militant by which as a result of visceral theory, it's late -- the mission was there was the great men in the gallery, leonardo, rembrandt, and so on, it was romantic myths. the notion of the great artist in melancholy was dreamed up by the romantics who described him in those terms to talk about the fact that some of their melancholy disposition was part of the excess of black bile. :

there is didn't actually have an incredibly difficult moment in particular composition whatever it was some artists who

lived their lives in a moment of input temporal serenity from beginning to end but not many of those you look at the early as agonized moments of violence and cruelty and all sorts of weird things you get to the much more arena. so i thought i wanted to really reinstate the notion of a kind of her a rick narrative of the artist. as i did with rembrandt i did feel documentation and everyone knows about him from those around him many quite clear he was far more than someone who simply responded to the society of the time. we know that he's a real nose bricker so the idea was to take one work of art almost frantically as the decapitation goliath and extraordinary thing to do especially if you're a convicted murderer on the run. but the painting that rembrandt

did for the town hall which was rejected and he had to literally set up himself in an attempt to sell it as a smaller work of art in an attempt the was not successful he made a huge fetish of never being a political artist deciding that this particular pride in his life in 1937 and so on. so i thought you could make a kind of drama as creativity on television around backtracking frantically from that one moment of critical difficulty, and it's interesting everything we did come everything that was said by the actors were absolutely rock-solid documents with one exception and the director normally it is because i was busy in the cutting room cutting a different film but i missed the fact that this director in

the first there's no need to make anything up. [laughter] as you all know. they don't need him. we know he dies, she stumbles and collapses and there may or may not have been a hospital in the months there's no need to have -- [inaudible] [laughter] so annoying because absolutely but we set ourselves. the response to the series and it goes on being shown by schools and it's been wonderful. technically in terms of photographing are never make a better film which is the one we won the emmy for her yet thank you.

>> [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

former columnist and editor johs book midnight in the garden of evil a savannah story. it chronicles his life including his coverage of four murder trials. this program originally aired august 28, 1997. it runs about an hour. c-span: john berendt author of midnight in the garden of good and evil, how much of this book in an interview with you not tell the audience because of the plot and all that? >> guest: in an interview the same as the flat on the jacket we didn't want to say who shot

whom. i did want to say there was a shooting and a murder trial but because the murder happened in the middle of the book i didn't know who got it and who did it. so there's one thing. but as, you know, books ought to have a little bit of suspense and there's quite a bit minor suspense, major suspense, you don't want to burst those bubbles in an interview. brucker c-span: when people see this will be a couple weeks after we recorded it but what printing is the book? >> guest: 86 printing. random house he would inquire of the push them -- printable right away? it cost them to store it in the house and random house has as most publishing has it down to a science how many of the need for the next few weeks, and random house, every publisher has a code and you can tell because the first trendies have no better, the teams have a b, and

then you take the c or the e or f to get what decade and even the lowest digit is the second number so if it's c, 98764 than its 24th printing. and that's just random house. c-span: how many was the first printing? >> guest: 25,000. it was going to be 30. 25 tawes and quickly another three, and then 57, ten, 12 and now it's 150. but in the know what the demand is and with the bookstores are going to order. it's a song entitled know much about but the publisher's note so they print enough hopefully to satisfy demand. c-span: over 160 weeks when this is recorded on the best-seller list did you ever dream of that? >> guest: i was writing this book and are you kidding, look

what's in it. a black drag queen, a man that has a bottle of poison to kill a variety in savannah and puts it in the water supply and on and on. i was hoping for a critical lack substance. first i wanted people to say or critics to say it's a book. this man who writes poems and magazines in articles has written a book. then i hoped they would say and possibly it is a jury could poke but i wasn't really thinking of sales. i hoped that -- i didn't get an advance, so i was writing a column in esquire and other magazines while i wrote and i just hoped the book would be critically accepted and might make a little money would but i didn't really even think about best sellers. it didn't occur to me to hope for the best. c-span: what is this on the cover? >> guest: that is a statute in the cemetery in savannah and its in a family plot. it's not a headstone, it's not a

tomb and its ornamentation, and when random house was designing the cover i said you ought to take a look at bonaventure cemetery. so this into local savanna photographer out there. i had three good karma. the hero was, in new yorker, i come to savannah, written a book about savanna and had gone back to new york. for random house to select a photographer from savannah i thought was great because it allowed savanna to have some creative input into the book. anyway, he went on to bonaventure cemetery looking for something that captured his interest and he found this girl on the second day. very tight schedule, five days to photograph and he saw her and took her picture and did things in the darkroom to make her stand out and it's is a magically seductive and beautiful photograph. it's mysterious. it just captures exactly what i would have hoped for in a cover.

a lot of authors have the approval of the cover. it doesn't mean you can design it but it does mean you can say no, i don't want that one. let's do another one. i was worried that i did see its cover that i was okay but i couldn't reject but that would help the book. this covered is a sensational, beautiful, wonderful covered. i couldn't vote for anything better. c-span: is that statue still on the cemetery? >> what happened when the book came out as the tourists went out to bonaventure by the hundreds posing with this statute. the family that owned the plot was horrified and i can understand why. they removed the statue and it's been gone for three years. however, recently i understand -- i'm very pleased about this -- the family donated the statue to the local art museum and will reside inside telfair and reside people to the museum and it's lovely i think. it's become an icon that represents savanna, and you can see it on t-shirts and cups and

charms and pans and flags, all sorts of tashi and items that people in savannah our manufacturing to go along with it. c-span: by the way, i didn't get the number of books that actually have been printed so far. >> guest: almost exactly 1.5 million, maybe 1,500 -- a staggering number. we've kept in hard cover for that reason. c-span: before we talk about your little bit, give us an overview of what people are going to read if they haven't seen this book. >> guest: akaka nemer return of the book. i'm a new yorker magazine editor and writer, goodell to savannah by chance on a trip with friends and i am overcome by the beauty of the city. it's a wonderful, magical city. and i went back to new york and three years later -- c-span: what year was this? >> guest: 1982. three years later miticide i've been writing magazine columns and never was able to get deeply

into anything. on what skid along the surface and fremont have to do something different. very challenging and lots of fun but i wanted to wallow in something i could get in deeply. i knew i would have to write a book if i was going to do that. question, what should the book be about? i looked a lot of subjects and fought back to savannah and thought what a wonderful place to set a book. the city is unusual, it's undiscovered -- it was undiscovered. and the people i met were extraordinary. and i also knew about the murder case. the way i wrote the book i took the liberty of putting the shooting in the middle of the book, so you have met all the relevant characters and know all about savanna before it happened, you were surprised as the reader and surprised by the shooting as the people in savannah were but i knew before i started i had that to work with. so that is what you do. it is a portrait of savanna with a murder case thrown in it all sort of ties together. a lot of different stories and

the trick was to make it sound like one. there were many ways i was able to do that. the subtitle of the book is a savanna story. even though it's hundreds of them to read and the characters in the book, there's a chapter but a character but it appears in several other chapters later. sinnott we, reappearing characters tend to pull this together into a community of tightening. and of course the murder case is a continuing fred after it happened. and this one character, joe odem, who pops regularly, commenting on our progress through stevan, making funny jokes about my riding this movie and never pay attention to the fact that it's going to be a book. to him it's a movie. we're going to be in it. if we are in what he is writing it will turn into a movie and we will be in it. so from the beginning for the end of the book is a greek

chorus of character a real person commenting on the progress so it's all pulls together and it's a narrative about my experience in savannah and a lot of unusual things happening. c-span: jim williams one of the principal characters is dead. when did he die? >> guest: he died in january 1990. c-span: how? >> guest: the first -- the papers -- what happened is he came down, he was at home to be keen to get the paper and make himself to your coffee and collapse behind his desk and died. what everyone thought at first is a heart attack. but the irony is that if he died in the very spot where he would have fallen if danny hansard the man who killed, had actually fired a gun at him, has claimed, and hit him he would have fallen right where he eventually died nine years later. c-span: where were you when you heard of this? >> guest: i happened to be in the atlanta airport on my way to miami at two atlanta through atlanta to savannah. and i'd gone to miami for i don't know, for it. and i got the word that he died. i was on my way back to savannah any way and went back. so he died.

in fact that's the end of the book there you go. there's some suspense right there. but before -- what happens before is suspenseful. c-span: how close were you to him before he died? >> guest: he was very forthcoming. he was the best interviewers i had in my professional life and magazines. he was very forthcoming, very cony, very articulate and like many southerners a wonderful storyteller. that's the one thing i noticed about seven hours, they tell stories of the time to read a story might last one sentence but it's part of the tradition of communicating, you tell stories, and it's charming to read it in life is life and certainly enlivens literature so i borrowed that technique in telling the story. the narrative style of my book is storytelling. and so he was terrific. i wasn't -- we weren't bosom buddies buy any means, but he was very friendly with me. i read him a couple of chapters. i -- ki agreed to cooperate with the book. but i said to him you know, jamaica watergate and all that,

but you won't see the book until it's published. you'll have no editorial rights. but as i was writing it, i would read him chapters that i knew he wouldn't have any problem with, and a couple of them about himself. and she was very pleased and impressed and he said, you know, when i agreed to let you do this book, i didn't know whether you're going to do a cheap, sensational book or a very careful literary one. i didn't care because i wanted my story out. but now i see you're doing a very careful job and don't you let anybody brush you. he said which i thought was very good. and so, and i didn't let anybody rush me. i didn't have an advance. i didn't -- the book to a publisher. so i took my time and it took seven years. >> how old was he when he died? >> he was 59. >> jo odom died in 1951. of what? >> guest: it turns out to be -- i did not know. he had a double life. married three times and he died

of aids. he died after the time frame of my book. i didn't include it. i thought i could have, but you did to keep this book to your parents. are they alive? >> guest: they are both alive. c-span: where do they live? >> guest: outside syracuse new york in a town called manlius and they did respect -- and stila me a great respect for literature and books and writing. my mother wrote an awful 1951 and was based on our family. it's called a small world come and she used her maiden name, carol bushehr and simon and schuster published in 1951. and my father has, for 30 years, and writing a book and -- a very scientific book, philosophical book and he's still doing it. so anyway, but i've always -- writers were always held in

great esteem and -- home and reading. my father read to me and my sister. he read the swiss family robinson and he read till of the two cities, a number of other books. c-span: what do they think of all this? >> guest: thrilling about it. and in fact my mother wanted to -- and father wanted to see every clipping that there was. and i said, juneau, i will give you a fax machine, it's a whole lot easier, instead of calling and mailing something every time there is something to get no, no, we don't want a fax machine. they don't -- the whole technology thing was horrible. so i set trust me. so i gave them a fax machine and they can't live without it now. so i send them everything that comes by that i can, you know, get my hands on, i faxed to them. so they've kept in touch and we talk all the time to really feel very much involved and they are thrilled of course but what's happening. c-span: i was watching on a network overnight -- eight canellos williams i ron and joseph heller and kurt. and one of the people on the audience that can you name

literature that you would recommend today, any books all? and curt said midnight in the garden of good and evil. what does that feel like? >> guest: it's beyond words. it's a thrill. c-span: that's the only one, by the way, the was recommended as i remember. >> guest: that's a great thrill because i'm a fan of his, as you can imagine. you know, somebody said to me when the book and now it's got good reviews and then i got on the best-seller list and people said how do you feel? i said i feel wonderful. and then something else might have happened and how did you feel now? i said you can only feel so good and nice things happen all along. now what you just told me is a thrill, i just feel as good as i can possibly feel and i'd probably bust if i felt any better. and it -- what is the mentally and spent seven years doing it, taking a long time and friends were saying are you ever going to finish this book? and people in savannah, after a while but i wasn't really writing one. the time is becoming an eccentric does little to the people in savannah and that i was supposedly writing a book i

really wasn't hiding. in communicative began to be a little bit of pressure. friends were saying to you think you will ever finish? this is getting to be serious now. so now that -- i did spend the seven years and the book has been received very well. i feel that i didn't waste a moment. that all -- every moment of the seven years was all spent. c-span: how did you live financially during those years? >> guest: i wrote a column for esquire. c-span: every month? >> guest: every month. and i wrote annual reports for big corporations on occasion, two or three and here coming and that was during good to do if you need to earn some money to ressa that meant pretty much covered my expenses. i mean it didn't provide any extra, but it meant that i could live fairly comfortably in an savannah. life is or has been not too expensive to beat c-span: let's go back to the beginning. you were born where? >> guest: born in syracuse. my parents were both born and raised in manhattan, moved to

syracuse. my father represented an industrial coatings company had traveled a bit in central new york, as we lived in syracuse amanites medium-sized town for some little kid to grow up in. and i went to public schools in syracuse and then i went to harvard and went on to harvard lampoon and came to new york to get a master's in english literature. and i was approached by harold hayes, who was the editor of esquire, the end of 61, and i was asked if i wanted to be an editor of esquire. of course. he said well we've got other candidates. here's six months of esquire. critique them and give me 20 ideas for the pieces. esquire that was in this greater glory days, large sized magazine and norman mailer was writing for it, and every naim you could think of he doesn't have any other candidates. i went home and i wrote a critique and 20 new ideas, and i

handed them to him and he said get back to me and i thought to myself when going to make these so impressive he will have to call me the next day and give me the job, which he did. but i later learned when i had lunch with him an old friend of mine michael herr cultic author tough dispatches -- >> guest: c-span: he endorses your book on the back? >> guest: he does. we call him mckee. he calls me johnny. for me he's mckee. we grew up, you know, a great school friend from high school and -- i yet meijer him enormously. he said when did you get your shot at esquire? i said in december. he said well that's when i was in for it to. so it turns out to only two candidates were two men who had gone to high school together, grammar school and high school together. neither one of us knew that the other was a candidate. and he went on to write dispatches and several pieces that appeared in esquire in the -- in the 60's it's a classic.

but you mentioned -- he did write a blurb on the back. there are for blurbs. it to people why knew beforehand and to the bye -- had never met. so that's a the -- that's how blurbs work. sometimes you ask a friend tentatively. wilkie asked me if he could read my book. i thought i can't ask him to do that. i'm so embarrassed. he said i didn't know so i called him up and said i was waiting for you to ask. of course i will write a blurb. c-span: he said john -- is it berendt, has written a gorgeous and haunting blend of travel and murder mystery. it's an enchanting and disturbing and to deeply atmospheric those kind of things work? >> guest: i think so. he seldom christine. i think all of the for people who -- know, there are certain things that make you buy a book. maybe you from degree review and

interesting review, maybe a friend said you're going to enjoy this book. not sure. to go to a bookstore and hold a book, looking at it and maybe do it two or three times. the cover might tip the balance. certain things tip the balance even told you do good things come something might tip the balance and make you think all right i will read it and that's where a blurb that catches your eye or impresses you might come into play. i don't think you go out and buy a book but it can be one of those things that makes you put it back on the shelf. c-span: named paray midnight in the garden of good and evil? >> guest: because i was and ensure esquire we spent a lot of time thinking of the right title for the peace and so i gave all of my chapters the title just to add more atmosphere. one of the chapters on ago with the murder descendant and also hired a priest. will she took of to what she called the flower garden because

he wanted her to put a curse. so there it is. chapter 18, midnight in the garden of good and evil. she said to me we are going to go to the garden, she said, which is the graveyard, and she said we have to get dead time. now you know about that time, it lasts one hour, half hour before midnight and a half hour after midnight. first half hour is for doing good, second half-hour is for doing evil. seems like we need a little bit of both tonight. we best be on our way. so that's in the chapter to the i sat down, wrote the chapter and thought okay, the garden, the gardens, a wonderful image. she called it the flower garden. but love for the garden. and at the stroke of midnight she said you can scoop up a graveyard church. it's colorful stuff to throw one someone's porch and put a curse on them. so i thought it might commitment light at the garden of good and evil.

this had come from what she told me and i put that down as a title for a chapter and i thought we imminent. that's savannah is a garden city of these wonderful squares and it's got a good and evil and i felt what could be better than midnight is also a very evocative word. it's an eight word title, very long, longer than most others. i thought well, this may not be commercial. so when i sold the book to random house and i'm not going to be a prima donna. if you don't think midnight in the garden of good and evil this commercial if it's too long to tommy and i will try to think of another word. they said don't change on our account we think will work. and on top of that you're going to have a subtitle to explain what this is about so i said the sec, a savannah story. and originally there was going to be on the cover to be a the would have made it 11 words. but the designer of the cover, carol carson, utterly brilliant, decided it didn't need to be on the cover. a savannah story is in sight on the page.

c-span: and you can see it right here. go back for a moment to syracuse. were you like in high school? >> guest: very conservative, not politically conservative but socially conservative. we wore white box, chino pants, button-down collars, this was the 50's, this is what you did. c-span: what year did you graduate? >> guest: high school and 57 in college and 61. and syracuse was very conformist. maybe that's why i'm drawn to such creasy, weird characters. i'm delighted by them because they break the mold, their freedom, and it's something that it's not unsafe, but syracuse was a very conservative place according to the books. c-span: did you write in high school? >> guest: i did. i was one of the editors of the crimson, nottingham bulldogs.

amazing how many schools have bulldogs for a mascot, many. i don't know why. c-span: or you recognize them as being a writer? >> guest: bye people in my class but michael herr was thought to be a genius them and he was. my experience as a writer was one of learning and getting better and better and better. michael herr started from a very high level, brilliance and writing, was someone i always admired, but the message of my career is that you can get better. well, he has gotten better, too. i really became -- i was awkward and i didn't quite -- now as i went along writing for esquire with a brilliant editor, harold hayes, jen and esquire and wanting all of us to be able to write with the style of esquire, the voice, the tone of esquire was to be knowledgeable, and that was the personality of

esquire and he insisted they be able to write in that style and find articles but we also wrote features that were not signed in the magazine. a long the editors were bonnie and clyde, so we had a pretty interesting staff put together and he later founded the new york magazine. anyway, i developed writing talent in esquire and getting as much as i could on the page in a few words as possible keeping the reader interested that will last i consider the right and to be a form of entertainment and i

keep it in a magazine all kind of things competing for attention. they are not as committed to leading as someone who sits down with a book. c-span: how did you get into harvard? >> guest: i applied and crossed my fingers. i had been a good student. also, i had extracurricular activities interested in a well-rounded student. c-span: what were the? >> guest: i was not very good but i was on the track team on the newspaper and i was a volunteer worker after school in various places in syracuse, so i had a number of other things besides grades and a juror interviewed by go travel member to make a case or the fact that

you're not there were more interested. c-span: what did you study at harvard? >> guest: i studied english literature. this is what you did when you did not know if you want to be. i thought i wanted to be an architect. i love to designed saugatuck to the architect department and he laid out the courses and thank you very much, walked out and it never went back because i want to take my own course but the english literature some that wanted to do any way and taking other subjects if i had been an undergraduate it was all the way down and that was i didn't do that so if all i will be that leader. >> host: how did c-span: have did you get onto the lampoon? >> guest: you go out for the lampoon as an undergraduate, and the competition goes off a number of weeks and each week

you write a short story or essay or in my case i wrote poetry. c-span: does it have to be funny? >> guest: yes. i was selected and then we had in which you are humiliated as a format war elevated. we were told we had to wear black eye patches and suit for a week which we did and you can see these people. then we had things like one of the so-called phools john not like was a man you had to go through this humiliating few days and play with trucks and what all the gates just before

might class's were released and they are funny to undergraduates. so that's enough and then for four years i was an editor and just before i graduated we had done in my junior year a parody most people don't know about in the magazine and in new york base of that party and elected a lot and got in touch with us in my senior year. will you do a parody of us as our july issue? eub the editors and we will pick the pos but to compare eddy us, photographed the articles because we want to solve these clothes and they brought five of us down to new york that was in july, 1961 cover. our other issue of mademoiselle

ander was kind of sort of them to do that because the july issue of the magazine is not a good sell so they got a lot of interest in the july issue buy simply having us do it and the had it very beautiful model on the cover and she had a flaw on her nose. articles are written about it and that is what was in esquire of hiring one of these people so we called mademoiselle and said which of the people would do that should i go and have a look and said no, john berendt to read as it happened i had jet then the summer courage and from harvard and columbia to get a master's in english. c-span: you didn't get it? how many years did you write for esquire? >> guest: i was at esquire from the and 61 through 69 then i worked --

>> guest: the, i did starting in '82. i left esquire and 69i had been there for eight years. cui hardly kept touch because it was like my home, my first home as an adult and i would write pieces through the years - riding and i rode, i would interview people for defrost for four years and then i became the editor of new york magazine, the editor. that was wildly exciting period of time. rupert murdoch had brought the magazine and i was hired as editor and i still am point to go for and for two years with the editor it was exciting. it was a weekly magazine and i

didn't delegate authority as much as i should have. i wanted to control every word to make sure we didn't cut too much of the peace because i wanted to have as much as possible. so i was there for two years and then the publisher who turned out he wanted to be an editor not brought to be one. c-span: who was that? >> guest: rupert murdoch after two months of him got him. c-span: is this the first time and only time you had ever been fired? >> guest: yes. no, i filled the been justified and rupert murdoch felt so, too much because shortly after that, he asked me if i would write his annual report and i did it twice for the -- the news corporation to read the was fascinating. i got along with rupert very, very well. c-span: politically? >> guest: i don't think we agreed politically but he wasn't sticky but that he and i -- i

respected him on certain important levels. he said to me one time -- he publishes the sun, the news of the world, the two barefisted newspapers in britain, and "the new york post" can be pretty racy but he also has the times of london and quite respectable publications after i'd written his report and showed the draft we went to london to devotee said to me the secret is, john, i've never been ashamed of anything i've ever published. the new york daily news had tried to go up against him. the daily news was a morning paper and the post was afternoon. the daily news was locked in a battle with him and the opened an afternoon paper to go head-to-head with murdoch in new york and he was a pretty greasy afternoon paper. he called the popular press. it wasn't a down market. he called the popular press. it was a nicely to describes something like that. they were ashamed of the kind of

breeziness they were going to have to do. he pulled back they put out a morning paper in the afternoon which doesn't fly, not in new york. while i was writing this report, they closed the daily news afternoon paper and murdoch said to me the wind behind him. i'm not ashamed of what i do. as an audience, i like it but as for them to their audience likes it they are not ashamed c-span: the bouck -- you look back at the beginning. are there two or three moments where something happened in the media that made a difference? you look back and go through the -- i can't find a word but why did this happen? >> guest: random house tells me his word of mouth it doesn't really need immediate. but it does. i can see for instance when i go

one good morning america the seals of the book the next week spike and i don't just mean good morning america but in a national television or radio does have an impact the you can't do that just so many times. if the book doesn't deliver to enough people, doesn't, you know, strike a chord, people won't talk about it. but i must say while i was writing it that i mentioned earlier i was aware of it being an entertainment. and i wanted to say everything i had to say but i wanted to hold the reader and in each chapter wanted for the reader to get something out of it, surprise. so it's manipulation, but the kind of manipulation he would be a fool not to put into a book that supposed to hold people's interest. and what you have is a lot of elements in this book that prompt people to talk about it. there's this incredibly seductive city of savannah that people generally had not heard much about. there are amazingly wonderful

characters with an ironic sense of humor that i had not encountered before. leedy and joe odom and jim williams, three characters larger than life i didn't have to help them in order to make them. the novelist to claims most people are not fully formed literary characters come they don't give you much to go by except the initial impression and it's up to the writer to make them compelling and interesting to read that may be true but if you're not list you can wake up every morning and start with an idea and a person suggests to add to it. i stumbled into a mother lode literary character whom needed who helped to be absolutely the possible thing in a book as they were and. c-span: looking back again was very new for times review?

>> guest: very important. jonathan yardley had a rave review in "the washington post" amazed me because i know how he can be and i wrote him a letter and i said i know how sparing you are and he wrote me a nice letter back. it was in a couple of weeks. "the new york times" did not review my book, never did. the sunday times didn't review it and random house, the refusal for the country. a publisher can do this. please, look at the book. they can't control the reviews, they condemned the book but they can't say look at this book. you should look at the book. well, it has been looked at but i'm told the second-in-command at "the new york times" book review so they gave it to the

reviewer, a newspaper reporter who loved and there wasn't a single negative review. c-span: did anything happen after that? >> guest: also random house sent a copy of the book before it was published to good morning america and it happened to land on the desk of someone who read it and loved it and got in touch and said we would like john berendt to take it on a tour of savannah. so, they were talking to me a phone and i would tell them who would be good to include and after a while i sit by the way, who's going to interview me? they said nobody. after talking to you we can tell you are going to be a guest reporter. guest correspondent. i said well great. i think it was the first week the book was out, good morning america had been on for a good 68 minutes and i -- they reproduced and taped it and they went around savannah going to

the major characters and major -- ball, you're outdoors and savannah to read it's a beautiful setting. and that had to be -- had to be important in getting the word out quickly. "the new york times" finally, the did review with an march march 13th issue which was about six weeks after the book had come out. but it already had been on the best-seller list so without the times it had gone on any way, and so there's a few i mentioned there were certainly important and it's all cumulative to be dhaka also was on this old house which is amazing because they don't ordinarily talk about books. what happened is that for some reason the producers of this old house decided to go and redo a house in savannah to read i don't go with it was because of my book or not but they were going to spend seven or eight weeks and savannah in a town house completely redoing it, as they do, showing you how to do

the dorsal and i don't know, plasterboard or whatever. and they took a house right across the street from mercer house where the shooting happened in a beautiful square, monterey square. the asked me to come on one of the programs and take them on a tour of savannah. so why did. i showed up and they said we will do six or seven minutes. as we start out six or seven minutes it was going beautifully. they said let's keep going. so for 18 minutes i was on this old house. what we didn't know at that point is that was the biggest -- that was the pbs show with the biggest rating on pbs because you get not only the pbs viewers but the house dillinger viewers who joined pbs to watch it, 10 million viewers watched this old house. it was a year-and-a-half ago as we were well into the books run on the best-seller list. but amazingly that was a very powerful show. so there -- yes, i would say media certainly helps and also

the book was a finalist for the pulitzer prize. c-span: this is the audio i'm going to reach over here and i got this and a bigger one which is the unabridged which is a lot of cassettes. how is this doing? >> guest: very well. that just came out last week. that is the unabridged but the one you held up first, the average one had publishers weekly had an audio best-seller list and that's been out for many weeks. random house has sold 70,000 of those, and it pains me because it is a bridge. now we have the unabridged which i prefer nationally as an author i would prefer unabridged. c-span: but you didn't read it, you have an actor to the to actor read it. >> guest: i didn't read it. i wanted to but my agent said you're going to be -- in the studio for a month. you'll hate it. besides the people who did the

on average, it was first of my recorded books which is a different company. random house, knowing i was panned by an average month, brought to the an abridged version over there from record books and has repackaged it as their own unabridged book. c-span: several months ago you ended up on the cover of the weekly standard magazine owned by rupert murdoch. it didn't have anything to do with why you got on the cover? >> guest: it would think so. daniel, mr. rider, they do say it. what is it? the hottest nonfiction book of the 90's. i like that. that's all about i liked about that piece. what he did was to go to savannah and talk to people in the book and he came across on character took issue with my portrayal. c-span: me indy 500 and hernandez? >> guest: i should say that -- she had no choice but to the public about who she was because people came after her. actually her name isn't mandy. she could have remained private.

at any rate -- c-span: are you allowed to say that and i can't? , nancy? >> guest: nancy il's. yes. perfectly nice person but she has never been active in to promoting her appearance in the book. she opened her house to tourists for $5, tour, she gave a tour, she had a gift shop, she flew to california to ask clint eastwood should be in the movie. klindienst what is directing the movie. so she has been energetic as promoting herself as mandy which i applaud. i don't blame anyone in the book for saying they are in the book and making money from it. i encourage any character who wants to go ahead and use it. it's perfectly fair. she was unlaid at me because we did a jazz show by the

organizers of the new york jazz festival and asked if i would take part in a jazz called midnight in the garden of good and evil based on johnny mercer's songs and they said margaret will sing and mall again what opened the thing. we are playing a solo. i thought i would read a couple of passages. we then took that on the road. last fall to eight cities in ten days. now, mandy was sorely peeved at me because she wasn't included in this love show. she's a singer and was sorely peeves, and that's probably why she unloaded on me and said that a lot of what i had in the book about her was exaggerated or wasn't true. well, i didn't in century that much about her.

she said she didn't have an affair with joe. my impression was she had a brief one. i built on that. c-span: why would this happen in "the weekly standard" and we ask why are we doing this on booknotes. >> guest: i haven't figured out why they did it because it really is where's the beef is what most people said after raising that experts say. the author of the peace centiliter 20 minutes would give character, and i have to say that when this came out shortly after it hit the stands it was revealed that this character had promoted himself as tennessee. well, the tennessee ranch center a letter and would sue her if she would promote herself because she had not been so that does speak to her

c-span: tuna how many times you've been interviewed the last two or three years? >> guest: over 100 times, never at list laing, must say on air. c-span: what do you think of the media looking at it from the other side? >> guest: amine step p inaccuracies. there are interviewers who taped interviews with me and i can tell when they haven't listened to the tape because there simply to the cruiser to locations and simply never under and they find their way into print. and on occasion recently i have a very politely asked if i could hear the quotes attributed to me to read no offense meant but it's easy to get things wrong and i have been horrified when i seen a draft of a piece using the words i had been uttered in describing certain things involving other people. so i've been able to correct some things but that has astonished me. there's been several wonderful pieces. i'm not saying that they were laudatory, but they were

beautifully written and funny and -- know, but there's been a lot of good writing but i have been struck by how much and accuracy i've seen. c-span: when does the movie come out? >> guest: the target date is november 21st which is astonishing. clint eastwood who is margolis was in savannah from may 5th to june 15th shooting in savannah and then he went to california to do in your shots for the next month and was finished by the 14th of july. but past. he's famous for being fast and is always ahead of schedule and under budget and is editing the film and by god he may very well be done in time to release of november 21st which means warner brothers tells me by november 21st. it's scary. c-span: when do you get to see it? >> guest: i guess i will see shortly after november 1st. i've been careful not to be present. i was asked if i would write the script and i knew that there was a bad thing -- that i shouldn't. i'd have to tear my book apart,

leave things out, compress things and the book works. i have no assurance my script would work. so i thought let's leave well enough alone. let's let someone else do it and john lee hancock is a very good writer and wrote a script. he did make certain changes and i knew he would and he would have to. one thing they told me of the movie of the book it's great to be hard to get it all and if they put everything into a movie it would be 25 hours long, so they said there are four trials in this all about the same shooting. you can't have four trials, you can't hold this back so we will have one. you can't have a story with more than one trial. can't you do one with a flashback? also, they said your a passage married her in the book. that works for the book very

well because the reader can look through your eyes and identify with you but in a movie you can't do that, you can't have somebody wandering around through savannah as you did, very involved in the story but present all the time. you have to get more involved. i said i really can't write this movie but on the understand what you're going to have to do, go and do it. i did say to them if you want my character more involved, one routt you can take is i did -- i didn't report this in the book but i did so fascinated with the murder trials i would advise jim williams for the third and fourth trials certain things he should ask for his lawyers to put emphasis on and a character or a witness or to to call. so i was more interested in the defense strategies and the because i was fascinated by it. so i said you can go that route and john cusack please see the movie by the way, make him more

involved in the strategizing. on that level, the narrator can become more of the story. c-span: danielson at the end of the but you told him you think jim williams shot danny hansford telling him to read well you know, being that -- we know he killed him -- but what murder? >> guest: self-defense. was it self-defense? in the book i never say what a thing about knitting. you can join slash of the characters but i never say this is a good, that's bad. i never say that because i realized early on when i started experimenting with how the town -- panaria should speak are realized these characters are so wonderful. just let them tell their stories. so when i got jim williams, i felt the preponderance of evidence against him was convincing. i knew him very well. he did, at one point, confessed to become a semi confession in the book that is on tape i have

it where he says it didn't happen the way i said in court that it happened. his story to the d.a. and in court and the trials was that he and danny -- here i am willing the suspense, but still, there's plenty of things that were suspenseful in the book. he flew into a rage and he was -- she was 19-years-old and jim was about 50 through a rage and they grapple with it and so he didn't call the police, called a friend. danny hansford then went out of the room, smashed the clock, did a more damage in the house, smashed a grandfather clock that is, came with a gun and shot at jim and said i'm leaving tomorrow, you're leaving tonight. shot at him twice and nist. jam grabbed the gun from a desk drawer file your and killed him. three times, bin bank bang. the d.a. said it didn't happen that way. jim williams shot and killed in

the first come shot him, walked around the desk, two more shots in his back and head and back and then went and did -- jim williams faked the damage in the house and got another dun and pretended and shot at his own position former hansford had been standing faking two shots from berendt. then he put the gun in his hand. well, there are nine serious points of evidence that support the dea. i won't go into all of them but the d.a. was able to knock down a couple of them but i find it troubling that there's still some evidence that is not accounted for and seems to me that jim williams was promoted provoked definitely by danny hansford running wild. a month earlier he had taken fire into the floor of mercer house setting a precedent for himself what he would grab a gun in mercer house but danny wood, the kid would. so anyway, i hope i'm not getting too confusing here, but,

for being too much evidence around. but i felt that -- i was convinced that while provoked by an outburst of anger by danny hansford, williams wasn't shot at first. that's my own opinion. c-span: let me ask about the writing. you said it took seven or eight years is that actually to get the words on? >> guest: i would interview people constantly. the first year i interviewed people on tape, heavy interviewing right away, and i didn't do any writing at first. i moved to savannah, 1985, from 85 to 86i just interviewed, research, spent hours at the georgia historical society reading at and then i began to write and talk and see things happening as i was from 86 to 90 in savannah i was writing and researching and carried with me

a little notebook and i always do. this is always in my back pocket so that i would be ready. i was going to be in savannah three weeks at a time to really decide at the outset i would go spent three weeks and come back to new york for a few months and go back down and i realized when i was in savannah things are happening as i was there to read into what makes sense to stay so i got a full-time apartment in savannah and for five years i was there and things just happened. i would go and meet people trying to get information about things i knew about but in the course of everyday events i would stumble upon something i felt should be in the book so i really put myself in savannah. i was in no hurry. i didn't know anybody in the book or the money or the evidence back. so, i wrote -- i got an apartment and describe an apartment in the book that the carriage hou