characters so we can have dialogue but not lectures pasted and tolstoy would be a huge case in point* but to have the good grace and sense a the end of "war and peace" before setting off on history fed is tacitly demonstrated by the proceeding but it requires very little thought to come up with examples of novelist either do give a straight for the lecture when we give a lecture, it is just painted in on the dead

christ and we have the incredible picture. this was in 1867 that the first saw this painting and he stood for 20 minutes without moving on the agitated face there was an expression during the first moment of an epileptic fit and he could never forget that sensation from the museum of 1867 christ taken from across whose body already showed signs of the composition haunted him like

a horrible nightmare. and then he comes back to the painting in the idiot and exclaims why some people may lose their faith by looking at that picture and that includes all whole lecture on the painting. i have -- the lights of the eyes of the glint the looking to the dead body of a tortured man one cannot help ask oneself the

peculiar arresting question question, as seen by all his disciples could they have possibly believed confronting with such a site that this murder would rise again? and then must have been overwhelmed by terrible anguish and dismay on the evening that had shattered all their hopes and almost all of their beliefs in one fell below. with a mighty thought never with the eve of crucifixion when taken from the cross in died as he did this question

to you cannot help asking yourself as you look at the picture. >> i guess you could argue that passage is a good instance of the saying that has led some people to claim tolls psd is a profound novelist but to come up with similar essays from other books. there is the famous essay on the integration of values from the sleepwalkers. novels are tacitly about war in response to one's that have gone before and barred traumatized essays about earlier novels.

this is best expressed by george steiner from the book where he points out that the tradition of any art form is up to what steiner calls a still look -- the syllabus of an active criticism. where specifically among other things a critique. wall the literature on madam boveri is fast -- and fast it is two and a terrine and that we look at creative interpretation. that to make good of that that was there in the year earlier books. in the case of the

sleepwalkers three things were and achieved one is what is called the new art of the novelistic essay that does not claim to claim a message but hypothetical or ironic. if you do not know what apodictic means raise your hand and security will escort you. i don't know either. but it makes me sound clever [laughter] but the reason this was achieved with broch he believes the essay written allegedly by one of the characters seems so much like the authors

presentation to the larger world of which it is a part, and aston to elaborate fat within the novel the essay enters the realm of play and reflection in is inquiring hypothetical. there is a say that is literally in the novel the sleepwalkers. but he really claims that it is not adequately assimilated by the novel's ball, -- chemical processing. once it becomes a part of the novel it since changes a

dogmatic fought to become hypothetical. to put the assay into the malls of characters those letter his but it is tone that is crucial. with that chapter about his reflection for study and passion behind it is provocative. of the essay is unthinkable. is what i mean with a

novelistic essay. to keep on with that his novels are flow of the raving mad essays and anything and anything all the more hilarious to be insanely serious. i will read one now that one passage is from an exaggeration from his last great novel. there is a novel for extinction but i will read this passage to you. i have cultivated to such an exaggerations it is exposing the art that i know of. nobody cares the art of exaggeration to such extremes. if i was suddenly justice say what i was secretly a

would have to say i was the greatest artist i knew in the field of exaggeration. the art of exaggeration is the art of one self over existence to make themselves and durable has always been the great exaggerated ears they it owed to the art of exaggeration. the arts who does not is the pork painter the muses -- musician who does not exaggerate is support musician and also a pork right tear. the art of exaggeration understates everything in which case we have to say they exaggerate the statement that a century is the understatement of their version. >> that is a nice little critique on hemingway.

[laughter] but one has to do disagree with us to be entirely serious and and playful s.a. into a novel as long as the town is consistent. with the long dispositions about time with that magic mountain in cosmic boring piece or the lecture on why there is no movement with beethoven's last sonata 111. or if you look at the handout from page 1972 book of prize-winning novels.

with a bit of context, this is from the metal -- middle of a sex scene where they break off to discuss them probability to right the sex scene also his guest to be a visual artist as well. to stretch the traffic, that little passage appeared as an essay in his own right before it was pasted in before the days of computers. roger and susan post described themselves as storytellers but the natural tendency but was tore the

analytical and they had to find forms of fiction that they made a virtue of this inclination. i think they made the transition from intellectual touse storyteller. but the first volume of his trilogy of peasant life in the french alps is bracketed by what is called an explanation and historical after word but in his case she is a great critic but could not tell a story to save her life with the novelistic essay makes one

realize that shakespeare is specifically of play like a shield and also pointed out and we will come back to that shortly. hamlet is a series of little essays. hamlet on friendship. hamlet on suicide. this is not just me twisting shakespeare to suit my purposes in a marginal comment of a soliloquy herman melville wrote here is forcibly shown have led. to cv essayistic qualities.

to revert, i don't know about you but while i still enjoy the essayistic part of the of miracle like this i was becoming increasingly impatient with the novelistic parts which unfairly i remember a benny hill with doctors and chasing after nurses so i was glad to get those be trade and s.a. of seven parts that they gave me all the stuff that i wanted without the novelistic bits. in the novel of the former variation, then the

testaments be trade was an essay of the variations are a series of variations. the same is true of that later that ends with the extraordinary reflection that is similar. is the history of music. a wonderful idea. but to in other words, to say that is the novelistic essay ashley novel that is exactly what you get with the supremely great book

from another writer you and i with a book about john updike. and the novelistic essay is what you get thrown out the works of the really great polish writer and of course, we value him for his reporting for the fact he witnessed all of those revelations in south america but that those essays about anything and everything. may interesting case of this framing lecture. christmas morning mentioned the book but they're really

did not make any difference because for so long they were indifferent to our telex such pride in and what has emerged from after his death to roam the world as he did with the secret service and not to go into the conundrum but from the point* of view was severely compromised by the revelation also the issue about whether he saw some of

the events that he provided such a spill of blinding eye witness accounts. but to repeat with that wonderful digressions from the shadow of the sun and continuing on the note of novelistic essay behalf to mention the huge book on yugoslavia, here she is in a cafe in the 1930's. this is her in yugoslavia. and seems so much from

gabrielle. officers moved rhythmically through the beams of white flight that poured down upon the acid green of the billiard tables. the billiard balls they felt their stoic shock. the feeling of a shiftless yet of a just doom and it seems possible someone may come into the room and just comprehensible enough and nonsensical because those officers playing billiards at the moment where play space games the eternal fate is decided that people sit there quietly and reading

the newspapers with a little thin yet of the course of yugoslavian history. it is a great great book i warmly recommended. i really would. [laughter] in the epilogue to the book rebecca west comments she loves ibsen because she corrected the chief lot of english literature to recognize the dynamism of ideas. with characteristic vehemence rebecca west later decided "that in some cried out for ideas for the same reason that men called out for water because they don't got any.

[laughter] the dynamism of ideas. centralizing to the appeal of the say. and the ideas are to essays what characters are to the novel. that is what you want from the novelistic essays and that is what we get the abundance from and his faces with the lyrical and loving and and flow of space and time and painting and place. also fears and a different form from his autobiography she writes the doom of esa compared to the novel, a

doomed to authenticity with quotation marks. that the book is prefaced all those imagined by a character in a novel the whole saying comes in quotation marks. with this discussion of s.a. and fiction and ideas and quotation marks his seems he came up with an entirely new version of the novelistic essay especially the names.

will love little lecture is pasted in with the characters space come to a certain point* cliff filming is implied with it self this is where we are. more than the fact we're constantly on film and constantly watching. a packet -- of passage like that this of feel pasted like tundra objected to.

their dozens of characters of all ages and they all sound exactly the same. they're all influenced. so with that issue you get what you get per these amazing meandering deadpan essays in dialogue under the blazing sun. but i hope with this semaphore you can follow your way through its. tell me about cairo. there is a city for you. 40 degrees celsius. 9 million people. you need at least 9 million people before you earn the

right to call yourself a city. the heat is impressive. the sand is impressive. sweeping sand off of the airport roads. i missed the sand good man. i was only there one day. that is all it takes. great cities take a day. the traffic, the sewage, the heat, telephones, get david to tell you about to rob. there is traffic. there is a city. now there are great books of those that are offered the letter called narrative's. letter called narrative's. they are highly original essays on place nor the myth of greece and india but with

style and arrangement others are almost indistinguishable from the other so-called novels. going back to only one teeing the essayistic part the preference of mind speaks to and impatience you're probably sharing as we're right on course. [laughter] i am very aware i read less and less novels as i get older. this tendency has been so well articulated in the book reality under he quotes says jay said instead of reading

or writing the 600 page novel he preferred to write reviews of these books as though they already existed. it is absolutely impossible to say where that novel begins and the fiction and. with philosophical investigations david his is of fairly seen as the anti-novel the hottest but the novel seems to offer entertainment but with the deep plumbing of consciousness so those that extends almost to the essay form it self. with a book entirely of

quotations that book reality under is a collage or montaged in which bids from other people are not acknowledged or distinguished from his own beds and in this regard he was deeply influenced by the book called this is not a novel. a novel of quotations and other books without any explanation for links it is highly fragmented and say of the experience of a lifetime of reading of one right to reflecting on another. we're coming to the ant i want to end very, very conservatively by pointing out something that you know, already. first, of course, if it is

of any quality even the most straightforward he picked up a cup of tea if it is of a certain quality of so essays from what we have always wanted from literature observation so exact it is into speculation that with richard ford or updike. one of the rabbit books ravages on a plane and is conscious of the cold outside and you can scarcely believe is there the sometimes feel it packed in the astute -- sickly -- suitcases and feeling unpack

your clothes with the dirty and a rare and beach towels with the chill of death from outer space still in them. >> continuing with the st. down the line fiction writers, notice the great attraction when the protagonist with us early underrated novel on the neighborhood of hammersmith to describe it just as a block or two the place with the oblivious city where his

life slowed and recovered. it seems to me in any form or john know we are all the time getting fees in perceptible trips from prescription to reflection to the essayistic crossing back and forth all the time between what is called the metaphysical streets of the physical time. thank you. now you can have some lunch. [applause]

>> good morning or afternoon. everything that geoff dyer said is true but you may not go to lunch. [laughter] you may not go to lunch. you have to listen some more. asking if we have enough to talk about to be dragged bodily off the stage this is almost a ridiculous privilege. they may be panelist but they are among my dearest and oldest friends. the idea we've got to be flown down to key west to

set up here to talk to each other about our greatest literary passion for free seems like an incredible scam. [laughter] but we will pretend that we are panelists. [laughter] and like other episodes, this is serious business. we have a lot to talk about. phyllis rose, it is like from oklahoma where everyone can be an artist. here we can be a star. and our subject today is the eyes of weatherford, the biographer and the limits of

the objectivity. and the others of which i dreamed up. [laughter] now, a light to begin by mentioning the biographies of our, you are not contestants. [laughter] of our participants. . .