really necessary and is something we should celebrate and not be afraid of. >> host: to use force seer rewinding of the constitution? >> guest: i don't think so. one of the remarkable things is we have done very well with the constitution we have precisely because we figure out ways it can evolve to change with society but doesn't turn the constitution over two judges to do what they want and we found a and in no small part because of the genius of the framers, we found the document that is adaptable enough and capable of evolution not to put us in a straight jacket and why it has worked so well. >> host: you have several years of government service? >> guest: the justice department the office of legal counsel and solicitor general's office initially

under president carter for a short time than under president reagan. >> host: what courses are you teaching right now? >> guest: constitutional law, federal jurisdiction, administrative law, a first-year course on legal theory designed to introduce the students to the basic operation of the system. >> host: is this your first book? >> guest: yes. >> host: published by oxford university press. he teaches at university of chicago.

>> how much of this book will you not tell the audit-- the audience because of the plot? >> the same as the flap on and the jacket we don't want to say who shot who but there was a shooting in the murder trial but because it happened in the middle of the book there is one thing but books ought to have a little bit of suspense and minor and major suspense. >> and people see this it will be a couple weeks later but what printing is the book? >> right now is the 86 printing what they just do it all right away? it cost to store the book in a warehouse and random house has a down to a science how many they need for the next

few weeks and every publisher has a code. you can tell because the first 10 printings have no letter. the teens have the bee and the 20s have a c then you take those to get what decade then soloist digit is the second number. that is the code and that is just random house. >> host: how many books was the first printing? >> guest: 25,000 it was going to be 30 but they cut back all books then they did five and seven and a half now it is up but they know what demand is it is a science i don't know much

about but they print enough to satisfy the demand. >> over 160 weeks on the best-seller list. did you ever dream of that? >> guest: no. are you kidding? look at what is in it. of the black drag queen one who kills everybody and on and on. i was hoping for critical acceptance and a critic to say it is the book he has written a book than i hoped it would say it is a good book and then possibly it is a very good book but i did not get an advance sorrows writing a column in "esquire" and while i wrote it, i just hoped the book would be critically accepted and may make some money but i did not even think about

best-seller and did not occur to me to hope for that. >>c-span: what is this on the cover? >> guest: that is a statute in this cemetery in savannah and a family plot. it is not a headstone or a tomb or ornamentation. when random house was designing a cover i said you should take a look at this cemetery. one of the most beautiful places in the world so they sent out a local photographer i was in new york i had written a book about savannah and going back to new york. four random house to select a photographer from savannah i thought was great because it allowed them to have some creative in point*. he went out to the cemetery for two days and he found this girl on the second day and he saw her and to occur

pitcher and in the darkroom he makes her stand out and it is a beautiful photograph of it is mysterious and capture is exactly what i would have hoped for. a lot of authors have the approval of a cover that doesn't mean you can design it but to say i did not want that. i was worried i would see a cover that was okay that i could not reject but this cover is sensational. >>c-span: is that still the cemetery? >> guest: the tourist one out by the hundreds to pose with the statute the family owners of the plot were horrified and they remove the statute and it was gone for three years however recently i am very pleased to see they have donated the statue to the local art

museum academy it will reside there and draw a lot of people to the museum and i think that is lovely and it has become an icon to see nine t-shirts and charms and cups and plaques and the thai and items. >>c-span: i did not get the number of books that have been printed? >> guest: almost 1.5 million. is the staggering number. it is in hard cover for that reason. >> give us the overview of what people will read if they have not read the book. >> i am the narrator of the book the editor and writer on a trip with friends i am

overcome it is a wonderful magical city so i go back to new york and in 1982, three years later i have been writing a column never able to get deep into anything. i would skid on the surface and have to do something very different and i wanted to wallow into something. but i would have to write a book to do that what should the book be about? i thought what a wonderful place to set a book. the city is undiscovered and the people i met were extraordinary. i also knew about the murder case. gries took the liberty of putting the shooting in the middle of the books a you need to the characters before it happens to you are

surprised about the shooting as a people in savannah but it is a portrait with a murder case thrown in with a lot of different stories and the trick was to make it sound like one. the title of the book is a savannah story and characters in the book, he appears in several others so that way reappearing characters have the tight knit community and the murder case is a continuing threat and there is one character who pops up regularly food makes funny jokes about me right team this movie. we will all be in it.

so from the beginning to the end there is a real person commenting so well pulls together in a narrative about might experience and unusual things happen. >>c-span: one of the principal characters is dead. >> guest: he died january 1990. at first, he came down to get the paper and make himself some tea or coffee and collapsed behind his desk and died what they thought was a heart attack but the irony is he died in the very spot when the claim nine years later. >>c-span: where were you? >> guest: i was in the atlanta airport on my way

from miami. i got the word that he had died and i was on my way back there any way. in fact, that is the end of the book but it happened of 47 how close were you to him? >> guest: he was one of the best interviews labor had been very forthcoming. one of the best of my professional life. very articulate eight and a wonderful storyteller. the story last one sentence plants his charming and allied with literature so i borrowed that technique to tell the story and the narrative style so he was

terrific. we were not bosom buddies but very friendly. fire pretty may couple of chapters. he agreed to cooperate but i said you may cooperate but you will not see the book until it is published. you will have no editorial rights but as i was writing it i read him chapters i knew he would not have problems with and about himself he was very pleased. he said when i agreed to let you do the book i did know if you would do a cheaper sensational book or careful literary one. i didn't care but now icu are doing a careful job and don't let anybody rush you. i didn't. i did not have the and a dancer zero the book to the publisher so i took seven

years. >>c-span: how old was he when he died? >> guest: 59. >>c-span: what did joe dae from? >> guest: it turned out to be aids. i did not know he had a double life. he died after the time frame of my book that is just one more issue to put in the book. >>c-span: you dedicate the book to your parents. >> caris living in a town outside syracuse new york they did and still a great respect the my another road to novel that was based on our family called small world and my father has been writing a book and is still

doing its but writers are always held in great esteem and my father read to me and my sister like swiss family robinson and a tale of two cities. >>c-span: what do they think? >> guest: my parents both wanted to see every clipping there was. instead of mailing something every time. the whole technology was horrible. i gave them a fax machine they could not live without it. they have kept in touch and they feel very much involved and a thrilled with what has happened. >>c-span: i was watching a panel and someone in the

audience asking you name the literature that you would recommend today of any book at all quicksand curb monegan said "midnight in the garden of good and evil." what does that feel like? >>c-span: beyond words. that is a great thorough. somebody said when the book came out, it was on the best-seller list and how you feel? >> i feel wonderful. you can only feel so good and nice things have been all along. and i feel as good as i could possibly feel but actually i spent seven years doing this taking a long time the friends would say will you ever finished the book and after a while the

people in savannah thought i really wasn't frightening one. 88/teenine there was no book and there were rumors i really wasn't right to one hour is becoming an eccentric and supposedly i was writing one by relevant wasn't writing it really. there was some pressure. so now i did spend the seven years and has been received very well i don't feel that i wasted a moment that it was well spent. >>c-span: how did you live financially? >> guest: i wrote a column every month and by roche annual reports for corporations. that pretty much covered my expense is. it didn't provide extra but it meant that i could live fairly comfortably and in

savannah life is so has been. >>c-span: go back to the beginning born where? >> guest: syracuse. both parents born and raised in manhattan and followed the industrial coatings company we live in a nice medium-size town. i went to public school in syracuse and then harvard and came to new york to get a master's in english literature. i was approached by the editor of "esquire" and asked if i wanted to be an editor of "esquire." of course. there were at other candidates it was in its glory days of the large size

magazine and norman mailer was trading for it. i thought it is funny he called me he must not have enough candidates so i go up and i wrote a critique of 20 ideas originally he said when you give them to me i will get back to you and i thought he will be so impressed he will have to call me the next day, which he did. but i later learned when i have lunch with an old high school friend of mine, we grew up with each other from grade school. via admire him enormously and said why did you get your job? i said december he said that is what i was up four is so it turns out the only two candidates that neither one

of us knew we were a candidate and he went to right on the dispatch and several pieces of that appeared. >>c-span: on the back there is a blurb. >> guest: some people i knew beforehand and to buy never met. that is how they work sometimes you ask the friend and he asked if he could read my book. he did. and he said he loved it then i told my editor of random house he loved my book and said would he writes a blurb? i said i cannot ask him. i would be embarrassed. he said all is waiting for you to ask. of course. >>c-span: john berendt has written a gorgeous and haunting blend of a travel book and murder mystery that is enchanting and disturbing and greatly atmospheric.

>> guest: i think all four are held in great esteem. it is what makes you buy a book maybe you hear a great review and you are not sure bet you go to a bookstore and you hold the book and look at it the cover may tip the balance if you have been told good thing something will make you tip the balance to think okay. that is where of blurb catches your eye. but it could be one of those things. >>c-span: who named "midnight in the garden of good and evil"? >> guest: the title i came up with as an editor who lot of times thinking of just the right title i gave all of my chapters a title in

one of the chapters i go with the murdered defendant and his priest a very expensive lawyer also a voodoo priest and she took up a flower garden because he wanted her to put a curse. and there it is. chap did -- chapter 18 "midnight in the garden of good and evil" so she said to me we both go to the garden and we have to go at dead time. do you know, about dead time? that last one hour. half-hour before midnight that is doing good the second half-hour is for doing evil. it is for both and we will be on our way and i sat down to right the chapter and i had a wonderful image and it

at the stroke of midnight is he said she put a curse on him. it all came from what she had told me and that was a title for a chapter and i thought that is savannah as a garden city and what could be better? is an aids whirred title. very long and longer than most others. but when i sold the book to random house i will not be a prima donna if you think that is too long they said do not change it on our account and they said you will have to have a subtitle i said that is easy.

a savannah story. that would be on the cover but the designer of the cover decided it did not need the subtitle that is in sight on the title page. >>c-span: you can see it write here. go back to syracuse. what we like and high school? >> guest: very conservative socially. not politically. we wore pants and button-down collars and it was the '50s. >>c-span: when did you graduate? >> guest: high school 57 and college 61 s. syracuse was very conformist may be that is why i am drawn to the of crazy characters and it is something that is not unsafe but syracuse is a very conservative place.

>>c-span: did you write in high school? >> guest: i did. i was an editor of the nottingham crimson. the bulldog. how many schools have bulldogs? i don't know why. >>c-span: we recognize them as being a writer? >> guest: yes. five people in my class but my goal here was thought to be a genius. my experience as a writer was one of learning and getting better but michael started from a very high level. but the message of my career is we can get better but i was awkward but now as i go on writing for "esquire" with their brilliant editor

of herald pays and the voice , it to be knowledgeable and that was the personality of "esquire." he insisted he was able to right in the style and we also wrote features that were unsigned and among the editors who wrote bonnie and clyde and the superman movies, had a pretty interesting staff who later founded "new york" magazine but i developed riding talents that "esquire" that i didn't have a up and getting as much as i could

in a few words keeping "the reader" interested in even if deadly serious i consider writing to reform of the entertainment and i use in the best possible sense. in a magazine all kinds of things are competing and other pieces and summer reading magazines. >>c-span: how did you get into harvard? >> guest: i applied. [laughter] >>c-span: were you the a student? >> guest: i was a good student and had extracurricular activities harvard was interested in a well-rounded student. i was on track team, and not very good but there. newspaper, things like that

day worker after school and i had other things besides grades and interviewed the fact that you are not just the grind. >>c-span: what did you study? >> guest: english literature. like half of the other people at first i thought i wanted to be an architect but he laid out all the courses i would take and i said thank you very much i walked out and never went back because i wanted to pick my own courses because literature is whether vaunted to do anyway but if i was an undergraduate at was too rigid.

>>c-span: how did you get on the national lampoon? >> guest: the harvard lampoon. >>c-span: i am sorry. [laughter] >> guest: you go out and the competition goes on for a number of weeks and you write each week stories are essays and i wrote poetry. >>c-span: doesn't have to be funny? >> guest: i hope it is i was elected then we had a week in which you are humiliated which is their form of fraternities and we were told we had to where we are a black suit for one week with the black eye patch i almost got hit by a car crossing the street and we were called phools you

had to go through a humiliating few days such a great institution such as john updike but nevertheless lock all of the gates of 19 gates just before a night class is were really so big crowds are gathered and then for four years i was editor of the harvard lampoon which culminated just before i graduated, we had done a parity of the saturday review. it was a lovely literary magazine and the editors of psat and liked a lot. they got in touch with us and said lourdes you do a parody of us it as the july issue you be the editors you can parity as with the

photograph and the articles. we said of course. we won't let five of us to new york that was july 1961 issue of mademoiselle and it was smart of them to do that because the july issue is not a good seller so they got a lot of interest with that issue by simply having us do it. we have a very beautiful model on the cover and she had a fly on her nose. that attracted attention and that is where harold hayes thought of hiring one of these people and said you did that? go and have a look at me add to john berendt it just so happened i had just graduated from harvard and i was at columbia about to get a master's.

but i did not get. >>c-span: how many years did you right for "esquire"? >> guest: the end of 61 through 69. . .