. a friend of mine years ago wrote a book about his life and there was a chapter about me and it made me out to be a hero. it turns out i was the first white guy to be at his house. i didn't know this at the time. he just made me out to be this st.. but still icky reading about myself. like i don't walk like that and i don't talk like that and i don't dress like that. well, it turns out i do walk like that and talk like that and dress like that. i don't see myself that way

because you don't see yourself the way people see you. first of all i had to come to terms with that that is, he's got me, you know, everybody else said he's got you exactly right, what are you talking about? but also its his book and i had to kind of give myself over to that. these stories in this book are very intimate. some of them are really intimate. the story about john becoming a woman, there is intimates of about taking hormone shots to grow breasts and sexual stuff she was alone others, not all of them are but others were a little bit you didn't really get me quite right there and i

didn't really like this. none of them are suing the were going to the mattresses over it. but i think they are all taking this remarkably well. given the intimacy with which these stories are told to and the truth about their lives. one of them is the high school band director. one of my characters is a high school band director, who had this tough doud was gone now and the stuff mom was a math teacher and, you know, there's all this stuff about stuff he did as a kid like selling drugs and robbing people. his mother never knew so he was worried about that, his mother was going to read this, and sure enough, she whopped his ass. she's this little bitty thing and he is this enormous guy.

[laughter] she tore him up when the book came out. i never knew that! [laughter] but they are okay with it. they are all okay. i worry about it though. of them signed releases or anything, so. >> we have time for one more question. >> [inaudible] >> that's a good question. that is a very good question. can i write this about richmond? richmond is pretty weird. [laughter] yeah. i think you probably could. new orleans is particularly interesting and it's got to hurricanes and all that said there was a hook and new orleans are so different it was be a cruel exercise to go to st. louis or minneapolis and try

to -- yes. we are a big country and all parts of the country are different from one another and every part of the country is unique. i think you could. it might be all little harder. i was telling one of the teachers earlier i wrote a book about the coor's family, the year, and many were rocky brewing engineers who couldn't tell the story of the wanted to and most of them didn't want to come so how did bill feel when his daughter jumped off that building and new york? bad. [laughter] thank you. opposite an hour-and-a-half with these guys and come away with like six lines on my computer. so some places it would be harder than others. but i think you start scratching under the surface just about