>> well, you have, i think there are several -- you one who is a korean and i think we have one korean-american come and i think you will see more going forward because you've got a lot of asian-americans who are mayors, you know, in major cities. and i think that the answer is i think it would be very helpful to have more asians, americans as members of congress. and, of course, you had a governor who is now ambassador, whose or secretary of commerce, who is now our ambassador to beijing. and if you believe the chinese are the most hyper ambassador of any in china today. so popular that some members of the current think he is -- the chinese government thinks he's too popular. and he's a good friend of terri's, and also of mind.

so i would hope to see more of that going forward. >> at the time of the formation of the euro, the three-tier euro was considered but not adopted. and an unfortunate result of this has been the mediterranean countries so largely dependent on tourism has become -- they are really not competitive. is it time to reconsider the three-tier euro in that important affair would be a very substantial devaluation of the mediterranean countries, and that should result in job growth, economic growth simply

from increased tourism? >> i think it's fair to say that historically, i talk about latin america, and als also about the asian financial crisis, korea, as an example, indonesia also, is that one of the great age they had was the ability to devalue. and what do we have? we have euro at one of its strong points today, which is one of the reasons why i'm an advocate for the european central bank to drop interest rates which i think will push the euro lower and help on exports. i think it always hangs out there. that's the biggest argument, like greece, should leave the euro. because their currency is misaligned for a country like greece. i do not see that you're going to have a two-tiered or three tiered system.

i think if you really are going to have a new alignment, it will be some members will be there and others won't. and so i think what is important though, and more and more i think the politicians are raising this, policymakers also in brussels, the bureaucracy, you cannot just wipe it out with a story -- posterity did you got to plans for growth. that was just a message i took to portugal when i was there. in june last year. because if you don't show that there is growth potential, and i should say portugal has increased substantially, but you need to have a plan for growth. now, devaluation alone won't give you that because you got to be competitive. you've got to have deregulation. those are even more important than a devaluation. because devaluation only lasts so long, why should make the

major changes and deregulation, this is the real i think going to be challenge for prime minister abe because we've had 14 agreed simas programs since the late 1990s in japan, and none of them have really done the job. so you have to bundle this up any packet, and put them through. so that's the best way i can answer you. and i think that where the europeans a follow dunk and this goes back to the question is, they didn't put the emphasis on being competitive. they didn't put the emphasis on driving the fiscal side on with the monetary side and allowed it to happen, and looked the other way. and now they're paying the price, and so is the world. >> days and gentlemen i'm afraid, you know, i've got the bad job of having to say i think we better hold it there.

spent while i still have my voice. >> and bill, what an outstanding presentation. not only are you an outstanding world leader, you're the banker to the world. [applause] >> you are watching booktv, nonfiction authors and books every weekend on c-span2. >> the final panel from the 30th annual key west literary seminar begins now. "the biographer as autobiographer and the limits of objectivity" features authors jay parini, brenda wineapple, edmund white and phyllis rose. this is about 40 minutes. >> good morning, or afternoon. everything that just said was

true, except you may now go to lunch. [laughter] so you may not go to lunch. you have to listen to samore. fellas, laughably us, if we have enough to talk about. whether we are dragged off the stage. for me, this is really almost ridiculous privilege. these are, a few of these panelists, but seeing the are among my dearest and oldest friends. so the idea that we got to fly down or flown down to key west to set up there and talk to each other about our greatest literary passion for free, seems like an incredible scam. [laughter] but we will pretend that we were, panelists. and it is going to be unlike

some other episodes, this is serious business here, and we have a lot to talk about. we have phyllis rose, star of our show, and we are all stores. it's like tosca, great leader of oklahoma. here, everyone can be a star. and edmund white, and brenda wineapple and jay parini. and are subject today, "the biographer as autobiographer and the limits of objectivity," which is a subject very dear to me in which i dreamed up. which is a lie. now, i would like to begin very practically by mentioning the biographies of each of our, i

guess you're not contestants -- [laughter] >> are participants. well, after that harold bloom -- have written and then ask you what it is that drew you to these particular subjects. in each case it will be different perhaps my but perhaps also a committee of theme will emerge. and i won't describe all their books, which are profoundly and numerous. but just for our purposes here, phyllis is the author on virginia woolf, the biography of josephine baker, and as literary classic parallelize. and edmund is the author among many other books in various forms, wonderful novelist and essayist, the biography of jean

genet, and beautifully brief biographies of proust and rimbaud. emily dickinson, hawthorne, and jay, when falcon, john steinbeck and robert foester i do so like to begin with phyllis. what do you see as having drawn you to these particular subjects? >> okay, i like to go back if i may a little earlier, considerably earlier to win nine in grade school even to explain my rather simple notion about what a person writes a biography. when i was in grade school, i think it must have been, i do, seventh, eighth grade, therefore i was what? nine or 10, i don't know about that. i had to write -- 5.

>> i had to write what we call a book report about the biography of an admirable woman. and so i went to the library and there were only two biographies of women in the entire library, as far as i could see. one was eleanor roosevelt, and the other was the duchess of windsor. [laughter] and i can even buy nine or 10, had had quite enough of eleanor roosevelt. and so i chose the duchess of windsor, and i brought it home, and my mother asked me what i was doing, and i said well, i'm writing this book report on the duchess of windsor's biography because she's an admirable woman. and my mother got incensed. and she said, admirable?

what did she ever do in her life except marry somebody she shouldn't have? [laughter] so i learned the lesson, and i took the books back and turned it in, and, of course, did the inevitable eleanor roosevelt. but i sort of got imprinted i think very early on, you use biography as a way of exploring that which you, that which was my. and my mother was right, to keep me from the duchess of windsor. i think that we're all very lucky that it didn't start writing biographies earlier because i probably would have produced the definitive biography of hopalong cassidy. [laughter] when i was six, going even further back, whenever they wanted to be was a cowboy. so, you know, how i got to this

point, i would've certainly written about hopalong cassidy. so now we'll move ahead to virginia woolf, okay, and i really stumbled on to virginia woolf. it's just amazing to think in the late 1970s i had not read virginia woolf. but an undergraduate, i was teaching, and an undergraduate came to me and asked me to do a tutorial with her reading through the whole of the virginia woolf book and i was completely blown away. and what i was blown away by more than anything, and this goes to what jeff was talking about this morning was the room with one folder i like the novels. i like the light has been i could understand what they were about. but a room of one's own really spoke to me. it was about women in fiction and why women did not have the

authority to be writers. and that addressed very directly an issue we would say that i had. and i found it deeply personal, deeply inspiring. and in the light of that essay, taking seriously her feminism, because it was i thought very important to her, i read the novel and read them. and what turned out to be a slightly different way from other people because i was interested in this, in the issue of her being a woman and took that seriously. so i started writing essays about the books, and then threaded and together with what seemed to me biographical materials that was relevant. and to my amazement this book considered a biography. so i really, i moved backwards

into biography, not forwards. i didn't know -- i didn't intend to write a biography. i backed into it. but i have to say in my own phrase, that once i saw what i done, i thought this is a really good idea. so i continued. i continue doing it. i saw the virtues of biography as a way of addressing very personal issues. maybe we will talk about just baker later because i don't speak you don't have to cover all of them. >> okay. >> that's expressed, the way we are going speedy let me say one thing about josephine baker. i fear that i danced as well as virginia woolf, and that i am as impressive intellectual as

josephine baker. [laughter] but they are both, they're both very meaningful to me, and they think you can probably immediately see why a very funny dancer is just somebody who is me. can't you just look at me and see that? [laughter] >> well, when i was 12, i started to write the biography of peter the great because i was absolutely paramount as a child and wanted to be a general. and i went, i got my father descended to culver military academy which absolutely hated. i immediately quit. so that was the end of my power madness. anyway, i got -- i could see how hard it was to write a biography. years went by, and my favorite editor, bill whitehead, was related to the whiteheads of key west, anyway, he asked me if i

knew anyone who could write a biography about jean genet. and i said well, do you mean to say there isn't anyone? there isn't about get? and he said no. and i said oh, i'll do it. and i thought it would take like three years to do. that it took seven. and i think a lot of people have talked about different kinds of biographies, but i think when you write the first biography of somebody, you are obliged to do, not to do terribly interpretive or the way you could be with virginia woolf, because there've already been so many. but the first biography is a document for the future. i mean, who cares about your interpretations? what you're really doing is anything all the -- genet only died in 1986, and i began my book in 87. so there were lots of people

around the new genet, and i felt that was important to get down all their witnessing of his life. with my little book, people criticize it for being too much, it's a gay version of proust go all the proust was entirely gay and that's all he ever did. [laughter] i mean, biting wit, people think i emphasize that too much, but i felt because there've been so many, there's probably a whole roomful of books about proust, that i had a right to do a gay proust, you know. >> i thought so. >> what i just said about writing the first ever biography of someone is likely very interesting. i talk about it, and i had the same experience because i chew my first book was a biography of janet planner who had been the

correspondent for "the new yorker" for 50 years who wrote under the name of genet. in fact, i think my book came out around the same time, maybe before. i think at the same time as genet. and as i recall, and do correct me if i'm wrong -- [laughter] >> your book, i think one and national book award, and my mother turned to me and said, well, i don't understand how a book named genet won the national book award and it's not yours. [laughter] >> yours had a little hat over it spent just come at that time. i came to write that particular book not because i was interested in biography to actually i wasn't at all. and around the age had to was talking about i started a novel and was ripped out of the. i wrote the first chapter and abroad to my father and you look at it and he read it and he was very kind. he wasn't a modernist him and he said but there's no plot. and that was the end of my novel writing career because i realize

i had no plot. i wanted to write the story of a woman that i went down to the library of congress as had been suggested i go and look at papers of janet. they had just been opened. and when i read through these letters, i was talking about the excitement of being in an archive, for the first time i've done that. i read the letters and it was really among a group of very articulate, strong women who were supportive of one another, and to a certain extent, self-sustaining. and i thought how can i do this story justice? and the only way i could figure out to do -- i wanted to tell the story of these women, and i decided to do it through biography because i felt that was a way to use janet flanner as a kind of means they get to the way friendship and groups of women at a certain time in paris

were self supportive and self-sustaining, and extremely important to one another through their lifetime and through old age, which also found very moving. while i was working, or towards the end of working on that book, and i was interviewing people, few people would mention the relationship that -- start, janet flanner new gertrude stein, and when i would talk about that relationship, some people whispered to me, well, you could never mention leo stein in front of gertrude or really alice. and i thought, that's the strangest thing i've ever heard because these people were very close but it was a close family come and gertrude and leo stein in some sense and documented the salon with which we are all very enamored today. so that's a good story. what is the story between those

two people? what happened to that particular relationship that launched the second book. and then hawthorne, which is the other, relating, i would relate that to the panel earlier this morning. and i thought well, i like this forum. i want to write about a person because this way in which leo stein wasn't economical. cartridges, but on the fringes people really dislike her power in many ways. and janet flanner become less and less known. i thought i would like to write about a minute i thought i'd like to write about a comical male writer, and i knew a lot about massachusetts, where i'm from, saving, where he is from, and so that's in some sense how i chose hawthorne. but as i said yesterday some of these choices, they seem conscious but they are really quite unconscious spent i just want to add one thing if i could

come and that is that nobody has ever, i do believe, talk about this aspect of biography, that is a very good repository for everything that is known about somebody. i mean, like my biography was endlessly long come at least it contained all the information, not just about he did this, he did that. but also all the various studies of him that had been done. and there was no other one place where all that existed. >> it is that archival sense to it, too. >> i admire these people who are primary biographers, really assembling zillions of facts and really putting things on record. i don't really consider myself too much in a category. i'm sort of a secondary biographer. and i don't mean that necessary self-deprecatory, i simply mean that there are those people that go into genet, or really, you

know, my colleagues here, so and so forth, they really go out and interview everybody and look at all the letters for the first time. i'm sort of coming afterward often, correcting and other earlier biographer, or writing in preference to a novel version which is really my fantasy version of the life of author benjamin, or my recent book with passages about herman melville. and it's my fantasy, although i tried, i mean, in the passages of hm, i said, every other chapter is by melville's wife, and i make it up because nothing is not about her, so i got to inventor. or in the longer chapters where i said to myself, let's imagine i can have a life of herman melville, but it don't have to really do any research, or know anything. and i can go anywhere. i can say what melville is thinking when he meets this handsome young sailor. you know, so for me it's that

imagine freedom i was seeking. and so i can't even in my straight biographies, try to imagine the life and really say what did it smell like, feel like to be in that life? i've really done original research except for my new biography of jesus where i interviewed everybody. [laughter] that was a lot of fun. market was a real bitch. [laughter] but matthew i could sort of take. luke -- john was really crazy. spend what was the highlight? >> all, god. [laughter] it was the dress i couldn't take. but, you know, i also do think going back to the original topic of a biography as autobiography, it's interesting how the genres cross. i never forget years ago sitting with gore vidal, two friends of

mine in austria, having lunch and gore said in his super silly way, what are you working on now my dear? she said oh, i'm writing my memoirs. he said, at last, you are turning your hand to fiction. [laughter] you know, i mentioned earlier i studied and was friends with berlin who wrote a great -- on tolstoy called a hedgehog and the fox, and he's quoting the great greek who said the hedgehog has one big idea, and the fox as many ideas. and i'm a fox, but as a fox we always love the other day and i'm in love with hedgehogs. and only write about monsters and hedgehogs. jesus is a big hedgehog of course. gore vidal is a hedgehog. he only has one idea, we know what that was. but tolstoy had commuted, he was

the ultimate hedgehog, and frost was a hedgehog. and remember, i made a joke yesterday about when i wrote a novel about tolstoy and the sentiment mother and she said, was to start writing books about me? [laughter] -- stop writing books about me. it seemed like a terrible joke she was making, and she was serious but i realized my mother is kind of, she's a wonderful tirade. she's 97 and she still going strong. she's amazing. certainly i learned about tolstoy by growing up with my mother. and when i wrote a tolstoy i just imagine my mother talking, and also the pursuit of the big white whale, you know, going after the hedgehog, you know? so in a sense i feel like and all my books, all i'm doing is being this little talk, totaling

is comprised by these hedgehogs are tremendously trying to figure out how the they do that here last night. >> jay, what is your mother going to think of this jesus book? [laughter] she was a merry mary quite contrary. [laughter] i don't think i'm being facetious when i say that you frame the discussion in a fascinating way i talking about the difference between the distinction between writing fictionalized biography that you do and the supposedly nonfictional biography that we write. i have become fascinated by this because the more you spend time writing biography and thinking about biography, and again i don't say this as a criticism or wish to undermine the legitimacy

of the enterprise, the further away i feel from a any conviction or confidence that we have actually been, gotten to the heart of the matter or been even accurate sometimes in the most ruthless ways, so now that we've talked about how to choose your subject, i'd like to go from there and ask how do you think these choices are reflected in the books that you write? a in a covert, i suppose distinction about epic and the other day, but a covert or overt way. since we're now any stage of soon to be superseded unsure by some other stage, where we are suspicious of the validity, and

as you describe phyllis, the other night, so vividly. we've left behind the 19th century biography for the post-deconstructionist, unstable narrator. the unstable narrator, like commandant. but in any event, how do we, how do we appear in these books, if at all? >> well, going back to the distinction that somebody to my left brought up here between the definitive biography and, i forget what the term was -- >> secondary. >> secondary. which is really interesting. ..

>> to our wonder has made herself famous. and it's definitive in in the sense that he knew everybody, he grew up with her. and he has all the facts right, and he really cared about that deeply, deeply, deeply. but in some respects it's not about -- it's not definitive. it left out, to me, you can imagine, i got it sent airmail from england, and i read it in the terror, and i was going,

whew, whew, whew. [laughter] it doesn't do, doesn't do what i'm doing, so thank goodness there's still room for my book. my point is no matter how definitive and no matter how objective-seeming the book is, it still has some kind of personal bias. and i don't mean to mean the word "bias" prejudicially, but there's a human mind there making the choices. and there's a personality behind every book. and the person's personality will be reflected in the kind of book they write. i wrote the only kind of book about virginia woolf that i possibly could have written. that's my virginia woolf book. so i think there's always personality reflected in the biography, no matter the genre. >> i think what i say is going

to sound really old-fashioned, but i really believe there's a great difference between biography and fiction because i write both of them, and i think that contract with the reader is entirely different. and when people find out that an autoboig by or a biography is full of mistakes or lies, they feel terribly cheated. i mean, all we have to think about is "a thousand little pieces," that novel, or even such a minor thing as in john berentz's book, everybody felt terribly cheated. and i think that the contract with the reader is entirely different. people ask me why do you call your biographical novels novels, it's because you're free to do whatever you want, make 200

lovers into 20 -- >> or 20 into 200. >> yeah, right. [laughter] and it just gives you, and you can shape the narrative in a dramatic way. i don't know if there's too much relationship between writing biography for me and writing fiction, but in one way perhaps with the -- [inaudible conversations] >> we can all go home now. [laughter] >> i realized that he had the most incredibly diverse life that you could never in a million years predict. he began as a foster child in the morval which is sort of like kentucky, and, i mean, for america. and he, um, and he ended up a friend and defender of the black panthers panthers and the palestinians. i mean, this trajectory is

absolutely unbelievable. and if there's one thing i hate, it's freudianism. and so many biographies are dominated with freudianism with the idea that you should find the key in some childhood trauma. and, of course, that's what sargrer does in his book, he says that he was of caught stealing as a child. when i interviewed 13 people from the village, he was never caught, he was never stoned, he won the number one prize as the best student in the whole county. and he was adored by his foster mother. and, you know, so i think there's a difference between fact and fiction -- [laughter] and, i mean, i really do. -- >> hope so. >> i mean, i know that's primitive of me to say -- [laughter] but working on the gonet biography, i realized if you took just the name and you

tacked all these things on to it that it was an immense from jekyll ri -- trajectory that included so many things the way flanders does. and i thought after i wrote a book of autobiographical fiction, and in that i felt like, well, if i have one subject, i, i can say the most incredibly diverse things. i don't need to worry as i had in the two earlier books of autobiographical fiction about giving a shape to the whole thing. i can just let the "i" be a kind of hanger on which you drape all the different cloapts. because all those things did happen to me just as all those things did happen to gonet. >> you know, i largely agree with ed here. i think that, first of all, and i think judith brought this up yesterday, the whole notion of the author, biographer,

whatever, their credibility is essential. and you have to establish credibility, and it's very important to do that. you have a contract with the realizer, as i said yesterday, to tell the truth, but tell it slant. now, of course, the truth gets into an area, fudgy area that jim is suggesting and, you know, ralph waldo emerson said each age writes its own biographies which is to say of course there are going to be many biographies, many interpretations, that's what phyllis said, about, say, virginia woolf or whomever just in a short period of time. but that doesn't mean it's fictionalized, that just means one has a different author in a different time with a different outlook, maybe even using different paper or archives or materials that became vawbl. when i did my gonet, i was very,

very nervous because many of the trends at the time were still alive, and one in particular, sib bill bedford who is, or who was a woman i respected enormously. she's a fabulous writer, large and terrific human being, wrote in several genres, and she herself had written a biography about -- [inaudible] we became friends, and i remember before my book came out i went to sybil's in london, and i said what if you don't like it, what if my janet isn't your janet? and she sat back in her wonderful way, um, with a glass of scotch in her hand, and she said your janet is your janet, my janet is my janet. janet's janet is janet. and she was absolutely right. and it relieved me nor mousily

because i realized i could only do the best that i could do. i could do the best with whatever materials i had and ability, and that's it. and end. [laughter] >> i sort of disagree with everybody. [laughter] >> you always have. >> i really especially disagree with what ed said. i'm a huge fan of ed's writing. and, um, i still think, i mean, essentially i thought phyllis set us up very well for our ongoing, extended literary discussion here in suggesting that we have to think of biography and biographical fiction, even autobiography in wake of literary theory x. i think phyllis was suggesting covertly, even overtly, that biography is the least theorized of all of our genres. and i think that when we begin to theorize biography -- which i do think we need to do -- then

we start to realize, um, we've got to break away from the old objective idea in 9th century -- 19th century, you know, preliterary theory idea of biography as being objective, and you've got to get the truth, and you've got to line things up. i'm certainly not saying you make up interviews or you distort quotations or you get the facts wrong. there's such a thing called the agreed-upon facts. but that's a very steppingstone sort of thing. that is such, so elementary that it's almost not worth discussing it from my point of view. i think as soon as anything is processed by memory, it's fiction. biography is about the putting into words just as fiction is about the putting into words. from my viewpoint biography is the purest form of fiction because the self isn't so consciously intervening at every point. if you're writing fiction, you can't help but having this terrible thing called "i" which

then breaks in. and so, hence, the joke about erica. but, you know, she writes novels, and she's just doing thinly-disguised versions in the fear of lying, so far, in the life of erica young. and that's fine, because that's what most novels do. but i think biography gives us an opportunity to be selfless and yet write the purest kind of fiction. because we have these shadow figures. you know, your gonet isn't real, you know? your janet flanner isn't real. phyllis' characters are not real, they're processed by memory. they're just, you know, like, you know, dots in the world, electrons. >> well, i completely disagree with you because -- [laughter] >> i was hoping you would. >> when you write a primary biography, you constantly have the question of truth that you have to weigh. for instance, i interviewed a photographer who traveled with

gonet when he was living amongst the black panthers. and he said i don't want to talk about gonet, he used to be a here -- hero of mine, and now i'm so disappointed. i kept digging and digging, he wouldn't talk about it. finally he said i saw him dance anything many a pink negatively jay for the panthers. and i said -- and he was completely stoned. and i said that's impossible. because gonet made a radical change in his life from being a kind of feminine homosexual with long hair and was a prostitute to being this kind of macho guy that he devised this new personality for himself in prison. and he never would have danced -- that's impossible. and enthen i interviewed -- and then i interviewed years later angela davis, and she said, oh, i loved gonet, he was such a gender bender. i loved the moment he danced for the panthers in his pink negatively jay.

and so then i had two sources for this story even though it contradicted everything i knew about him. and it didn't fit into my scheme for him. and so if i've imposed my scheme on him, on the facts, we wouldn't know the truth. >> but i read your biography of gonet, and i thought it was a great novel. [laughter] i consistent being excite -- kept being excited about what would happen next. it's shaped like a novel. it's got a rise and a fall, it's very dramatic. and, you know, is -- life is not like that, you know? >> but no one is saying the biography isn't shaped and isn't narrative. and if ed's biography starts to become a novel, that's your way of complimenting him, and that it's wonderful. that means the biographer has at his or her disposal narrative

devices of the novel. there are all kinds of ways you can use timing and pacing and characterization and setting and all the, all the tools. those are the same that poets use or you could use images. bob richardson's book this morning, his thoreau is beautiful, a beautifully-crafted book. you would think you're reading, in some senses, poetry. so it's actually wonderful, and i think that's because -- [laughter] because bob is talented. he's very gifted in that way, and he's writing, he's chosen nonfiction, i think, because -- >> bob is a good example, though, because he -- his method of writing biography is to read everything that the author had read. so, like, we all think we'd like to read madame bovary or anna

karenina, but he was forced to read what emerson read which was corrine, an endlessly long novel. because that's all was available to those poor people in the beginning of the 19th century. [laughter] >> now, i have the unpleasant task of having to bring this to a close because we're on a very tight schedule. i'd hoped we'd have questions, but with this these -- this has certainly been the easiest panel i've ever had to moderate. phyllis, you see we will have enough to talk about, and -- but we will have to resume in other ways. and now what jeff dyer said 45 minutes ago is, in fact, true. so we are done for now. go have chowder, come back. [applause] >> we'd like to hear from you. tweet us your feedback, twitter.com/booktv.