business. >> how would you like to see the google book settlement end? >> oh, happily. you know, i don't know that i'd want to comment on it as a publisher, you know? i think that, obviously, what google wants to do, making books available, is very important, spreading knowledge is important, but it's also critically important that authors and publishers are compensated for intellectual property. so, you know, i don't think i could, i would comment beyond that. >> george gibson is the publisher of bloomsbury press. thank you for a few minutes here. >> peter, thank you. [inaudible conversations] >> and now tw the 2011 chicago tribune printers row lit fest, john sayles talks about the united states during the turn of the 19th century.

[inaudible conversations] >> all right. so welcome to the 27th annual chicago tribune printers row lit fest. a special thank you to our sponsors. before we can begin today's -- >> can't hear you. >> before we begin today's program, please turn off your cell phone and other electronic devices. photography is not permitted. today's program will be broadcast live on c-span2's booktv. if there's time at the end for a q&a session, please use the microphone at the center of the room so that the home viewing audience can hear your question. note that our coverage will be reaired tonight beginning at 11 p.m. please welcome elizabeth taylor of "the chicago tribune", and john sayles, author of "a moment

in the sun." [applause] >> thank you so much. can everybody hear? so here it is. somebody, a reviewer called that a cat squasher of a book. [laughter] now, i love the book, and my cat survived. [laughter] so, really. in these days of big box stores where everything seems like it's a huge commercial chain, john sayles stands out. independent film, independent fiction, his work is, and i call to mind another era of history, refusal to tailor truth to fit the fashion of the time. by embracing a life of independence in film and in literature for three decades, he's brought work of conscious and purpose to this world.

he may be better known as a film maker than as a fiction writer, but probably that says something more about america and the cultural hierarchy than anything else. but it was, actually, his fiction that drew hollywood's attention. and just as many creative people have jobs to support their work, john sayles writes screenplays. his projects have included plan ya, alligator, the howling. now, i don't like scary movies, so i haven't seen any of those films, but i am told they are really well written. [laughter] and he has been brought in to do rewrites for the film apollo 13 and the fugitive. growing up in schenectady, sayles wrote fiction as a youngster and in junior high mowed lawns and shoveled snow so

he could buy a manual typewriter so he could write. after college majoring in psychology which is kind of interesting because his fiction and film are just so, are really full of psychological insight as well as kind of acute social observation. so he worked in factories and hospitals and even sold blood to make money. his first novel was published in 1975, and -- but he really broke through into public consciousness with second novel, "union dues," in 1977. finalist for both the national book award and then the national book critics' circle award. and that kind of elevated him as a literary figure. um, and simultaneously, the income from hollywood, um, financed a surprise hit that i'm sure everyone in this room has seen which is return of -- [inaudible] yes, you've all seen it.

[applause] as you know, it's the story of this postcollege reunion and capturing the feelings of young people trying to hold on to idealism as the world around them changed. continue to build on his reputation as a film maker with conscious, the story of the west virginia coal miners' strike and, you know, the efforts to unionize and the massacre in 1920. and then just not too far from here, actually, the movie called comiskey park, "eight men out," and the great white sox scandal where he made a wonderful film and had the ingenious casting call of placing our dear friend and beloved icon, studs turk l, in the film. books actually take center stage

for a change, and that part of his career is what we'll be talking about today. the new novel is derived, the title is derived from a famous comment from w.e.b. duboise. the slave went free, stood a brief moment in the sun, then moved back again towards slavery. the novel, set at the turn of the 19th century, hits those hot buttons of american history. it's a tale of racism and american imperialism. big books, and this is a big book, they're often described as sprawling. it's kind of a cliche of book reviews. anything, you know, over 500 pages is sprawling. but this novel, it does reach around the globe from the back alleys of manila to the havana harbor, but -- and it covers a lot of territory in the five years which it's written. but it doesn't sprawl at all. it's contained in certain kind

of scenes, and so it's sort of -- there's an even kind of pace to the novel. an energy that really propels you through. and so in that way it's like, you know, the whole individual, white and black soldiers, wheeler dealer movie guys, you know, yellow journalism, some real characters like mark twain, william randolph hearst to sort of remind readers this was real history. he wrote the novel during a writers guild america strike and then assembled it in seven binders and lugged them in shopping bags to his agent. and in further testament to independence and the world of publishing, um, can credit this

beautiful book to being published by mcsweenys which has done an exquisite job with it. dave edwards publishing house. it's sort of a beautiful cover, the to be, the type -- the fob, the type, it's a work of art, as is the novel. and let me just introduce, now, john sayles who's going to read from the novel. [applause] >> thanks. thanks for coming, everybody. couple clarifications. one is i actually didn't write the screenplay or work on the screenplay for the fugitive. if you read wikipedia or any of these things, about a quarter of what you read there is misinformation. so -- >> wikipedia. >> yeah. i, i watched the tv series and the movie, liked them very much.

[laughter] didn't write them. and i, in fact, did sell blood to make money, but it was my own blood. [laughter] so the chapter i'm going to read you is set in wilmington, north carolina, in early 1898. at the time will wilmington had a population that was over 60% african-american, and unlike many of the other southern states at that moment, their ability, black men's ability to vote, had not yet been taken away. north carolina was the last of the former confederate states to bring in the jim you laws -- jim crow laws and grandfather clause and those kind of things. and, in fact, by allying themselves with the working white people in the populist party which had a brief vogue right around the turn of the century, wilmington was one of the few cities in the country

that had african-american city councilmen, firemen, policemen, even the guy who was the head of the local federal customs house was african-american. and the governor. but all that is about to change. chapter's called "a shave and a haircut." white folks' hair is easy. dorsey never stops wondering as the way it just grows out straight from their heads, offering itself up to be trimmed. and the shaving for the ones like the judge who don't keep a beard or moustache, you just pull the skin taut and slide with the blade. it never curls back into the pores to make a bump or get infected like his own. if only they would keep their mouths from moving while you try to work. [laughter] humiliation! the judge sits in dorsey's chair lathered up to mr. you are turpo

owns the pharmacy. the colonel waits near the door, his face hidden behind the wilmington messenger. we have attempted to hold on to our heritage, to our custom of living, says the judge, and we have failed. so now we must be humbled. i don't know, judge, says mr. turpin as hope clips out the hair in his ears. hoch is a good boy, stand on his feet all day if he needs be, although sometimes commences to hum while the gentlemen are still talking. i don't know, you scratch under the surface just a bit, you'll find somebody making a profit on it. that's what politics is all about. russell got sufficiently foot even before he was governor. this appointing of half of our aldermen, unprecedented. another chance to force us to eat crow. i believe the january keys are behind this -- yankees are behind this. but our own supreme court failed

in their duty to protect the citizens who maintain it. the judge is one of those who keeps his own shaving mug at the shop, has a favorite razor. he won't let hoch shave him, good as the boy is. dorsey, of course, dorsey is famous at the orton hotel and hasn't drawn blood since he was a novice. let's see the script, utters the colonel. that was their verdict. the law as it is written, the judge scowls, is not meant to serve scoundrels. dorsey cuts the guests at the orton, merchants from around the state, even governor russ t once when he was still running a ferry across the river. but many of the finest men in the city come to be trimmed here as well. the judge is a daily customer, as is mr. turpin. the colonel wears a full grain maine of hair -- mane.

looks just like the jefferson davis statue they put up in raleigh, and only wants a bit of neatening up once a week. he waxes the tips of his moustache at home. they got the governor, and they got the numbers, says mr. mr. turpin. the way they got it fixed, it'll take a revolution to push 'em out. mr. turpin is thin on top, and hoch is carefully spreading what's left with his comb over the scalp. we must not bow to the tyranny of numbers, says the judge. what if tomorrow the blunt family decide to bring in 5,000 chinamen to bale their cotton? is should we then be ruled by chinamen? i think so. dorsey waves his hand for the judge to stop moving his jaw. humiliation, i tell you, the judge goes on. sold the mountain folk a bill of goods they bought the colored folks with whitemen's positions,

and now he means to ruin this city. dorsey crosses to put a couple towels into the steamer. when the judge gets going like this, it's to wait him out. he's been known to jump to his feet and pace, so you have to be careful with the cutting edges. the redeemers have worked wonders if other states, says turpin, in other states soothingly. south carolina, georgia, louisiana, other states where they have looked the thing in the eye and dealt with it. could happen here, judge. and very soon hoch is whisking the back of the pharmacist's neck. somebody's just got to put the thing in motion. we've got them on the police force now. the judge shakes his head violently, ignoring the lather on his face. dorsey drops a couple taps of witch hazel onto his palm. he has polk power pour it into

the store bottles when they get low. the judge faces mr. turpin, getting himself indignant. do you think they'll arrest their own? not on your life. and if they do, they got the juries packed and the duck walks out free as daylight and twice as bold as before. it is the gentlemen's right to choose their topic, of course, but dorsey always prefers sport to politics. he's one of the sponsors of the wilmington mutuels and can hold the floor on the relative merits of every ball player in new handover county, black and white. he can talk horses, he can talk bible if there's a man of god in the chair. he can even recite the arrow into song if pressed into service. politics, though, make him sweat. plato believed that men should be governed by philosopher kings, the colonel observes. i fear we have drifted away from that ideal. it wouldn't surprise me, said

the judge, that if it serves the interest of these repopulists or whatever they're labeling themself now, we'll have women's suffrage thrown into the mix. no, judge, white women have the sense to listen to their husss -- husbands, says turpin. giving them the vote would be redundant. [laughter] there's still a separate entrance for ladies at the orton hotel. dorsey cannot imagine them in politics, the ha -- the harangues and spitting and swearing. women are above all that, made to bind up what men have broken. the judge snorts and lather flies. will i dare -- well, i dare say our women wouldn't have given the city over to carpetbaggers. dorsey always starts around the ears, tiny little strokes to outline the sideburns. the judge has a large mole on

the left he has to be careful of. the key, says the judge -- finger jabbing underneath the cloth to make a point -- is to have some sort of qualification as to who is allowed to vote that's what the founders envisioned, responsible government issues from informed voters. you're suggesting a literacy test. that is one possibility, yes. an awful lot of them can read now. i see them at my store with, what's it called, dorsey? your colored paper? the record, sir. dorsey advertised in the paper and others. do you read it? no, sir. don't have the time. well, there's a group over there brooklyn neighborhood got them a bit more leisure. turpin winks to the judge and the mayor. unless it's to wrap fish in, i see an awful lot of them look

like they read it. i would not propose that puzzling out the limited vocabulary in a colored daily constitutes literacy, says the judge. dorsey can do his neck if he's steady. if we were to take a section of the state constitution and have the voter demonstrate his competence by explaining its meaning, mr. turpin laughs, we're going to do that with every voter in the city? selectively, yes. selectively. hoch is bending close to clip out turpin's nose hairs. we administer the test to those who we suspect of being illiterate on a ward by ward basis. i would suspect that half the poor whites might fail that test, judge, including a good number of loyal democrats. well, of course if there's a tradition of voting in the family, record turnout in the last election, judge. selling your vote for a glass of whiskey does not qualify as a

tradition. [laughter] what i'm suggesting is if you can prove your grandfather was a registered voter, now we're getting somewhere. you would be passed unchallenged at the polling place. the louisiana clause, adds the colonel. the old gentleman had been in office himself before dorsey's day. he is always very quiet in the shop but well spoken, using words like impecunious that dorsey makes sure to look up in his dictionary when he gets home and then slip into his conversations at lodge meetings. of course, given the present infestation here and in raleigh, such an amendment to our statutes would stand no chance. i wouldn't give up so easily, judge. when his back is pressed to the wall, a true white man is capable of -- dorsey catches the judge's look in the mirror, just

a tiny nod of warning to mr. turpin. hoch is rapidly snipping hair with his scissorses, made nervous by the turn of the conversation. what, says mr. turpin? dorsey? dorsey doesn't mix in politics, do ya, dorsey? i try to keep my nose out of 'em. hoch shakes his cloth out, and mr. turpin stands. what'd i tell you? the good ones know to stay clear of it. the colonel observes arises to the imface of those -- imitation of those we can assemble. dorsey can feel turpin watching him do the judge's cheeks. you planning to vote in this election, dorsey? the judge concludes his head. -- cocks his head. the colonel lays his newspaper in his lap waiting for the answer. hoch retreats to get the broom. dorsey has always voted ever since he was old enough, but

nobody made any fuss about it until lately. no, sir, he lies softly. don't suppose i will. if rest of your people show that kind of good sense, it'll stay peaceful in this city. it sounds a bit like a threat, but he can see mr. turpin is smile anything the mirror, gently tapping the thin layer at the top of his head with his fingers. say, dorsey, how come a good looking young fellow like you isn't hitched yet? dorsey flicks lather off the blade, rinses it through. oh, i've been studying it, mr. turpin. got a gal picked out. that's good to hear. the pharmacist winks. dorsey hates it, especially when there's a nasty story coming after it. before we know it, you'll have a tribe of pick anyonenies to support. whatever you say, mr. turp. the anywhereny of numbers,

grumbles the judge. if we bred like damn jackrabbits, we might stand a chance. mr. turpin leaves two nickels on the counter and turns at the door. don't you worry, judge, he calls, plans are being formulated, prominent citizens are involved. with that, he steps out into the street, setting his hat over his haircut before the breeze can mess it. -- muss it. the colonel settles into the chair as hoch drapes the cloth around his neck. if a move to remedy the situation is afoot, he says frowning, i have not yet been informed of it. the judge seems lost in the thought, and the lather has been sitting on his face long enough. dorsey reaches his ting fingers under but doesn't quite touch it. the white man grunts and tilts his head back for the razor. [applause]

>> wonderful. so how did you go about triesing to capture -- trying to capture these different voices through this novel? because the research is so kind of lightly apparent. but you must have really studied it. >> i think you always, you know, with this, what brought me to the novel itself was with doing research for my last, um, novel, and i went back and it's about this long dance between cuba and the united states. going back to the spanish-american war and hearing this phrase and just saying how

come i haven't heard ofd this and looking into it a little bit more and, you know, generally in the united states if we win a war, we celebrate it, you know? you hear a lot about it for a long time. ame bow, our movie that's also about the philippine-american war that'll come out in august is probably, i think it's only the third american movie ever made about that war. and i don't know if it's to write home about, almost no novels about it. why is this not celebrated? so suspicion, you know, turns to interest, and i got interested in that. but always, you know, when you have this historical thing that you're interested in, my interest is always in the human beings and if they're doing this, what are they thinking. so a lot of what you see in this novel is not just what happened or what happened to the individual characters that i've created, it's what people thought was happening. so there's a lot of media such

as it was in those days. there's the yellow journalists, you know, the hearst and pulitzer newspapers. there are political cartoons. one really striking thing that i saw in the political cartoons at the time -- and this was a time when there was photography, but the technology to get a photograph into a newspaper didn't exist yet. so it's the golden age of illustrators. frederick remington, wonderful illustrators and political cartoonists. during the first part of the spanish-american war when the filipinos were ostensibly our allies, our little brown brothers, they were drawn the same way that mexicans or cubans would be drawn, offwhite, straw hat, raggedy white clothes, barefoot. kind of, you know, nice looking guys looking up, you know, thankfully at big-muscled uncle sam. within a month or so of the philippine-american war starting

when we started fighting the filipinos over possession of their own country, filipinos started being drawn by the same artists as coal black savages in grass skirts with bones in their nose and wild hair and with spears in their hands so there's an agenda going on, and if you were around them, it's not just what you're thinking, it's the air that you're breathing. it's an extremely racialized time and not just in the yellow press but, you know, professors are spouting eugenics and these racial theories which ended up in nazi germany, came to a head in nazi germany. and that's, you know, the rudyard kipling poem, pick up the white man's burden, the subtitle is pick up the white men's beings. for doing what why is christians

have to do which is, you know, fixing brown people's country even if you have to kill a couple million of them, and then they'll be thankful for it. so this incredible stuff is going on, and i started thinking about who are the people who lived it? you know, not necessarily the big people who got to make the decisions, but the people who get caught up in the flood of events. and to go the places i wanted to go, i just realized, oh, i need this character who could go there and this character who could go there. and then as far as the voices are concerned, it's, some of it is the mindset of the character and how they see the world and what their version of it is. so even this judge who you hear here who is arguing for a grandfather clause actually has a strong sense of honor and honesty. despite his racism and his being stuck in the past, somebody who fought in the con confederate s, the civil around -- civil war

and has his view. when you get into the dialogue, literally, the way people express themselves is part of who they are, how you characterize somebody. and if you're going to have some 40 or 50 characters and sometimes four of five of them in the same scene, they'd better express themselves somewhat differently, or else you're going to have to put he said, she said after every single one. you want people to look at a page of dialogue and by the rhythm or the way the person expresses themselves know who's talking. >> did you go looking for diaries and records, and what kind of research did you do? because there's so many characters. i mean -- >> yeah, you know, it's interesting. i think the thing about me having written "the fugitive," is important here -- [laughter] which is that the official record is often inaccurate. >> right. >> and sometimes purposefully inaccurate. if you read the newspapers of the day, if you read some of the

books, you know, our new possessions about, you know, puerto rico, hawaii, the philippines, they're incredibly racially tinged and have a real kind of imperialist head to them. there's one caption on a photo on this big coffee table book maybe before there were coffee tables, but it's a coffee table book, a lot of pictures of our new possessions. and it's, you know, the typical one of the ethnic groups in the philippines, not one of these people is worth an american life. you know? that's -- you know? so this is something who's against the world but on very racial terms. these people aren't worth it. so what i found is that you take those texts, and you say, okay, here's what people were saying at the time. you read the historians who will come later who have their own

sympathies that you don't necessarily agree with. and then you try to go back down to regimental histories of, you know, i've got people in both 25th regulars which was colored infantry with white officers, the colorado volunteers, um, some of the philippine, you know, fighting units that were there. i read spanish, and so i was able to read both filipinos at that time who were educated wrote spanish and the spaniards, their documents, government documents, diaries, whatever. and then you go back to letters home, um, you know, soldiers would write back to their home paper. damon runyon lied about his age and went over to the philippines and wrote back to the pueblo, whatever it was, about his experiences in the minnesota volunteers where he ended up. and those letters home, there were congressional committees investigating things, there was

a anti-imperialist movement. waterboarding started in the philippines, it was called the water cure there. that was investigated, so that's in the congressional, you know, record as well as letters home describing people who either thought it was kind of funny and fun to do even if filipinos died sometimes, and other people who were horrified by what america was doing, and they as soldier were being asked to be done. so you almost have to go back as a detective and say here's all this evidence including people who saw the event and, you know, their account doesn't jibe with another account, don't jibe with another account. what actually did happen? what can i take from all these sources and come up with my idea of what might have happened? and not just what might have happened, but what a certain character from a certain place may have made him what was going on, what their limited analysis might have been.

>> one thing about the novel is that the characters don't kind of break, break voice. they don't start editorializing, they don't get on soap boxes. so i, so this idea that, you know, you, you know, feel like you're the attorney making a case, often subtly, can you talk about that process? >> yeah. you know, what i've done in this novel and some of my movies and some of my other novels is i actually see the world in very complex terms. um, it's one of our problems making movies is that what movies do very well is black and white, black hats and white hats. and, you know, if you've seen almost any hollywood movie recently, the bad guys have to be so bad that they can be killed in a really awful, viability way, you know -- violet way, you know, really torn apart by chip monks or something graphic. and to earn that, they have to

do something really, really bad. [laughter] so there's been a lot of torture in movies lately, even comic book movies. i'm interested in, actually, more recognizable human behavior which is very complex. and characters who aren't necessarily heroic, even though one day they may act heroically, the next day they may act in a cowardly way. so to get that complexity across of some big event or whatever, i often feel like i have to use a lot of witnesses because each one of them, you know, i've used the metaphor of a flood. if you read "a moment in the sun," it's like hearing the accounts of 40 or 50 people who were lost in a flood, and each one was just trying to keep their head above the water, and then something floated by that they grabbed on to, and they can describe that in accurate, graphic detail, but if you ask them about the big story, they say, hey, i was just trying to survive. so so many of my characters have

a piece of the story, and they may have an analysis, but it's actually a pretty narrow analysis that has to do with who they are and where they're coming from. but the reader, i hope, can have this, this kind of overview. for instance, in this movie, "amigo," amigo is the character speak -- the characters speak english, spanish and cantonese. and the spanish is spoken by a spanish priest who is held over and is trying to see if americans are going to let him keep the property that he's kind of acquired while he's been there in the philippines, and he's the only person who can translate between the english and the filipinos. but he's got his own agenda, so he's often not translating what's being said because he wants it to come out his way, not the way it might if these people could actually talk. well, the characters don't know that, but the person who watches the movie has this overview, and they see what's going on in this camp with their misconceptions

of the enemy and in this catch with their mis-- camp with their misconceptions. the characters don't have the wherewithal to do. so a lot of what i start out with is this overview of where the places i want to go and really explore. and then e start to think, well, what character could get there? what character could get inside of that? so in "a moment in the sun," i've got four major characters and every once in a while there's a chapter that that character only has that chapter, and then they may show up, but we're not in their head again. and it's also that, for me, in a book this size i think it's more interesting for me as a writer and for the reader to not follow it from one point of view, certainly not my point of view, but to say, well, what is this character going to make of what's going on here? we may know more than they do,

but what's their version of it? the as we start to understand -- as we start to understand them even to the point of sometimes there's a don't go in that room that hitchcock used to do so well because we know things they don't. and we go, oh, my god, he's going into this area, and that's going to be a disaster. [laughter] >> and wonder how -- one can see the similarities between writing a film, writing novels, but how does being an actor affect your writing? or vice versa? >> yeah. i was an actor before i wrote any fiction and have continued to act a little bit. um, i think the thing that an actor does that's the most useful for a writer or storyteller of any kind is, um, when you walk into this room, if you know who your character is, you actually don't just know internally, but you know what you're going to do next. and, in fact, you know what you're going to notice first. so, um, if you're an intern

who's working here, you're looking at, okay, does everybody have a ticket, is there water for the people who are going to be up here. if you're the sound person, you're looking at the sound thing or the microphones are in the right place. if you're an audience member, you may have a preference for being on the aisle or in the front or the back, or you may be looking for friends of yours who are here. if you're at a hitchcock movie, you're looking for a bomb under one of those chairs that nobody else knows about, you know? [laughter] so you come in, you know, loaded with some kind of preconception and some kind of agenda of what you want out of the scene. you do that all the time as an actor. one of the things i do for both the screenplays that i write and the weeks that i -- books that i, you know, write, i read everything out loud, and i read each character as if i had to play that character. and think about it as an actor would of, you know, my friend

elizabeth peña who was in lone star says actors read screenplays by bullshit, bullshit, my line, my line. [laughter] i do it a little more thoroughly than that. but if i had to play this, is there enough there? you know, who do i care about, what do i care about, you know, what do i want to get out of this thing? when am i paying attention, when am i not paying attention? so each character is something i say to actors in these ensemble movies we make. i want the audience to feel like if camera followed you instead of you walking off screen, there would be a whole movie there, and that you're going somewhere and that you're an interesting person to follow. and what happens off in a book -- often in a book, you know, especially in a book this size is there's a lot of character, and you feel like, oh, jeez, i hope he or she shows up again. and they may not, you know, because they've done their part

for this particular thing. somebody else or me could come back and say, oh, i'm going to develop that character and go in that direction. >> um, i'm sure there are questions. i'd urge you to head to the microphone and ask them so that they can be heard on c-span. >> yeah. just raise your hand. the microphone person will come. here's somebody in the back. >> [inaudible] >> oh, come up to the microphone. >> thanks, john, i'm a great fan of all your films. >> thank you so much. >> i just wanted to ask you one of the hidden aspects of mark twain, of course, was his opposition to the filipino-american war. could you maybe say a little something about twain and the war? >> yeah. twain shows up in here, he has a couple of appearances. he was actually, when asked, pretty open about his opposition to it. took a lot of flak for it. he was one of the two most

famous person in what was called the anti-imperialist lead. andrew carnegie was the other famous guy in it which was this very strange group of people which also included mrs. jefferson davis, another absolute segregationist whose objection to the war was ha american white boys would come back with filipino brides, and we had enough mongrelization in this country already. so strange bed fellows. but his line was something like the american eagle shouldn't sink its talons into any other country. and he had been very, very pro the spanish part of the war because he feldt like the cuban people did need relief from the evil spaniards who had colonized them for 300 years. some of the ve he is of his opposition to the war he put that in envelopes and said do not open until i'm long dead with some of his other writings. but he did catch some flak, and you see some of that here.

you know, things that would sound very familiar to us today, how can you say us when our boys are at risk over there, you know? how can you say this -- once the american flag has been raised over a place, we can't, you know, with honor pull it down, you know? the usual story. and he had to put up with it then. at that point in his life, his feelings and his attitude were a little bit more like ambrose bierce. he was a little sharper with his feelings about these things but understood that he still had to make a living, and he was this beloved old humorist. and so he was always a little bit of a balancing act with his, you know, political pronouncements, and he wanted them to be ironic at least, if not humorous. and it was tough to be humorous about some of this stuff. >> 1898's the most important democrat in the country was william jennings bryan.

since he was anti-imperialist, after you kid your research, did you come out with more respect for him? andal were you influenced by the usa trilogy? >> yeah. um, william jennings bryant was kind of a mixed bag or a mixed windbag as he was known. [laughter] he was very progressive on a lot of things and pretty retro on a bunch of other things. he, unfortunately, came to the anti-imperialist thing fairly late, and his reasons for being anti-imperialist kind of got drowned out in the din of war. one thing about the spanish-american war that's unusual is it was a war that was more popular with young people than old people. the young men were just itching to be, to prove themselves in battle. that was, you know, something thai been hear -- they've been hearing, gramps, and if their fathers were older, talk about the glorious days of the civil war, and they wanted to be part of it.

an important thing about this war was for white people anyway in this country was that for a young southern man to fight under the yankee flag was like a jew wanting to fight under a swastika in 1968. it was that much of a stretch, but they got a bunch of union and confederate generals out of mothballs and gave them positions of authority and, yes, those southern young men came and fought under the yankee flag and, eventually, that turned into a tradition of southerners proudly fighting under that flag even though it was really tough at first. um, and the stuff about john, i actually am a very badly-read person, and i read only the -- in the usa trilogy there's those parts that are almost in italics about battling lafayette or whatever, and when i read the book, i only read those parts. [laughter] so i have some influence, but i can't claim him as important

influence. yes. >> i believe future president taft was in the philippines, and i wondered the he appeared in your book. and also, is there much discussion or many characters that are japanese or spanish in your book? >> yeah. taft actually came just after this bookends. he was the -- book ends. he was the first civilian governor of the philippines. actually arthur mcarthur, douglas mac arthur's father was the first governor of the philippines when it became our territory. taft is famous for coining the word "little brown brothers." and the military didn't like the phrase very much. they had worse names to call them. and he's also famous for being photographed, if you actually go online to mcsweenys and moment in the sun, i compiled this, like, 200, 250 images that go

with the book, and one of them is taft on a caribou where the caribou look like a pone n underneath william taft. [laughter] the japanese really haven't showed up yet. there's a slight mention of trying to send some arms to the filipinos to fight against the spanish, but the boat sank, so nothing came of that. and, yeah, there's a couple spanish characters and cuban characters in the book because the spanish had been there for 300 years. and their influence on the filipino revolutionaries and the filipino republic was enormous. the education of philippine illustrators, basically, came through the jesuits and augustinians, francis cans and dominicans. so most of the philippine revolutionaries had been trained

by spanish priests and actually became radicalized when spain executed three of their own priests for, basically, arguing that there should be filipinos allowed as priests in the church. yes. >> this is the last question. >> last one. make it a really good question. >> i'll do my best. [laughter] it's a little more about process. you are creative in the truest sense, and i wonder, i would imagine you get ideas constantly. >> uh-huh. >> how do you really hone in on one idea to focus on, and then do you have, do you ever have a challenge of really sticking with it and keeping interest in it? >> you know, that's kind of my test as to whether i'm going to finish something is, um, you know, if -- i'm very lucky, i write fast, and it's fun, you know? when i'm working for other people writing screenplays, the first draft is fun, the second drafts get more political and less fun, but, um, you know, i write for recreation.

so one of the things if i'm having a hard time and maybe, a, i don't know enough about this yet, so i have to do some research or just some thinking about it. or, b, i'm not interested enough about it to really follow through on it. um, you know, i have a couple rules. one is like with this book, when there's research to be done, i limit it to one week of research because it's so much fun and seductive, you can go off into hawaii or some other place and never come back. but after a week or less of research, i have to sit down and write some fiction which is actually more work. and the other thing is, um, when i run three miles, if i'm working on something, often i can remember five ideas, but sometimes i have to cut my run short because i've got five ideas already, and i might get some more before i get home, so i have to turn around. [laughter]

because more than that, you know, i start to forget them. so i do occasionally think up stuff faster than i can either type or writing by hand, so i'll write future notes that i hope when i get to them i can decipher. i've had a few cases in a couple of my novels where i've gotten ahead of myself and then gotten either sidetracked by having a job i have to do or just another chapter to finish, and when i get to them, it doesn't make any sense. in my last normal, there's a dead body in the trunk of a car in a parking lot, and i know when i put the dead body there, i knew why, and it was going to -- [laughter] you know? but, you know, in the book i just kept him there because it kind of worked. [laughter] and it's just one of those unsolved mysteries, you know? [laughter] so thanks, everybody. [applause] >> thank you.

>> so thank you for attending today's discussion and for supporting the chicago tribune's commitment to literacy. a book signing will now take place in the arts room, and we do ask at this time unless you have a ticket for the next performance, please, exit the room. thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> john sayles, live from the 2011 chicago tribune printers row lit fest. we'll be back with more in just a couple moments. >> a very hopeful person, an unrepep about the idealist, and

i've come to understand hopefulness and idealism as strength, as real blessings. and this book is a gesture of gratitude to some of the people who have given me those gifts. the teachers who gave me a reason to believe in a brighter future. the family and strangers, too, who gave me a reason to believe in the power of kindness. the church ladies on the south side of chicago who gave me a reason to believe in the essence of faith. the voters, for that matter, who have given me a reason to believe in the politics of conviction and many, many others. a friend of mine described this book recently as a love story which, for me, was the most powerful compliment i could be given. i wanted to write about these people and the lessons they taught me for two reasons. first, because they've done more than help me succeed, they've helped me want to be better. to be a better leader, a better husband and parent, a better citizen. and secondly, because it's within each of us to pass these

kinds of lessons on to others. in fact, i think we have a generational responsibility to do just that. as some of you know and as bea was alluding in the introduction, i grew up on the south side of chicago in the '50s and the '60s, most of that time on welfare. my mother and sister and i, um, shared a two-bedroom tenement with our grandparents and various cousins who came and went. my mother and sister and i actually lived in one of those bedrooms and shared a set of bunk beds, so you'd go from the top bunk to the bottom bunk to the floor, every third night on the floor. i went to big, broken, sometimes violent public schools. but we had a community. because those were days when with every child was under the jurisdiction of every single adult on the block. remember that? you messed up in front of ms. jones, and she would straighten you out as if you were hers, and then call home, right? [laughter] and i think what those adults were trying to get across to us was that they had a stake in us.

and that membership in a community was understanding the stake that each of us has not just in our own dreams and our own struggles, but in our neighbors as well. given the expectations that much of society has for poor black people in circumstances like mine, i am not supposed to be where i am today. my story is improbable, but it's at the same time a distinctly american story. and it may not get told as often as we like in this country, but it gets told more often in this country than any other place on earth. it is a defining story. in 1970 i got a breakthrough a program called a better chance to go to milton academy. and for me that was like landing on a different planet. i saw it for the first time the night before classes began in 1970. all by myself. my family didn't see it until graduation day. i remember they had a dress code in those days, the boys wore

jackets and ties to classes. so when the clothing list arrived, my grandparents splurged on a brand new jacket for me to wear to class. but a jacket on the south side of chicago is a windbreaker, so the first day of class all the boys were putting on their blue blazers and their tweed coats, and there was i in my windbreaker. i want to point out i have figured it out. [laughter] i struggle today find my footing, but there were teachers and other adults who reached out and helped. i went on to harvard college, the first in my family to go to college, to harvard law school. i've lived in chicago and boston and los angeles, in new york, here in d.c., in the atlanta, in the sudan. i've done business all over the world. i've had some remarkable experiences, improbable ones in the eyes of many. i've argued in the supreme court, i've hitchhiked from cairo to khartoum, i've counseled two presidents. i've served as the first black governor of massachusetts on my

first time running for office. but as i reflect on each of these experiences, each has its roots in the lessons that i try to write about in this book. these lessons have given me a sense of the possible, and that has made all the difference. i write in the book about the transition from the south side of chicago to milton academy, about the experience of trying to bring these very different worlds where each one seemed to demand that you reject the other as the price of acceptance in the one and how important it was for me to understand, ultimately, that that was a false choice. i write about the way the old ladies in big hats in church back home taught me to see that faith is not so much what you say you believe, but how you live. i write about the extraordinary courage and strength of my wife diane through her first marriage to an abusive husband and the toll my early days in public office took on her and how her triumphs has strengthened not

just me, but thousands of others. time and time again experiences of great trial and even turmoil have produced transcendent powers, and they have contributed to my idealism. i want to defend and encourage that kind of idealism because i think it is what motivates people to make what seems improbable possible. that may sound corny to some of you, especially in hard-bidden washington d.c. but, in fact, there is nothing at all corny about hope. and there is nothing at all empowering or ennobling about the alternative, about pessimism. in fact, as governor it has been a sense of the possible that has helped us achieve many remarkable things against more than customary odds. in these exceptionally cynical times, i think people are hungry

for something more positive and affirming than the steady diet of no that they get. it has implications on both a policy level and a personal level. on a policy level, without a renewed sense of idealism, with all the risk of failure and disappointment that that entails, an essential part of the national character, our can-do spirit will be in jeopardy, and none of the big challenges facing this country will successfully be faced. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> what are you reading this summer? booktv wants to know. >> hi, it's eric from cbn, and what i'm reading this summer, number one, is the road to fatima gate by a great international correspondent named michael. michael takes you on a wild, hellish firsthand tour of the neighborhoods where the terror group hezbollah dwells in and

around lebanon. from direct confrontations with members of hezbollah to being in the middle of israel's 2006 war against that group, this is a thrill ride of a book. i can't put it down. he's done just impeccable work, and he's a brave, brave, on-the-ground journalist. another book i've been dying to get to, a large book, it'll take up a lot of my beach time, the legacy of islamic anti-semitism by a friend of mine, dr. andrew boston, a preeminent expert on islam. and lastly, i'd love to dig into "power, faith and fantasy," by israel's am bass ambassador to the u.s. but it is a history of american involvement in the middle east, very timely, to say the least. >> visit booktv.org to see this and other summer reading lists. >> this is a sad day, i have to say, in mrs. kennedy's life. this ises the red room, and the

reason i showed this is that that was the first room she completed in restoration. but they this was the day of her husband's funeral. and she insisted that she meet those who were coming from afar, those who were diplomats, the diplomatic corps from abroad. and so she stood with her brother-in-law, senator edward kennedy, to her right, and she insisted on greeting everyone who had come to pay their respects to her husband. on a more glittery note, again, we remember her for her state entertaining. in the short amount of time that she was in the white house, and it was only a little over a thousand days, she and her husband threw 16 state dinners. in the first term, full four years of the w. bush term, they held, i believe, it was two. now, mind you, 9/11 happened during that time, there were security issues, but the bushes, the second bushes from texas were just not as interested in that.

they weren't as interested in state entertainment, they weren't as interested in bringing people from abroad and entertaining them at the white house. the kennedyss loved that lifestyle. they both came, you know, from the northeast, they both had ties to new york city. president kennedy had ties to hollywood going back to his father's day there as a hollywood mogul in the 1920s. so they loved that glimmer and that panache of entertainment. but they also, particularly mrs. kennedy, loved the arts. so she would use each and every one of these state entertainment occasions to bring artists to the white house. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> we asked, what are you reading this summer? here's what you had to say. ♪