[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] ..

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] >> what's going on, ladies? tell me name, ages, titles. are you going into high school? congratulations. what's your name? excellent. what greater you going into next year? york 11. you've got that down pat. are you interested in gardens? you're going to spread the word to other kids.

it's great to meet you. you know, the girls went to the concert and i don't know their names. [inaudible conversations]

the bonus march of 1932 when 20,000 world war i veterans marched on washington for two months in the hopes of receiving advanced payment of bonuses that were due in 1945. president herbert hoover ordered the u.s. army to a defect the marchers from camp in washington, d.c. on july 28, 1932. this is about 45 minutes. >> so, i was going to talk a little bit about the impetus for the book, where the book came from, "my father's bonus march." with every book i've written, it always seems -- it seems almost to residential, but there's always just one small incident that starts off, and it's one small incident and it keeps mushrooming and mushrooming into a book. with my first two novels the washington story the journal of the novel if you will come began with just imaginary

conversations of three people on the street corner in my old neighborhood, west rogers park, been trying to imagine who these people were on the street corner. imagine their lives, the family, the time period, and a thousand pages later into the first draft, i realized there was going to be a novel after all. with ellington boulevard it began with one simple moment coming home to an apartment that you thought was yours and finding a real-estate broker in side and you're own dog, my dog, going slight decrease the of the site of a stranger's apartment. from there a whole series of lies about real-estate in new york. the next novel that is coming out next year called the feeds of manhattan was taken from one tiny moment in the back of los angeles and a quote i won't reveal now because i'm not here to talk about that book. "my father's bonus march" is the

story about a book my father always wanted to write but never did and my effort to write that book, find out why he wanted to write that book, why it interested him began in an airplane. it was 2005, it was about -- mabey early 2006, about a year and a half, two months after my father passed away at the age of 80. i was taking an airplane from indianapolis to new york and i was connecting through chicago. and i was thinking, while i was on this airplane, that this would be the first time i would ever pass through chicago but not go to my parents' house, and i was thinking about that, and then i started to look out the window -- and if any of you have done the indianapolis to o'hare flight it's not one of these 30,000 feet in the air. the plan doesn't get up in the air that far. so i started looking at the

window and it is a winter night and i remember it was incredibly clear. and i looked out the window, and i was thinking about my dad and, you know, the conversations we had, the conversations we had and had during the course of his life and mine, and i realized that when we started coming into chicago that his entire life in a way was visible from this window of an airplane. and i could really see the likes of every place he ever traveled. my father used to be a traveling sort of guy, but by the time i was 11-years-old he stopped traveling. he didn't even leave the state of illinois from 1978 to 2005 for reasons i dillinger in the look and reasons i don't necessarily know all the time. so i was looking out the window and i said look, there's the area he was born. there's the old town of west chicago. there is the place where this hospital longer exists, but chicagos hospital where he was

born. then i looked and i saw tears roosevelt road over there. that's the whole west side. that's where my dad grew up on the eastern european immigrants, the son of a man who has supposedly fought in the first world war who started a soda pop factory that went out of business, and then was a trucker for a soda pop company. i could see where that was as well. and then as i started looking, starting the approaching, i could see other aspects of my father's life out the window of this airplane. i could see where he lived when he was a doctor, when he started being a doctor on the west side of chicago, this place called the university of illinois hospital, where he studied, where he practiced, and incidentally with the chicago cubs first baseball stadium was. i could see that out the window as well and i could see east rogers park which is where he lived with my mom, and then i

could see west rogers park and the place where i grew up in 1967 in the places i played, the places he and i had gone, the places we had driven, and then i could see, too, the places, the last place i saw him, which is pretty near where he was born, the hospital where he passed away on the west side of chicago, just blocks away from where he had studied, where he had lived, where his dad lived when he first moved to chicago. so i was thinking all these great faults suposedly great to myself about how this is the last time, this is the first time i'm going to be here and i'm not going to stop i'm just going to be moving on. and i thought about how symbolic this was of my life, my life moving on. actually i speak the same age within days the age my dad was when i was born.

so, we landed in chicago and i am sitting there at my departure gate waiting for the plane to new york. i'm sitting their waiting and waiting and i look at but the departure monitor and everything else has a time except for my flight to new york. and it says "c. indigent," and i go to see the flight agent and it's canceled. so this imagination by had this is wendy the first time i ever passed through new york, passed through chicago and good to york isn't true it's not until the 6:00 the next morning. so i'm in a cab inaki hilboldt this cab and i go back to west rogers park, the same place where my mom has lived since 1960 almost 50 years now. so while i'm in the cab, i'm thinking okay. i guess i can't leave chicago so easily after all. so in in the cab, and i start having a conversation with the

cab driver. and we start talking and he starts telling me about his life. and he tells me about how he was born in key and how he had fallen ill with the regime and had to leave. and he had wound up in chicago where he took a job as a cabdriver. he was going to work in agriculture but it turned out that he was going to work as a cabdriver in chicago coming and he been there for however many years. so i turned to him and i asked him, i said well, have you ever thought about leaving chicago? and he said well, i've been trying to leave chicago for 50 years. [laughter] that is a place i would like to pick up and leave from the first section of "my father's bonus march," which talks a little bit about life like in chicago, which i will pass over since we've already discussed that. and move on to what happened after i came off that airplane,

got out of that taxicab, and arrived at my mother's house in west rogers park. so it ends the previous section ended with the cab driver, which i spoke and it moves on to your. when i got out of the camera could see a light on in an upstairs bedroom. my mother it seems always to be the case now must still be awake. almost 80 she keeps an active schedule staying up late, getting up early, exercising, taking english literature class is at least a month. she speaks slowly and my dad was, how quickly he could read books but she reads more than any of us ever did. she powers threw a party, conrad and dickens. she's always talked about how fast my father did everything, but hers is the energy i often have trouble matching. i walked toward the front of the house passed my mother's garden and up to the stoop where my dad used to sit on a lawn chair while i sat on the steps. i live in this house for the

first 17 years of my life. i came back home after college and lived here for another year. came over for dinner on average of twice a week until i was in my early thirties when my father stays at the dinner table became ever prefer to leave his own spoken effort always seem to me as a family run its course and lets its children though his or her own way. how long are you staying, he but as clever i arrived. you going to be sleeping here? you on your way in or on your way out? during all that time here i hardly ever knew a day of my father wasn't home by early afternoon. he never took business trips, never took vacation time even during the great blizzard of 1967, half a year before i was born when the snow was rendered impassable he tracked down the steps and thus no debate -- thus no allin needed for the train station. every night i slept here. he was sleeping in the dead across the hall. every time i was here for dinner, so was he. there he would be at the head of the kitchen with a dining room table.

upstairs he sat reading john, samuel eliot morison. in the living room watching the bears game on tv. looking out the window to see if my brother or sister was coming home. i can imagine my father in every room of this house. i can see the hard work he made, the collages and sculptures in the basement. the paintings of animals on the laundry room heating pipes. the pencil drawings of the chicago skyline in the living room. strange he won't be in any of these rooms when i walk inside. this house always seemed to be so much his domain. i walk into the kitchen, open the refrigerator, weighted to open the refrigerator come he would say. i would pour myself a glass of juice and he would say why don't you take a glass of juice. i would open the screen door and hear his voice why did you open the screen door? i would take out my house keys, you going in or going out? but as i entered the front hallway, it's my mother's voice i heard coming from upstairs. is that you, she asks? i would say it's me all be right there.

i would take off my backpack and shoes coming up my jacket in the front closet where my dad used to hang his jackets and coat. i would pour myself a glass of water in the kitchen where he is to sit in the only armchair. why don't you take a glass of water, i would hear him say. the house seems utterly quiet, cold. i will pass the dining room where my dad was blazing through until he got the part of the festival meal. visiting upstairs to bed after dinner with barely a good night for a good buy. i gave him -- the dingy orange, but my mom hated but my dad bought its still in the brown wrapping for the fireplace they never wanted to use. another day, he told my mother. another day. dad, my mother calls down. be right there. on the second floor, three bedrooms and two bathrooms. my sisters old bedrooms or drawings and sketches my dad made. and off-the-wall better and i shared with my brother when i was old enough to sleep in my

own bed, my pictures on the wall and my poster on the door and the snow globe atop the dresser and the bed from which just two months ago i was awakened by the sound of the phone ringing. my mother's voice in her footsteps approaching. i knew what she would say before she told me. in my parents' old room, my mother's glasses off and she sits at my father's desk looking at papers under the fluorescent lamp. she gets up when i enter the room and we embrace. how long this has been since i was last year. two months seemed a lifetime one of my mother's favorite movies the man who would be king, three summers and a thousand years ago. i will show you, she said, what i was telling you about it she takes a piece paper and hands it to me. i found it in the letter, she says. my dad could pictures, greeting cards and leader get well cards. but i don't recognize the brief letter my letter.

the letter is dated 1982. dear dr. langer, the letter reads, the march would make a great story. about that, my mother says, remember the bonus march? you remember that. of course i do. the bonus march was a relatively obscure but pivotal event that took place in my father's boyhood during the great depression. my dad told the story of the federal law passed in 1924 and huddling veterans a world war i payment for their service. 1 dollar for every day serve at home, the dollar 25 for every day overseas. but that money was and payable until 1945 or until the veteran's death. in the early 1930's during the deficit depression,

poverty-stricken veterans, fearing their money wouldn't come until after they died lobby washington where texas congressman wright powhaten sponsor a bill calling it remedial payment. approximately 20,000 veterans, world war i in which my dad said my grandfather had served in washington, d.c.. they marched around the nation's capital can't doubt for the better purpose of two months along the banks of the river and elsewhere throughout d.c.. continue to camp and to get even after the bill was finally defeated in the senate. until a bloody confrontation which led the to marchers did. president hoover called him general douglas macarthur and members of the u.s. calvary who fought the on veterans' and forced them out with tear gas, rifles and bayonets. for more than 30 years, my father talked about writing a history for the bonus march. the most overlooked and stand in the 20th century american history, he called it, and the country was on the verge of the coup d'etat. it was an event that history books have left out, he said,

but one that should be remembered. he talked about the need he felt to preserve the memory of the generation that had been neglected by its own government pitting he talked about the need to remember the movement march even as he was beginning to lose his own memory. remember the bonus march, my mother says. remember that one? i do. the bonus march but was far from the only my father discussed but never completed. there is the painting of a female nude from which he had drawn sketches, a fountain he built for the backyard. often he discussed plans but never mentioned them again. when you get back from disney world maybe we will think about getting a dog. he talked about abolishing a liquor store downtown, running it with my brother, opening a screen shot and having my sister annette. there was a realistic he might buy in wisconsin, in that apartment on the magnificent mile around the block. most of the projects mentioned no more than once or twice. you're bringing them up again with my dad he would choose to a quizzical laugh like a drum with a hangover to be reminded of the trouble he caused the night

before. you remember the bonus march? i can remember my dad dictating to my mother authors letters from the book review asking if any surviving witnesses to the bonus march could tell the book he wanted to write. during the conversation like that would return to the topic may i tell learn about the bonus march? what ever i had trouble coming up with a high school record he would say have you thought about researching the bonus march? i often got excited when he was discussing the book and the fact that my dad seems some small strategy and scientist's life was in complete. maybe if he had other interests. maybe he would continue to pursue his art and if he had written his book. his life always seems equally divided between medical offices and the house on mozart. i like the idea of there being more to it. i never learn all that much about the bonus march but towards the end of my dad's life the book seemed like a project we might work on together. when i was a kid we collaborated on projects, movies, stories,

sculptors. but i remember most about them is the stories he told they rarely left along. my father would be in projects that we wouldn't see them through. we work together on a super adaptation of one of my favorite books, the blueberry pie and which there's gambling blueberries from a giant pine my father had made. i was eager to make another through the book may be the tiger and the teapot. but even the my dad takes a costume for me we never saw the movie. we finally took slides addressed as a tiger in emerging from a giant green a garbage truck which to me seemed wholly inadequate. my father once said he and i should read the dictionary together and write lists of words and paper, read a certain number that we didn't pass the first pages. we started with aardvark, ended with abrasion. he talked to me of collaborating a children's book the secret

sicilian salami society but after the chapter he lost interest in the project, too. when i was an adult with a career as a writer and editor and it became more difficult, we would talk about money going to research the bonus march and i would take notes and bring them back to chicago. when my father retired from medicine in the autumn of 2002, he did so with little fanfare i remember. he came home from work early in the afternoon, went upstairs to bed early. the time he would follow through and the projects he always wanted to complete he could paint, draw and then finally write his bonus march book. instead, what happened was a long slow time as if he had already lost his patience. i get shown photographs or videos i had taken to block midway through. my mother and i would give him books he wouldn't finish reading them. frequently when i taught my father i would offer to go to the hoover library in on a lot. i will go there myself when i

feel like it, he would say. but by then i think we both knew he wouldn't make it out of town in the morning. i never found out of the bonus march was the incident that seemed to interest him more than any other. perhaps he wanted to write about it because his father was a veteran of world war i and like many others he felt marginalized when he returned. could my the grand father had actually gone to washington, d.c. to protest? could my dad had gone with him because he was physically unable to serve in the military making that much more concern with veterans' issues with her to the residence for a man that has difficulty walking the rosebud you're trying to find out, maybe that is something he lost as a character in citizen kane. my mother's favorite film in which a dying man's last word leads to a search for the history and identity. maybe the bonus march represented something my father had lost. that book would have bee something else, my mother tells me. you're father, he was something

else. before my mother and my head downstairs i ask if i can make a copy of the letter. she looks uncertain as if not knowing what i might have in mind that she nods and asks how long i will be staying. overnight tell her after i catch a 6 a.m. flight. there are some unexpected advantage is growing up with a distant father. one who often substituted the? party conversation. we usually left he might have been thinking or feeling of to the imagination. you learn to rely on instinct and trust your own judgment. and if you wonder what you might have missed out on, you wonder why you felt so disconnected at the funeral that sometimes it seemed to you as if you were only watching yourself, not actually participating. you wonder why you didn't cry and wonder if it will hit you later the we've often heard grief described but you wonder, too if you wind up not feeling at all and if he would regret this, too. it's just after 4 a.m. and i'm in another cab, heading away from my mother's house on route to the o'hare airport.

in my backpack i have a copy of the letter barbour wrote to my father taught between the look papers of my high school letter my brother wrote about the march. the taxi driver hasn't said much and neither have i.. it's too early to talk any way and i had more than enough to occupy my mind. i'm thinking about my father's bonus larchwood. the project seems symbolic and the relationship with my dad. something that could have taught me more about him and his generation. something the might have brought us together what was left unfinished. the but he never noticed the story of what we didn't do together, the conversations we didn't have and the projects we didn't finish of the stories he left out as the end her life about which i knew so little. of what our relationship could have been but wasn't. the bonus march itself reminds me of the relationship between a searching child and a detached father. the effort perhaps to collect that. my taxi driver is continuing to speed. the route that is different from the one i usually take that that's okay. taxi drivers navigating the

corner to my parents' house could be difficult. getting away from it had never been a problem. for me the opposite has always been true. like my father, i've always had trouble leaving chicago behind. but when i do finally get inside zero here and look at the departure monitor and find my flight, i see that it's the first one of the day and it's right on time. [applause] so, that's where the book begins. as i said it starts with an airplane ride and taxi ride and from there took me to washington, d.c. to talk to senator john kerry but his memories of the march 2 commentary founder millman parts neoconservative founder in new york, my father's favorite magazine to ask him about the bonus march. i was spending a lot of time in skokie in chicago talking to my father's old friends. i talked to my father's high

school girlfriend in los angeles. through all these interviews and her talking to all these people, i try to come up with an image of my father for how others see him and an image of how his life and the bonus march felt some striking parallels. in my books before crossing california and ellington boulevard i tried to take national defence and personal events at the same time and this is the first time i'd ever tried it with my own life, trying to view a historical incident in 1932 bonus march in the context of the life of my father and relationship with him. i'm happy to take questions at this point people have some to offer. and, yes. >> hardee your siblings view the book? are the older than you and does this make sense to them? is their relationship with their

dad? >> i don't know actually. the book has only been out for a short while and i have yet to gather all of my family's opinions about that. the one challenge i did have in writing the book and in showing it to people is a was okay with my mom. that was my one major concern and someone once asked me or to concern about what the reviewers will say about people. once i got through my mom it was the hardest reviewer i could imagine for this book i don't care what anybody else says. succumbing you know, the hardest critic has been if not pleased, satisfied by what's in the book. and, you know, it is a challenge to write a book in which you're not writing a book that's a black-and-white, you're not writing a book and that me talk about my book and the second book to distance myself from the conversation, but you're talking

about the person who i didn't have one of these relationships life father the would be easy to write about and hear or all of the awful things that happened. at the same time, i didn't have one of those relationships where my father was full of lies sayings and softball games and of long lead might conversations about girls. it tells us to write something about either one or the other, something that is a little bit in between the three had the same is true of the bonus march in some ways and it's kind of a complicated incident and one that is not talked about in large part i think because it sort it detracts from the idea of the american dream come a lot of the american heroes are villains in the story to some extent. so, douglas macarthur, great american hero tries the bonus march these destituted veterans that fought during the world war and who was with him, who is the

chief of staff, dwight d. eisenhower coming and who else is in the army then? general george patton who wound up having to evict a guy that saved him during world war i. even franklin delano roosevelt was someone that vetoed the bonus bill so a lot of people think the bill passed under franklin delano roosevelt to the it did so under protest from him. so, the bonus march story itself was something of a dark incident in american history. at the same time though, a lot of positive things came out of it. my father told the story in a very simple way. basically the veterans are arriving at the march in washington and mcarthur kicked him out. yes, that's true, but what he didn't tell me was that veterans kept returning to washington. they returned in 1932 and 1934 and the bill finally passed in 1935 and the veterans did get

their bonus after all. he didn't tell me there were positive aspect as well, such as that there was kind of a precursor to the integration of the army and also displayed the foundations for the g.i. bill so it is a complicated story neither black nor white and the relationship with my dad to place in the context of what i try and show both sides to explore themes and commonalities yes. >> is it difficult to make the transition after writing the nonfiction books to the non-fiction biography material? >> yeah, it really was. partly because first of all -- finally come from a journalist in the back rows of the idea having to write something true isn't strange to me that having to write something true about one's own family is a poses a challenge, and the idea that i

was talking to a lot of friends of my fados people that had been friends of his 60 come 70 years president for 75 years i talked to and felt the need to honor the friendship and respect, and if i wasn't writing about my father's friends this temptations to write a little glib at the side. but i felt i had to be very respectful of the truth in this case, and truth also means resisting people telling you that your story is to be more dramatic. then you want to get more conflict in the story coming you want it to follow a traditional art like i went off and this and this happened and this is what i learned but if i wanted to be tried and true in my own experience that i have to tell with in a different sort of way and have questions that didn't necessarily get answered in a way that would be satisfying to the readers of fiction.

i came out of this book so excited about being able to write a novel again because i was able to lie. i could make stuff up. i didn't have to be true to story and character. in my other fiction i had been pretty inslee - to try to get the detail accurate but the stakes are not quite as high they are personal mistakes. it's cool to me the right music is playing on the radio or that the grocery store on ellington boulevard is the right one but ultimately no one gets hurt if i make something up. here i felt there was a lot more at stake. >> what connection if any did he have to the military and if he didn't have a connection, why? >> he had a connection -- there are still some things left unanswered at the end. my father was he had difficulty

in walking with a hip condition i have as well. his brother served in the army during world war ii. all of his friends went off to serve in world war ii, so he was the son he said of the world war i veteran and came from -- he had a brother who served with his high school friends with a couple exceptions served and because of that there was a great interest in military service and may be the sense that veterans were not being properly recognized so i think that is partly where his interest came from. >> was it really that he had this inner social justice drive even though he hadn't been connected he was being a champion for somebody he felt deserved it? >> i think the real answer to that is me. what i try to do that is get some needles perspectives come bicycle comrades as relatives.

but in the end, it's really difficult to know. i can no my characters but i don't necessarily know another human being inside and out, particularly, you know, one of the things about this book is my dad grew up in all of the kind of totems of his you felt like it to them out the airplane though they were gone by the time i came around. my father and my mother in their 20s they never learned back. they never took me back to the old neighborhood. you go there you get killed. i went to a letter last weekend, but so, you have all these things that are completely not necessarily mysterious but somewhat of a deal like that very far off. so trying to recapture the world and trying to imagine that world as they imagine it, you know, some of it has to be conjecture on my part and hopefully with everybody's input you get the sense of why he might have been interested in this.

but i didn't -- at the end i have a moment where i think it all comes together in the book where i learn something about my father and where he came from. but it's ultimately a good answer but it doesn't feel like a completely satisfying one. and i returned to orson welles a few times throughout. it's like saying rosebud is thus lenihan yes it is, but what does that mean, what does that explain? at the end, you have some ideas of what it might be the that is still a little bit elusive. >> yes? >> you talk about your mother giving the okay on the book. but did you interview her? did you get into her thinking about your father was that a plus or minus? did it help you? >> my mom talked to me about the book coming and we -- she helped me research it. my mom is not one to go and for being interviewed.

in some ways i've been interviewing her for years on a certain level so there are some things i know and some things we discussed but figuring out what the tape, the difference between -- there's a connection that is between one of the reasons i felt i should write this book is one of the last things i remember my father saying to me is my daughter was three months old and i took her on a trip to chicago and i was at my dad's house, my mom and dad's house and i was taking pictures and i took pictures of her on the front stoop of the house and pictures of her here and there and my father who literally live a couple months more said, you know, in some of those pictures and that's one of the last things i remember him saying to me. this means to me, whether he knows it or not, you know, honor the history, don't lose it, preserve it. by the same token, a few months later i was out my folks' house and my dad was gone.

i was taking victory and my mom said to me to be a favor, don't take any pictures of me. so, there's a few glimpses of my mother but i'm not taking any direct pictures because i could write the book without that. so, >> mengin door daughter and you start the book by telling her that story coming and i wonder was that the original location for the book began with stories you wanted to pass on to her? >> when my dad was still alive i did think a lot about all the stories that my father had told trying to figure out a way to preserve and that was at the back of my mind, and so i thought injury is times of my life that i wanted to get everyone who knew my dad and my parents and lived with my parents i wanted to get them on film and do a documentary. i didn't know if it was great to be a personal documentary but to give to my daughter that was it or if i wanted to be a film

documentary. so, as i said i grew up not knowing very much about my father and mother's neighborhood except for what they told me here and there and i had been very conscious of trying to tell my daughter that is only four and a half and the only is other seven weeks at this point so she hasn't heard a lot of the stories in the neighborhood. but, trying not to make that industry because a lot that was mystery to me it's satisfying figuring this out would be interesting, but again, some of it is conjecture and i would like to hear the stories and tell some of the stories. >> i think this is a beautiful book and i think among the new ones are what stories are told and what stories are not told. and of course you do the personal intellectual and historical and you are masterful

at that i believe. i wonder in this process of the research and the sitting together in your own conjecture about this march and you're own father were there times you felt this was so intimate that it was hard to get through? because i think it is also an extremely intimate book. your mother isn't interviewed but there is a very clear picture of her. i'm almost relieved she isn't here tonight. i almost know her too well tonight. were their moments you thought this is too personal? >> when i first wrote them for the but i tried to tell the story without putting myself in it, and i didn't think at first it was necessary. i didn't want to indulge myself and tell little stories about myself. i wanted to let my father's character, and the bonus march to the i thought reading the book they are going to want to know what the narrator is and that can be a mystery, too

commesso then i started telling stories of myself and how those were interwoven so that wasn't my first intent. no one told me to do this. they are things people told me to do that by resisted in terms of trauma or more argument or so forth. but i thought there was important for the reader to know who y yemen where i'm coming from and what my relationship was because otherwise you have a story of some guy searching for his dad's story but why is it so important to him? another question that needed to be answered. and my preference up top would have been not to deal with all of that. >> a lot of the white with a flow of excitement. that was fun. but there are elements that were enjoyable and interesting. but there was a certain intimacy

that i don't usually do in my riding. i try to hide myself in lots of other different characters but i couldn't do that. >> you list the music to listen to while you're right in that process is it different for this history of fiction? >> especially "the new york times" wrote a piece about the music i listen to for letting this bonus march book just on the web site, and normally if i'm writing about the 70's and these were the present, i'm like really deep heavy into listening to books in the 70's. but it's stuff i would normally listen to. this i was trying to recreate both in my dad's world and the world i knew growing up, so i listened to a lot of music from the 40's and 40's and a lot of blues songs about the bonus march in fact. there are dozens of songs

written about the bonus march listening to eight. so, my standard in line is i like to become a you know, there is a method of acting where robert deniro wears underwear to get into the role. i don't do that but i try to listen to the music my characters listen to so i try to listen to music from my dad's youth with his early days with my mom and the time i spent growing up, but you know, when i'm writing there's a lot of music when i'm writing stuff affection you don't blast songs about and you don't last brothers can use garre or dyga i did listen to those while writing. yes? >> unrelated question. are we going to see them in the washington story? >> probably. probably. it's funny because i always say

yes and i do intend to revisit that. but i also have to follow -- i have two or three novels in mind with them, so i can picture the is but whenever i try to right eye in that riding something else. it can't be a calm debate conscious effort to say i'm going to write this book that comes out is the book that comes out. so, often the book i write is one in that i got sidetracked doing while something else. dalia titles for those books, titles for two or three of them, but there is unfortunately so many hours in the day and i can really only work on one book at the time. but yeah, i delivered my final manuscript to my editor an hour and a half before my second daughter was born.

i started working on the next one. >> i have ideas for that the next things i have in mind are fiction and a play that i just finished which is for anyone that saw red cross california in the washington story there's a lot in common in the 1980's in chicago but i'm not sure what i plan on doing with that. that's the most recent thing i've completed. >> do you write every day? >> i used to. >> now you're on book tour. >> the book tour is nothing. i could write every day on the book tour. i have a daughter whose idea of a good sleeping arrangement is waking up at 6:50 and going to bed that he 11 at night. and, so, my -- i hope to get back to the writing every day. my plan to write a thousand words everyday. if you write 500 words a day and

he sounded like he led a life a little more hectic so that sounds about right to me and i should be back to that pretty soon. >> i'm thinking about playwriting. how did that influence or how did your background in theater -- i know in chicago did a lot late and for a theater critic. how does the fielder riding influence your models or even this book? i noticed him on the dialogue at active to the stage when you were talking. >> it's more influenced by phill my thinking and i usually see my books on folding in these movies and this 1i totally saw as documentary. i imagined the kind of structure of the documentary for this, and i do have passages of oral history, where i have a dialogue because then the reason for that is another thing i had intended

when i started interviewing all these people i saw these other stories i wanted to include and i couldn't include chapters on every single one of my father's friends and the way that i thought to do it was to create these essential themes as the way i would do them in the movie where i would have this person telling a story and this person and this person. in terms of learning how the dialogue flow it comes from the letter. it's more of a moving picture. >> thank you. [applause]

>> there's a new exhibit at the library of congress and it's called books that shape america. book tv is taking a tour of the exhibit and joining us is roberta schaefer who is associate librarian for the library of congress. why do you call that books that shaped america? >> well, we actually call with books that shaped america as opposed to the other words we consider like changed america because we think the books slowly have an impact on american society. and shaped seemed to be the better word to imply that kind of consultation. >> when you think of the word shaped what book in this exhibit comes to mind? >> that is the fabulous part of this exhibit. no one book is shaping america. so many books have had such a profound influence on american culture and society and indeed the very essence of what america

is that there would be impossible and would be improper to take one look from 88 curious and there's 88 books and it starts out with common sense. >> yes it does although the earliest book is actually ben franklin's upon electricity. that is in 1751. so, we have to books about thomas a. and michelle. oneness' dr. fox's book on raising your child in a common sense way, and of course thomas kane's book that kind of sparked or save to the american revolution. >> when you see these books are they all first editions? >> they are not all first editions were very rare although we have many books in our collection and our library of congress collection that would be additions and very rare if not one of the kind. but we selected books for a variety of reasons. some of them have inscription's by other famous people or the

authors themselves to read two books in the collection that i adore our books that are part of the armed service book outreach to people who are serving in the military. so we have two examples of books i should say. i believe they are now books to read that the war front on the ipod and other things that least in the olden days -- >> what are the books you have? >> one of them as tarzan and i am trying to think now with the other one is. islamic a lot of novels. >> yes, and novels are a critical part of american culture. not only novel's people read and the common people read it, but some very highbrow and complex novel. some novels that appeared to be when all ages. some children's books that appeal and all ages.

they are hardly limited. >> how did that buckshee america? >> many of them identify the aspirations we had as a nation. others told about experiences that we have uniquely as americans liked the dying rays of lewis and clark. many others defined our dialect. huckleberry finn talk in dialect and so they shaped how we speak today. >> you also have some social cultural books a lot to ask about you mentioned dr. spock. there's a couple cookbooks and the book called the big book alcoholics anonymous. >> we thought it was important to get nonfiction and either

were barriers of some kind of looked at the broad spectrum of books that she dominica and limit ourselves to a particular genre for a particular type of book or a certain type of author were writing style. we look for books that are innovative that show america as an innovative country as a way that looks for practical solutions that share is more broadly that and use books and stories to inspire going into the frontier. that could be literally or intellectual. >> here's the library of congress. are you encouraged -- in charge of the process? >> that's an interesting question. it's a large committee. there is no chair person which i think is interesting. we have a number of discussions as people brought forth titles. and so believe it or not it is

not all that difficult to select these books because i think as you imply, this is not a definitive list. there is no article that shaped america in the title of this exhibition. and so, we really decided what we wanted to do to choose books the way to get america talking about books, and that wasn't as difficult to find consensus on as may be choosing 50 books or the 100 books and so we didn't leave the chair person. >> some of the books have created social movements. thinking on that car will come upton sinclair, rachel carson. >> i think one of the interesting things about many of the books here are that they not only created social movements, but some even lead to legislation. so, we see the jungle in here and we know that there really created the forerunner legislation to the food and drug

administration being created so not only social movements but actually legislation, social change. >> mauney 88? >> 88 is where we decided to stop. we were worried about using a number that is commonly associated with a definitive list. so we avoided ten, 25 and 100. beyond that, it was kind of up for grabs. when we got to 88 we said you know, we think that's a good number. there won't give anybody the impression that we need to read this is 88. >> paltry, religious books, are they in here? >> the arcuri we have quite a few extent was of poetry in the stand with each two centuries we've got walt whitman and allen ginsberg suite try to be clear that poetry has been an impressive part of american history and that america has been very committed to writing and reading poetry and i think

that continues today. >> what about religious books? >> we have a holographic bible. a lot of the books while they wouldn't necessarily be associated with a religion have a kind of do good talent to them and we really felt that that is more representative of america van our values than what be a particular religious book. so we try to get the values of america for the spiritual sort of persona rather than looking at a particular religious books. >> robert shaffer, how did you get your start here the library of congress? >> my goodness i started over 30 years ago as the first special assistant to the library and its full refresh of law school. i absolutely fell in love with the library of congress, and 30 plus years today as today, you cannot keep me away.

i run to work every morning. and i think that working here and being here surrounded by books, manuscripts, musical scores, movies, the whole gamut of what really is knowledge in america is such a thrill and privilege that you really are going to have trouble getting me to retire. >> is this exhibit open to the public? >> entirely open to the public. it will be open through the end of september. but let's say you can't come to washington. we have a virtual version of our exhibit on our web site, and part of this and said that, part of this conversation is an open website where we are asking people from all over the world to comment on the books we have selected, but also to tell us why you think something we selected shouldn't be on the list, and even more important, why something you think should be on the list should be added to the list and we want to hear

from you. so far we have heard from over 5,000 people, and we encourage everybody to go to our website, www.loc.gov/bookfest. you'll find a list of the books. you'll also find the opportunity to complete a very, very brief form telling us what you think of the book and what should be on the list. >> roberta shaffer, the last book published on here is 2002. >> yes. we kind of decided to put a cut off on it. we thought if we are really going to be looking at books that shaped america, we have to give them an opportunity. give them an opportunity to prove their worth in shading america. so, this is an organic endeavor by the library of congress. we intend to keep looking at books that keeping america. but we thought about a decade that's a good place to stop. if we are in 2012 now, let's stop at 2002 and keep revisiting it.

>> the books you have in here, the template on 1987 and cesar chavez, 2002. >> yes. the arcuri and of course randy's but had a huge influence. we talked about that earlier days research and sort of raising our consciousness about that terrible disease. and cesar chavez of course a leading voice, a farmworker but really a leading voice of america petraeus genex, roberta shaker, the books in the exhibit, or the best sellers? >> many of them were best sellers and actually many of them continue to be and have not gone out of print. so even though that wasn't a specific criteria so many of them have been translated and carried american ideals across the world. >> now, i want to ask about one other specific and that is emily dickinson book of poetry. >> will of course emily dickinson is a must have american poet. but the particular books that we have here on the show is done by

a cooperative, and the every produced the book of poetry, and they also made a facsimile of her house and and hearst and a little treat and it is made out of recycled materials. emily dickinson of course is a phenomenal poet, but we really didn't know about her or discover her until the mid 1950's when we finally were able to see her poems and love her poems and edited. >> who is doing the editing? >> of those professional editors like to take their ten and make you conform so emily of all people that was all of construction. >> roberta shaffer, associate librarian at the library of congress. books that shaped america is the name of the exhibit library of congress is located at fifth and independent avenue in washington, d.c. right across from the nation's capital. >> well, now you've seen the