puzzle that fired ten mm rounds. walters idea was that the company should export some of the gold club sparkle to the show. hiring a professional stripper might turn some heads. the addition that evening lasted until midnight. the delegation settle on a performer in the early twenties, sharon drolen, blonde full breast as dracula tall young woman. and walter asked her if she would be willing to promote and las vegas she readily agreed. she would have to go through a standard four day training. the stripper to the program alongside personnel from the defense department and several federal agencies and police departments. a presence in the company firing range cause a significant stir. the guys came in and asked, who is this girl demanded not want to tell federal agents and police s.w.a.t. specialists that the returning with an erotic dancer, so he didn't. they all thought she was with

the cia. to heighten anticipation and draw maximum attention to the new block ten mm pistol walter created an enormous billboard on the highway from los vegas airport to the downtown strip. .. >> you're talking real excitement, sex and guns that must have taken a thousand orders the first day. people came l up and said, carl, i'll give you a million dollar

order right now if i can go to bed with you, walter recounted. it was las vegas, and walter did not tuck her in at night. at the awards ceremony marking the end of the show, dylan was called to the stage and given a plaque honoring her as best all-around model. shooting industry magazine reported after seeing glock's sharon dylan, it is easy to see why dealers were anxious to get glocked. [laughter] so that's all i'm going to read from the book. i'll say that next week my lovely wife julie and i are going to the shot show, and i can only hope we have similar marketing glock the book -- [laughter] as carl walter had. thank you. [applause] so i guess questions are in order if there are any x there's a microphone so that our friends from c-span can record your thoughts. >> thank you.

i assume that was your glock article i saw with bloomberg magazine? it was excellent, a while back. >> thank you, yes. >> when this gun first came out in the '80s -- >> yes. >> -- i remember hearing that there was a ceramic chamber that was available, a slide? >> yes, very interesting story behind that. >> that could be smuggled onto airplanes, and i was just wondering if that's true, what was the company's explanation for that? >> well, part of that myth i referred to had to do with this notion that the gun was invisible to airport detection machines which has turned out not to be true which didn't stop congress from having a year of hearings on it, by the way. gaston glock was flown over, it was an extraordinary marketing opportunity for glock. the ceramic part of the story is a whole different myth that was derived from glock's debut as a villain's gun in the movie

"diehard 2." in "die hard 2," bruce willis who plays a detective in the movie is involved in -- it's almost hard to describe in straightforward or language. they're defending an airport against terrorists who are going to crash planes, and the terrorists are also in the airport, and at one point bruce willis shout toss another -- shouts to another cop, he just pulled a german glock on me. every single fact in that speech was wrong. [laughter] the gun was not made in germany, it was made in austria. there was no model called the glock 7, ceramic was not involved in constructing the clock in, and you can see it on airport detection screens. otherwise it was perfect. [laughter] this speech, like "the new york post" headline and so many others similar end pose, was pure gold for glock.

gun officionados had a complete field day making fun of this speech. t-shirts were made up, and all this was done for free. so that's the origin of the ceramic gun from germany, and you can -- i guess you can thank bruce willis for that. anybody else? yes, handsome young man in the front here. >> i know that people's positions get very cemented about these things on both sides, but i'm wondering whether in the various context you had with glock's associates and glock salesmen, did they feel the need at any time to address the moral dimensions of profiting so richly off of a weapon? >> um, yeah, i'm not sure that people work for glock or, for that matter, for any other gun

manufacturer view the moral dimensions in the sense that you're suggesting. by and large, people who manufacture and market guns see them as tools and see them as products that are intended to be deadly. and that when used properly, are potentially dangerous but not necessarily dangerous. certainly, the people who make glock and certainly gaston glock himself who i did not interview because he refused to talk to me but who i feel i know personally because i've talked to everyone who practically worked for him over the years, saw his gun as a masterpiece. he saw it in a morally positive light. it was a tool that protected and armed police officers and soldiers. it was something that people could have in their homes to protect their families.

and when asked about situations where there might have been a gunfight or even more horrendously a psychotic mass shooting as the glock has been used in a number of mass shootings, the company's standard response was for better or worse -- and i'm not offering my opinion about this -- it would have been just better if more people had glocks on the scene because they could have shot the bad guy. this is a perspective that illicits gulf thats -- guffaws in some settings, but i have to tell you taken as being completely logical and matter of fact by millions and millions of your fellow countrymen. so there's a tremendous divide in attitudes toward guns. >> how much does a glock cost? >> if you go into a main street

gun store and you're going to pay, you know, pay retail -- [laughter] you will probably end up paying $600 and change. if you go online right now on your, you know, on the interweb or whatever, you can find the glock offered for $499 before taxes. many people buy used guns. there's a huge market, a huge secondary market in guns the way there is in automobiles and other durable products, and so if you buy a glock that's been used, you can get it for less. but it's not an inexpensive gun. it's kind of mid to upper range. i mean, you know, if you need a gun to wave around in a 7-eleven that you're going to hold up, you don't go into a retail gun store and buy a glock for $600,

you borrow someone's saturday night special, and that usually will do the trick. [laughter] >> um, have you shot a glock? if so, what did it feel like, how did you do? [laughter] >> well, several different questions there. [laughter] yes, i have fired a glock on many occasions. um, it is -- my experience was very much the experience that i described here. it's quite easy to learn how to use. it works very readily. it's intuitive. you can compare it, for example, to another semiautomatic pistol like the baa relate that which -- bret that which has an external safety and a decocking device. you have to think much more about is the safety on, do i have to cock it? glock has none of those features. now, critics of the glock, gun

control advocates who see the glock in a dark light, say the lack of those features makes it too easy to fire the glock and blame those features for accidental discharges. there's a big debate over that. but i personally found that the gun easy to learn how to use and quite straightforward. i would say i am a thoroughly mediocre shot. interestingly, though, my wife julie is a crack shot. [laughter] and gun people will tell you that that's quite common. that if you take two neophytes, the fan who will have all kinds of built-in ideas on how you shoot a gun and want to be showing off will be mediocre. and the woman who has no preconceptions and is actually listening to the instructor will do the right thing and hit the target, and that was exactly our experience, and i wouldn't mess with julie. [laughter]

>> paul, can you talk a little bit about how the company's been managed over the years and any unique events in its history that you think are interesting for your audience? [laughter] >> that's what's known as a ringer. [laughter] brian grow, who asked that question, is my former colleague and my great friend for life who worked closely with me on the first article that we did for "businessweek" about glock back in 2009. and knows fully well the answer to that question. [laughter] the most -- one of the most fascinating things about glock is that over time as it has been phenomenally successful in commercial terms, extremely profitable because of those crazy high profit margins that i alluded to earlier with the factory that was designed to make just this gun, this is a product where the profit margins

even today are said to be about 70% which is just unheard of. the company has increasingly been subject to a kind of gothic, dark overhang in terms of its management with extraordinary rivalries, people accusing each other of terrible crimes. and in 1999 gaston glock's main financial adviser who was a luxembourg-based finance year hired a hit man to kill gaston glock because glock had discovered he had been stealing from him. so the man, everett, hired a french -- a former french legionnaire and former professional wrestler to kill glock. strangely, he didn't bring a gun. [laughter]

he brought a rubber mallet, and the apparent plot was to make it seem as if gaston glock -- who was 70 years at the time -- had fallen down a flight of stairs. they were going to bop him on the head a few times and push him down the stairs of an underground parking garage which is where all this transpired. the problem was that gaston glock was an ornery old cuss and in very good shape, and when the luxembourg police arrived shortly thereafter, the former french legionnaire and professional wrestler was unconscious, knocked out and lying on top of gaston glock who had apparently rendered him useless with his pair hands. [laughter] bare hands. it sounds like something that if you put it in a movie script no one would believe it, and yet brian and i have looked at it from every angle, and it seems

implausible, and yet that's what happened. and he's still serving a 20-year sentence in a maximum security prison in luxembourg. interestingly, the hitman got out after seven years, and no one knows where he is just adding more sense of mystery. but that's the way things work in the realm of glock. yes, lois. >> where does glock -- >> lois, they want to hear you. >> where does he -- [inaudible conversations] where does he stand in terms of "forbes" rating of billionaires? >> interesting question. >> i have another question then. >> all right. [laughter] the short answer is we don't know. glock is a, the glock companies are privately owned in austria, and there is very little public financial data. so we don't know exactly how

much cash gaston glock has. my guess is that he would not rate very high on the fortune list, the "forbes" list, and that's because of the phenomenal period we've just been through with our own financial world where incomes have gotten so crazily out of whack. so this is a man who makes tangible products as opposed to conjures things up, you know, on wall street. so his fortune is vast, but we don't know how vast. >> okay. so in terms of his fortune, is he known for any good philanthropic deeds, for example? >> no. [laughter] the gentleman in the hat. >> my question is this, given

the relative dominance of the glock as an issued weapon to police departments over the two-plus decades that it's been an issued weapon, what sort of performance record has it actually accumulated in the realm of actual street encounters, gunfights that police have gotten into? >> yeah, that's an interesting question. there is no national database about, that describes the performance of one firearm versus another. so you are inevitably in the realm of anecdote talking to veteran police officers and asking them to compare and having to judge their credibility based on the way you would judge anyone's credibility. there have been police departments that have had problems particularly adjusting to the glock in the first place. there have been cities like washington that have had very pronounced problems. but in the end those problems turned out to be much more a function of poor training than they did with the actual tool itself. i have a episode that i describe

about the washington metropolitan police department where they had a large number of accidental discharges after they switched to the glock. but the police department it in time, basically, admitted that this was because we hired a whole bunch of new recruits, stuck a glock in their hand, did not send them to the range, sent them out on the street, and guess what? if you don't tell someone to keep their finger off the trigger until they want to shoot, they're going to shoot themselves in the foot. but otherwise you see large, sophisticated police departments like the nypd which have adopted the glock and stuck with it for 20 years, and they can choose, you know, they're so big they can choose any product they want, and they choose the glock along with, you know, smith and wesson comparable weapons. in this city police officer can choose from that list of three. and i'm told that about two-thirds of the officers in this city choose the glock.

>> hi, paul. i can't wait to read the book. >> thank you. >> how does glock relate to the nra? does it help fund it? and what happens after these mass shootings like the glock used with michigan -- gabby giffords and the tucson shooting, virginia tech. and was it involved at all with fast and furious, the undercover operation of guns to mexico? good, good. all right. several very good questions. first of all, about the nra. the answer to that question forces me to slightly amend my flip answer earlier about whether gaston glock is involved in any philanthropy. [laughter] the glock companies, in fact, are extremely philanthropic when it comes to giving to nonprofits like the nra. and also to town indications -- foundations that support wounded

soldiers, the families of law enforcement officers who have lost their lives and so forth. so in all seriousnd, i do want to -- seriousness, i do want to amend that comment earlier. glock gives millions and millions of dollars to these organizations, and, obviously, when you give money to the nra, it's used not only to support widowed wives of cops, but it is used to support the nra's political activity directly or indirectly as well. so glock is a huge player. the gun industry is part of the constituency that the nra serves even though if you ask ask the nra head on what is your business, they say it's to defend the rights of gun owners, and they like to play down their links to the industry. now, mass shootings. the glock, one of the things that's distinctive about the glock is that it has turned up in a disproportionate number of maas shootings beginning in 1991 only a few years after it showed up in this country with the

horrendous shooting, i'm sure some of you will remember, in kill lean, texas, where more than 20 people were killed by a guy with a glock and another handgun. and when that, when that mass shooting took place -- and it resembled in many ways the shooting at virginia tech you mentioned and can the more recent terrible tragedy in tucson involving representative giffords. you have, you know, severely demented people, but not so demented that they haven't chosen their weapons rationally, and they've chosen the glock because of that large magazine capacity. the shooter in tucson had a standard glock with an unusual magazine, a 33-round magazine. so large that it protruded out about this far below the gun. no ordinary, law-abiding gun other than would really bother with an awkward accoutrement

like that. you wouldn't go to the range and stick a33-round -- i mean, you might, but there would be no logical reason for it. what happens after these things? well, what happens what happens in the counterintuitive world of guns in general. at bloomberg which is my, you know, sister operation or the parent operation of the magazine i work for had a terrific story a day or two after the tucson shooting in which one of my colleagues tracked down statistics showing that glocks had sold out all across arizona the day after the shooting. now, why did they sell out? well, the quick, flip answer is, well, because people might think that, oh, it was so effective that they wanted to have it for themselves. that's not really it. what it is is that people who enjoy owning guns reflexively fear that if a gun is used in a

notorious crime, that that gun will then become subject to restrictions, so they want to buy it before it goes away. and that's what happened. and that has happened repeatedly over time. again, for better or for worse, that's the story. fast and furious which is the scandal involving the atf also, coincidentally, in arizona whereby undercover atf guys were allowing mexican bad guys to buy thousands of weapons without any means to keep track of them, and the weapons ended up in mexico, and this whole thing came to light when a poor border patrol agent was killed on the border, and a couple of these weapons were found at the scene of the crime. that whole scandal which is a fascinating episode in and of itself is mostly about military-style rifles, even more

potent weapons in that they have even larger magazines. it's not so much about handguns. so the glock does not play a central role in that particular fiasco that you're referring to. john? no, and then -- >> how have glock's american competitors reacted to its great success? has it inspired innovation, consolidation? >> uh-huh, right. at first smith and weson which was the main incumbent, the gm of the gun industry, reacted just like gm did. this'll never wash just like those silly toyotas and hondas, no one will ever want to buy those, and got caught with its pants down and lost a huge amount of business to glock. then they did the next step was they just tried to knock it off, and smith and wesson produced a

pistol that looked a lot like the glock but wasn't as good. glock sued them for patent infringement and was settled out of court, and they had to adjust the gun. today smith and wesson produces guns that the naked eye of the non-expert look quite similar to the glock and are comparable in quality. people who are deslow todays of smith and wesson would tell you they're better. it's called the m and p for military and police. and it's, you know, like the glock it's a good, reliable firearm. so, basically, the rivals have caught up, and they've mostly caught up by imitating it and then making slight improvements. and a question going out into the future from just a corporate point of view is whether glock is going to figure out how to come up with something new, something different. and if it doesn't, when the old man, gaston glock, meets his reward -- he's 82 now -- my

guess is that another company will actually buy glock because it's still a very, very valuable brand, very valuable franchise. but its weakness is that it hasn't innovated as much in recent years. and glock, while he is not well in case anyone here is hoping to buy a gun company, is not out of the action altogether. just this summer he got remarried, um, to a 31-year-old woman. [laughter] yes, ma'am. >> hi. i'm wondering if you could, excuse me, i'm wondering if you could talk more about the glock as sort of an object of fantasy, and particularly with, um, civilian purchasers, whether you think that they buy it more for its utilitarian design or for its lawyer? >> well, aura is certainly a big

part of the glock story. one element of that that i haven't mentioned yet and i'll mention now is, of course, glock is the semiofficial gun of all hip-hop music. there are literally scores of hip-hop songs that refer to the glock by name, there are, you know, six or eight prominent rap performers who have incorporated glock into their stage name which doesn't seem to me like a very good, competitive idea since i think you would get confused with each other, but in any event, so aura is very important. when it comes to somebody who's going to spend, um, $550, $600 retail on a gun, i think aura plays a role, and certainly the glock's reputation for efficiency and sort of every man

common sense, get the job done, nothing fancy, just the facts, ma'am, that's really the aura, i think, in all honesty that appeals to the, you know, hundreds of thousands if not millions of law-abiding gun owners who have purchased glocks. which is not to say that they don't also in some part of their brain enjoy, you know, the bruce willis "die hard 2" business too. i mean, there's no denying that part of the appeal of guns is their power and the fact that they're lethal, and if you pick one up and you fire one, you know what i'm talking about. i mean, it's a memorable experience. and, um, it's also fun. it's fun to shoot guns. which is something that gun skeptics don't absorb enough. and in failing to absorb that, don't understand part of the appeal of firearms to those

people who own them and enjoy using them. >> i was wondering how you got interested in glock initially, and if in reporting the book, um, you changed your views about guns and gun control. >> i started, um, reporting on and writing about the gun industry in the late 1990s with my former colleague and friend vanessa o'connell who's standing in the back when i worked with her at the "wall street journal." and i started in on those stories, and then vanessa joined me very soon after we started because there was a lot of mass litigation against the gun industry at that time following on the mass litigation against the tobacco industry. many of the same lawyers who had gone after the tobacco

companies, once that -- those mass lawsuits were settled turned and quite self-consciously chose the gun industry as their next target. they engaged municipalities and counties as their clients, and for interesting reasons those lawsuits did not work and did not gain the kind of traction that the tobacco lawsuits did. and vanessa and i sort of chronicled that and also got interested in the industry itself. and for my dollar there is no, i mean, we're -- i'm a business journalist in large part -- there is no business, no industry that is more fascinating than the gun industry. the gun industry has its own amendment to the constitution, it has a place in american history that is unrivaled by the maker of any other product. i mean, you could say cars are very american or fast food is very american, but, you know, there's the minuteman and the

symbol of the american revolution, and guns are right there. and there's the cowboy in the 19th century, and there's the film noire detective and then bruce willis and on and on and on. so the marketing of guns, the imagery of guns is fascinating. guns are one of these is symbols that divide american society and politics in fascinating ways. it's right up there with issues like abortion or homosexuality. i mean, people have passionate, intuitive views. and in the case of guns, that has played very much into how guns are sold, how they're marketed and so forth. to me, it's an almost irresistible story. to put it another way, you don't meet anybody in the gun industry who is boring. everybody's interesting. everybody's got an interesting story. and the product is interesting. and i enjoyed learning about it. and i enjoyed doing it. i mean, you know, i don't run

away from that fact. it's fun to go to the range, it's fun to do it. and i get a kick out of it i think the way a lot of people get a kick out of it. >> can i think we have time for one more. >> okay. i'm not going to be -- oh, i'm going to choose meredith. and the microphone man's going to defy me. >> hi. is there any significant black market for or known major theft of guns, or is the price point preventing that? >> no. there's a huge black market for guns. there are millions of guns that are owned illegally -- >> [inaudible] >> the, the -- yeah. the glock is not distinctive as a crime gun as best we can tell from the sparse statistics that are available. the statistics are very sparse because the nra and its allies in congress have bound the hands of the atf and made it very

difficult for the atf to collect, um, so-called gun trace data and to disseminate that data. so it's actually been a number of years since that data has been readily available. when that data was available until a few years ago, glocks tended not to rank very high on the the list of guns that were traced because they were found at crime scenes. now, part of that might be because the glocks were relatively new. i mean, smith and wessons have been around forever, guns are very durable and don't necessarily break, so if you've been making them for 75 years, there are going to be more of them around, more have gotten stolen and ended up in the black market. but the short answer is there is no evidence that in real life as opposed to mauve i haves and television where every gangster is holding the glock like this -- that's a glock, by the way. if they're doing this, that's almost certainly a glock. [laughter] there's no evidence in the real

world that the people shooting it out over turf concerns, over who can sell drugs on this corner or holding up the 7-eleven prefer glocks. i mean, i'm sure they might prefer them just as much as the next civilian, but they're not found disproportionately associated with crime. so our hosts say that's it. i want to thank you very, very much for coming. [applause] >> for more information about paul barrett and his recent book, visit glockthebook.com. next, encore book notes. jill creme moment was a guest on book notes in 997 to talk about her book, "the writer's desk: a collection of photos of authors as work." as creme moment photos several different writers like steven, king and dorrny west. writer's "

what's it all about? >> it's a collection of my photographs over a period of 30 years, of writers, and i've photographed over 1500 writers, so of course it's not all of the writers. it's my favorite pictures of a lot of the writers at their desks, but it's all writer at their desks or near their desks or behind their desks. somewhere there's a desk in the picture, literally or figuratively. >> why did you pick this for the cover? >> the eudora picture? i suppose because it's one of my favorite photographs. i think it's pretty recognizable now, so that people would know it was my book. and because i think that it is a picture about a writer. it's a picture about a writer's place, and i think

you feel that looking at that picture, that of course this is where eudora welty would write. it's like her writing. >> here is a picture that's not in the book that you gave to us show, where she's not at her desk. why didn't you use this one? >> well, first of all, i hadn't taken it then, and then, more importantly, i brought that picture along simply because it reflected a visit i had had with her very recently. i went down a year ago. i was having a show of photographs in mississippi, and i went to jackson to see her first and brought her all the photographs, and she was looking at that photograph that's on the cover of the book and all the others, and she said, "jill, thank you for bringing me these. it's just like a visit

upstairs." and it made me very sad because she could no longer navigate the stairs to go up to that room where she once wrote, but i found it very interesting on another level because i think that all my work that i do as a documentary photographer of writers is in a sense a visit upstairs. it's a way to bring you and your viewers and anybody who sees the pictures up those stairs to see where someone like eudora welty works, or even if the desk is not literally upstairs, even if it's downstairs, in a cottage in the back, it's still "upstairs," upstairs being a private place. but i never thought in a million years that i'd be showing a photograph to the person i'd taken it of, and i would be transporting them back upstairs to a place

where they could no longer go. so that's why that picture so meaningful to me. >> who's this fellow? >> that's curt vonnegut, my husband. you've just met the fellow, i'm sure. >> he doesn't have any shoes on here. >> that's true, and he's wearing his pajamas. that's in our house. what's interesting about that photograph to me is it reflect a ritual for kurt. it happens to be doing the "new york times" crossword puzzle in ink. he is really incapable of writing before he has done that puzzle, and i think that a lot of writers have rituals, and a lot of the writers talk about these rituals. for most of them it's just a cup of strong black coffee. for tennessee williams it was a glass of wine. for george simmonon, he actually went to a doctor for a check-up before he started to write. he had his blood pressure

taken and his heart listened to, and then he went into total exclusion, like a monk, for 11 days. he didn't come out. he didn't do anything else but write. so rituals interest me. i think the most important aspect of this book is that it's not just photographs. i think that what makes it interesting to people is that each writer, each of the 56 writers, has text accompanying the photograph, which talks about in their words, the creative process, how and why and where and when they write, and some of them talk about the rituals. some of them say where they got the desk. with kurt, he talks about a prayer for writers. with everybody it's different. and i think that it's this juxtaposition and this marriage of words to the text that makes it different than just a picture book.

>> how long have you been married to kurt von gut? >> we've been together since 1970. >> where did you meet him? >> i met him photographing him. i was working at "time" magazine as a reporter. i noticed that every copy boy had a copy of "breakfast of champions" sticking out of their jeans pocket, and i was just starting to photograph writers, and i was very friendly with dave sherman, who was the picture editor, a picture editor and the book editor of "life" magazine. so i'd go up and see him, and i'd very often photograph writers that he told me had books coming up, and so i photographed kurt for "life" and while i was photographing him for "life" there was a reporter from the "new york times" who was -- magazine, who was doing a story. so i ended up selling pictures to the "times" and it just kept going, and -- >> you said you were a reporter for "time"? >> i was.

i was a reporter in the new york bureau. >> when did you start your photography? >> i've always gone back and forth between writing and photography. i started photographing, actually, in 1961. i got a nikon for my 21st birthday as a birthday present, and i was working for "show" magazine first as a secretary, then as a reporter. and all the -- the person who gave it to me had brought it from japan and all the directions were in japanese, so i went to see henry wolfe, the art director, and asked him how i might load this camera, how i might open this camera. so he loaded it up for me. he said, "oh, this is like having a rolls royce and not knowing how to drive." but it's the only camera i had. i went off, took pictures and with no shame whatsoever, came back to henry and asked him if he could unload the camera and how could we get some contact sheets or whatever, and he sent them out for contact sheets. then i had him look at my

contact sheets and talk about ones were good and which ones weren't, and he became a very important mentor for me. right from the beginning he'd look at a contract sheet and say after you take three or four pictures of a person doing something, don't shoot a whole roll. just take different pictures, and he almost didn't have to tell me that because i was so poor then and a roll of film cost so much that i needed to have at least 20 situations on a roll of film, and i also -- it didn't have a motor drive. it just -- but i think photographers today, they stick a roll of film in and they will take four rolls of the same picture. i think that's nuts. >> did you ever do covers for "time" magazine? >> not an eye siment. when i went -- i came down here and covered the march on the pentagon. they had 27 photographers on

assignment, on day rate with expenses. but i sent my film in that night. i was staying with neil and susan sheehan and i got a call that night to say i'd gotten the cover. >> what year was that? >> when was that? 1963, 64 -- >> the reason i ask is because i think i was the military officer assigned to you in 1966 or 1967 and i haven't seen you since that day, but i'm sure that you got -- >> it was 1967, yes. and i remember that i was done and i thought, well, if i want to shoot, i remember, there were all these photographers with important credentialses and i thought i should go up to arlington cemetery and get everybody coming up. so i got up there early, went up there, and i was waiting and waiting. i was all alone and i thought, well, maybe -- i'm just here and i'll be here until 10:00 tonight. maybe they went a different way. so i went down to see what was happening and by then i saw what was happening and i took a few pictures of everybody in the front of

the line. i got norman mailer and robert ludlum and all thoing people, and been spock, and i got one of those pictures inside of "time," then i went back up to arlington cemetery. then there were all these guardsmen, and they said i couldn't go past, and i said, well, i was just up there, and they said do you have credentials, and i had no credentials but i had my passport. so i took out my passport and showed it to them, and i traveled so much that they saw all these things pulling out and they said ok, and i went back up and i took that picture with a long lens, and -- >> memorial bridge. >> yeah. then i took some color, because i know that i ended up getting the magazine, the cover of the "new york times" magazine with my color, and i only shot half a roll of color, and when i went to send them in, i had 13 pictures, and i thought, well, that is so unlucky, i'm not going to -- and i couldn't add one, so i took one out and i sent 12 over.

so you'll never need to convince me ever in my life not to send 13 pictures. i never sent 13 of anything. so i did very well that day, and that was my one-time cover. you are probably the one who let me through. thank you. >> 30 years ago. >> it was 1967, right? >> it was either 1966 or 1967. go back to your book for a moment. you have a picture here of john updike and he wrote the introduction for the book. msnbc did. >> how did that work? >> he is an old friend of mine. i've photographed him 39 times over the years. and i just thought that he would be the best person. he loves photographs. i just showed him the dummy and i said, "i'd like you to do it, and if you'd be interested, it would just be such an honor."

and he did write it. he sent it to me in a week. kurt was sitting with me in my office when his introduction came in. i read it and i just started to cry. i was so moved by his introduction. and he actually had noticed some of the things in the photographs that i hadn't. he himself has three desks. one where he answers his mail, a second where he actually writes his books, a third where he does his work for "the new yorker", which is very high tech with a computer and printer, and then he has a fourth office where he has a big cozy chair and he just sits in there reading books and reviewing them for "the new yorker" and the new york review of books. >> here is the picture. i guess this would be the computer picture. >> yes. it's been very satisfying to me to over the years, to have gone back revisiting authors, and really

documenting their lives, documenting their children as they grow up. with updike, i just loved going to visit his mother on her birthday. i knew his mother was alive, that she had been a writer for "the new yorker" and she had published a novel, and i knew that john's son david was a writer, and i realized that this was the only situation of three generations of living american writers. there were other families like the benchleys, but one writer was dead, so i asked john if i could take a photograph of all three of them sometime and he said, "well, you know, i'll think about it." i'd keep asking him and then finally he called me one day and he said, "i'm going to visit my mother. it's on her birthday. david will be there and if you want to come, come."

so that was really fine, and he had given her pictures over the years that i had taken of him, so i went in, i think, as a friend of the family. >> when did you take this picture of bill buckley? >> oh, gosh, i guess in the early 1970's, i was -- first i photographed him at home and then he said he was going over to nbc to do an interview, and i asked if i could go with him, and he said yes. and i jumped into the front of the car with a chauffeur. when i'm traveling with a writer or anyone i'm photographing, i do always sit in the front with the driver because i don't want to bother somebody when they're in a car. i know it's a time for them to gather their thoughts if they're going to an interview or whatever they're doing, and i just like to stay out of their hair. i like to have enough distance so that they don't feel clause electrophone i can. -- claustrophobic. so i turned around and there

he was working with rolly, his companion over the back seat of the car, and i was to find out that he had had this car specially built for him when the people who were building the car called and asked him how much leg room he wanted, he says -- interrupted, he actually extend his legs, asked for a few more inches, and he ended up with an office in the back seat of his own car. >> are there a number of things you can say about writers after having photographed so many? how many, 1500 writers? >> probably 1600 since i've made that last statement, because i'm always working. but you know, i don't know if i -- the last few weeks i've gone back to photographing joyce carol ates, erica jong and others, so i don't know whether i can recount them, so i've photographed them -- updike

would only count for one time. all i know is that i'm going to have to get a new house with all my file cabinets of photographs. what have i noticed about writers? i would say that none of them have enough book shelves. i've never been in a writer's office where there weren't just piles and piles of books everywhere. certainly robert penn warren is a prime example of that. >> here is a photo i'll show in a moment that i don't think this someone in the book. >> yes, that's an example too of a picture that wasn't in the book because the picture i have in the book is very cluttered and messy and he's wearing his flip-flop sandals. but this is very messy, but you have to see the whole picture to realize just how messy it is because you have to have the stuff all on the floor as well as all the

stuff above his head, and in a small book that's a square format, it's going to just focus on warren and his messy desks, and i had lots of messy tabletops, and i had the picture of robert posed showing that he didn't have enough bookcases. so i went with the bookcases and used warren in the outside house, because i liked the idea of almost being bare footed and having the -- well, that's the -- >> this picture, how many years ago is this? >> that again was in the 1970's. i photographed him subsequently. in the book i have put him on the page next to the page with the picture of walker percy because i just thought they should be together in the book, because they were such close friends. and -- >> who is robert coles?

>> robert coles is one of my heroes. he's an eminent child psychologist, psychiatrist, who knows how to listen to children, and again, he is someone who has mentored me all my life. the first book i did, first children's book, was called "sweet pea." it was a photo essay about a 9-year-old girl growing up in alabama, and robert coles was very helpful to me and very supportive, and has always been on all my books, on everything i've done. i applied for a guggenheim. i didn't get it, but he wrote one of my letters for me. he is someone i admire and respect enormously. >> and you mentioned walker percy and here is the photograph. >> walker percy wrote in bed. i flew down to new orleans to photograph him. i liked the photograph

because i think he wrote also with a catholic sensibility, so the cross is important to me in that photograph. i returned, oh, 20 years later to re-photograph him, and when i was covering the republican convention, which was held there not long ago, and i went back to covington and had lunch with him, and photographed him with johnny walker, his grandson. in the earlier picture johnny walker was standing beside him in a window with magnolias outside and walker was standing inside and johnny walker in his oshkosh overrules, standing, came up to walker's waist. when i returned, i guess it was about 18 years later, i asked ahead of time if johnny walker might be there. he said, "oh, yes." johnny walker is now a college student wearing jeans. and he is sitting in the window, and from his head to

his butt is exactly the same height as he once was standing as a 2-year-old, and if yo look at the two pictures -- i don't have them with me -- side by side, it looks as if i took them moments apart because walker didn't change at all. it's just the son. and again, that's a perfect example of what a pleasure it is to be able to have that kind of access to a family and to take those kinds of pictures. it doesn't have anything to do with having them published. it just has more to do for me with taking them and documenting these people's lives and my greatest compliment is always when somebody tells me that their mother loved the picture they sent them or their son, or if i see it framed in their living room when i go, an earlier picture that i sent, that it's -- or with e.b. white, who was one of

my other heroes. i was so excited before i went to photograph him. i was like a small child waiting for christmas, five more days until i do e.b. white, only four more days, three more days. but then on the third day before i was going to photograph e.b. white, the phone rang. i was in the kitchen, around 3:00 in the afternoon, and this voice said, "oh, hi, this is andy white" and i didn't know who it was because i didn't call him andy. i said, "oh, mr. white." he said, "you know, i've been thinking about this photography session, and i just -- i think i'm too old to be photographed." i said, "oh, mr. white, just last week i photographed p.g. woodhouse who was 96, and i did rex stout the day before yesterday and he's 86." i said, "you're not even in your 70's. your a spring chicken." and he paused and he said, "well, come along, then." so i said, "thank you, thank you. i promise you, i'll take a

taxi from the airport. i'll have the taxi wait in the driveway. i'll be in and out before you know it." so i went and did him. it was a winter day when i went to do him the first time. i photographed him out in the snow with the employees around his house and we had a very nice time. i spent a few hours, maybe an hour -- i don't know. i do know i kept the blue hill taxi waiting for me. and when i returned to new york, i sent him an album of photographs, and a thank you note. the whole time i was there he kept saying, "oh, it's too bad it's not spring because i usually write in the boathouse. in fact, that's where i wrote "charlotte's web." so i became obsessed about going back and photographing him in the boathouse, which indeed i did proceed to do. on that same visit when i went back in the spring, i took a picture of him on a swing. it was a simple wooden swing

which his grandchildren had used with just one rope, not two, and he's swinging, and his family ended up using that picture on the front page of his memorial service when he died, and again, i was so sad when he died, and yet it was just to me the biggest honor in the world to have had a picture that his family loved enough to use in that way. that's just better than any book, any picture in a magazine. it's just -- that's what matters. >> have you ever had an author say no? >> oh, yeah. but sometimes an author will say no because they're busy,

and they mean it's because they're busy then but they'd love to do it sometime when they're not busy. sometimes an author will say no because they don't want to be photographed. >> do you remember one that -- >> but -- well, i usually have a pretty good sense ahead of time if an author wants to be photographed or doesn't, so i'm not going to ask j.d. salinger or thomas pynchon to take their pictures, because they're private people. they don't play cat and mouse. they're not coy about it. so i respect that privacy. >> have you had one where they've never had their photograph taken and you called them and they said sure, come on over, i've never done this before, that you can remember? >> yeah. well, i know, for example, that i was very anxious to photograph william shawn when he was in the editor of "the new yorker", because i

thought he was the most important editor and that he had nurtured so many of the best writers, and i let it be known that i wanted to take his picture. certainly updike knew, and i guess mr. white knew. a lot of people knew. but -- and i would often say that if he ever would let me photograph him, that i would literally stand there, take the picture, as the film came out of my camera, i'd hand them to him and he could put them in the vault until after he died or do whatever he wanted. but i thought he should be photographed. and i never -- one day i'm in california and the phone rings and this man says, "hello, ms. krementz? this is mr. shawn. i hope i'm not bothering you." i said, "no, mr. shawn,

you're not." he said, "well, you know, i want to know if i could impose upon you for a favor," and i said, "oh, absolutely." he said, "well, "time" magazine has recently interviewed me for the anniversary of the magazine, and they wanted to photograph me, but i told them that i already had a photograph that i really loved of myself, and i was wondering, if you weren't too busy, if you could come and take that picture." so i said, "i'm packing to come home now and i'll be there tomorrow afternoon." so that was an example of something that worked out with patience and then when the picture appeared in "time" magazine, i let him pick the picture he wanted and rather than pick a picture of him at his desk, as i photographed him at his desk, i photographed him at home with his wife, and i photographed him out in the park and he was wearing a fedora and that was the picture he wanted.