>> recounting the life of his father, sol, bellow, and reports his dad, recipient of numerous awarding inning the pulitzer prize grew sty dent in the political beliefs as he grew

older and less accepting of other's views. this is about 45 minutes. [applause] >> janet's going to start. are the mics working okay around the room? do we have to do anything? >> so greg and i were e-mailing about how to do this tonight, and we came from different places thinking about it, and the place i came from thinking about it was, holy, cow, in another year, by father will have been born a century ago so the way that time happens that we wanted to get out from under, you're now doing your best to reevoke in the ultimate irony of existence, and the past seemed quite past to me as i thought about returning tonight, and so i thought that -- and i checked with greg, and i thought the way i'd like to start is by framing for you just a little bit about the two men and how they met and

a little bit about that path because they knew each other across a fair amount of time. in the summer of -- so, excuse me, reading is what i was going to say. in the summer of 1952 #, the year i was born, my father left oregon where he was teaching and visited new york city for several weeks going there in part to look in on his father and brother going through difficult times, but he was also there to celebrate the upcoming publication of the first novel, "the natural," an event dreamed of as a boy at 15 and worked for 25 years to make it happen. talk about long apprenticeships, by the way. the writing apprenticeship, this was a man who worked for 20 years before he published anything. i think we forget how long that can be. during his visit to new york city city, he met sol bellow, wrote in a letter to my mother that saul is a really wonderful, superior person. we chatted for two hours

including time spent in the car as he drove me from queens where he lives to manhattan. he said so many nice things about my book and stories that i was infin gnat elated. these two ambitious competitive men maintained a friendship for 35 years. they were not terribly close, but they did not always meet regularly, but they managed to stay in touch. towards the end of my father's life when saul summered in vermont not far from where my parents lived in the summers, they saw each other several times a year. i was grown and away by then and only have a vague memory of a dinner in a restaurant. my father was born in 1914, bellow in 1915. saul lived 20 years longer than my father. they shared a status of jewish sons of recent russian immigrants. they also shared a history of early loss. my father's mother died at 15. saul's dieded when he was 17.

both men were curious and vital, devoted to fiction writing, believing that little in life was as important as books. greg writes in his memoir "the tenant of our family included a deep appreciation for art and culture, outright contempt of os tinnation, lack of religious observance, sympathy for those disadvantaged or suffered discrimination, support of organized labor, respect for people of all races, and a commitment to fairness embodied in the socialist ideas of each according to their needs. he described my family's values exactly. i say all this by way of pointing out that greg and my conversation tonight continues one that began between our families 60 years ago and that began between us several years ago as if greg was contemplating writing the memoir, and we discovered we were both sike

therapists trying to understand the balance between our conflicts and hunger for privacy and to be known on our own terms, and our wish to offer our own perspective and views on family life. >> before i start, i want to -- i have one and only one bernard story. i was in new york, about 20, and i was reading "the assistant," and i don't remember the day of the week, but i had a date, and so i stayed with my cousin who was a woman who was very interested in literature and seemed to be a big influence on me said i was reading a great book, but i got to did out. i came home at three in the morning, and i finished the book. i got up the next morning, and she says, i read it from cover to cover while you were out. that's how captivating that book was. i want to speak a little why

janna and i decided to do this. i wanted to talk a little bit about what we experienced as a similarities between our fathers and our own experience as children of authors. just to get us started to frame about what we want to talk about so i'm just going to list some of the similarities and how they played out. number of one, the influence of growing up in a write's home and world as children, we protect from intrusion, never to interrupt while they wrote, and early on, to understand the need for privacy and solitude, the privacy in solitude in which they retreatedded in the writing days. the second similarity having to do mostly with the childhood is they used stories and allegory as a way to communicate meetings to each of us.

two, switching to the similarities and how they played out in the adulthood. both of our fathers maintained that it was a taboo against making the connection between the writing and the living. we were brought up to subscribe well in adulthood and overcame it with trepidation. the third similarity, a shared passion for writing. bernard and saul led lives devoted to writing well. i used the term "a singularity of literary purpose" to describe saul's passion for writing, and janna calls what i believe to be the same phenomena bernard's ruthlessness for good writing. number four, our reaction to the literary fame, we were both uncomfortable witnessing the public inflation that accompanied our father's growing fame. that discomfort reached its ten kl after their death and criminal intented to --

contributed to our impulse to write memoirs. similarity number five, we saw reactions to reading our father's work, and saw crucial aspects of our fathers' lives and emotions transmuted setting up a discontinue newty between our experience as readers and shared dilemma how we were to approach this as children and as memoirs. i see my father clearly in the voices of the narrators, and reading novels in chronological sequence after he passed away helped me to see connections between life events in which i lived and my father's view points on them. the differences are as follows: saul talked about his past all the time, and according to janna, bernard did not.

the second difference, graping with the life work taboo. jay'sism pulse to protect her father is in "private matters" and it was published in 1997. by 2006, she had overcome her red sans and published a book called "my father is a book," and after reading both and deeply am biff lant about whether to write about my father, i went to bossen -- boston to ask janna why she changed her mind, and i began to reconsider my protective behavior towards saul. it was something that could not have happened while he was alive, absolutely not. let me describe the dilemma in which i found myself. on one hand, i was protecting saul out of habit and loyalty taboo. on the other, i was disstressed about the tributes to my father,

barely recognized the man lauded and came to realize that the tributes were to the public's demand, the famous author, rather than the father who raised me. i believed i had a duty of truth to him, my mother, and to myself, and i needed to give an hoppest portrayal of my father's entire life, warts and all, which balanced the late prize fame with the questioning the reverent man who raised me. the third difference, choosing how to write about fiction. we know that to be personal. knowing well that we will be now exposing not only our fathers, but ours ourselves. my approach has been to read between the lines of the father's fiction. we're in at a moment where i fine a candor not present in what saul said out loud to me or best as able i can determine as

anyone else. i read a passage from the book about seize the day written after my grandfather passed away to illustrate. after that, i will show, take a -- make a bigraphical conclusion that i draw from not only this, but it's too long to go into in-depth, but what i say about the book, open quote, nowhere is the loss of ?ens clearer than in seize the day which saul wrote soon after her father's death. his their their rare tore aspires to be an an actor. dr. adler, tommy's father, is a better actor that has his son, a man of constant emotional control. a desperate tommy makes one last try to penetrate d. adler's

social facade and touch the heart tearfully attributing the end of family life to his mother's death, begins at the mother's death, and accusing dr. adler of feeling relief at her passing. caught out in the lack of feeling, dr. adler gives no quarters offering only platitudes. tommy, after failing once again to illicit human response from the father asked himself if he falsely sentimentalized the past. imagining a future strip of delusion, he mourning compound losses and wanders into a funeral of a total stranger, a place where a man can cry freely. the bigraphical questions and conclusion i draw is that saul agreed with his father. saul knew he lacked the inner zeal my grandfather tried to instill in his sons and successfully instilled in saul's

brother. grandpa was having noun of my father's acceptabilitiment nor going to give his son an emotional inch or a dollar, the dollar that, for years, came to represent fatherly love between both men. okay. before we start, i also really want to pay a debt of gratitude to jean goodheart sitting there. jean was one of the two people who whom i sent the first draft of the manuscript, and the other is missy, well into her 9 os, and who was the only person who survived who knew my parents both well, well enough to describe this to me. many people knew my father, few people survivedded and knew my mother, but only missy knew them both as adults, and jean, i sent, you know, a draft, and she sent it back saying, greg gri,

-- gregory, you can do better. i sent the final draft, a copy of the final book, and he said, gregory, you did do better. i really, i mean, when i wrote to him, i said, you know, every time i got criticism, i listenedded to it. every time i got praise, i ignored it. the book got better and better and better, and, also, there's two gentlemen in the back who were working with my dad, you know, will and chris, and who were very important to him in his last years. they are here tonight. i want to honor them. so do you want to chime in, or do you want to throw open the -- >> sure, whatever. >> open to the floor? i mean, we made memoir writing the title of tonight's meetings, but, excuse me, you know, there's -- i think it's water time -- there's no reason that you can -- you know, it's open

season on questions. it's just that because we shared all these things, we wanted to let you know a little about what, you know, how we -- what our relationship was like with one another, and then when janna sat down, she said, are you glad you wrote it? i said, yes, i am. i wanted my say. she said, yep. that's showing a little bit about what binds us together too. >> first time i talked publicly about my father was after he died, and i don't know if you ebb the scene where the statue comes up and gets him, and i thought when i was speaking that that statue was going to get me because, you know, what you feel in a sense is that you are playing with the gods, doing something prometian, stealing fire, not much, but enough to tick the gods off. i think that's the kind of pleasure you're probably hearing in what greg heard in my

response of, yep, but i really agree with the boston globe reviewer who says when a memoir's job is to bring you back to the fiction, ultimately, and so there's a contradiction where you are both really wanting your say, but to do it in a way that leads people back to reading the writer, and so, yeah, maybe, you know, as we hope this conversation up to you, i also invite you back to the writers. >> and the book. and the men. >> right. >> both of them because, you know, i sort of give equal deference to both. my father was a unique man and wrote 13 wonderful novels, and i agree, you know, i think that if this book as having had my say.

questions? , yeah, chris? >> in having your say, did you realize things in the act of writing you had not realized before? did you feel differently about some things? i mean, maybe the story of the entire book, but other specific things that stand out? >> the book starts out with my being so disgruntled as his funeral feeling that i was not hearing anything about who he was as a person, and it started out as anger which is largely abated, but it fueled the writing and the thinking and experience of it. i worked hard to make it not dominate the book. i would say in another meeting, similar thing, and i've been to a few in the last week, this was near my home, and there were many friends and colleagues there, and one of the friends got up and said, you know, used to be, you know, the condition of being your friend was not saying anything about your

father, and i laughedded, and i said, well, you know, you're in a room full of friends and colleagues. is there a show of hands for how many people for whom that's true? half raised their hands. i would never have spoken like this about him. i could have never have thought about that, you know, about him in this way, and, you know, were it not for his passing, and the thinking and five years writing a 200-page book, going over every word about 500 times. i took great care with it because it was so important, and i wanted to do it right. more questions? yes, please. >> forgive me if you touched on this, but your fare's memorable statement was if the zulus produce a toy, i'll read him, and i thought to myself this comes out of a kind of an anthropology ignorance.

maybe they have and we don't know. did you go into the book? have you thought about this? >> i do not go into that quote, but, you know, my father got very much caught up in the culture wars going on during the 1970s, and he said a lot of things in private and public, some of which were provocative, and i list that high among the provocative statements he made. >> i don't really understand -- >> someone has to put the microphone close. >> the question to you is i don't understand how your interpretation of your father differs from the literature. from your introduction, i don't have a sense. you're saying that you have a different experience, of course, everybody would, the public figure en, and that's what

you're referring to? >> sure. i'm not sure i heard exactly the whole question, but part of the way i experienced the taboo, is that i prerkted him by sticking my head in the sand when it came to saul, the great writer. i didn't attend public events in his honor after the nobel ceremonies which i found exciting and a great deal of fun, but irritating. i felt people acted like they owned him. i didn't like that at all. i stayed away from public events, came and visited him in boston, in chicago when nobody here, and not in awards or ceremonies or things that were done. it was true, but not the whole

truth. the other half of it was i really couldn't, and since then, i've made and effort to do it, and i'm comfortable with it and familiar with it, and where i had not done that, i would not be here tonight because i wouldn't want to talk about him. i'm not positive is answers your question, so if there's a follow-up, please, yes. or another question? we stumped them. jean? >> well -- >> thousand -- throw me a curve ball, please. >> well, you are relentless with his failings as well as his virtues. i recall sending you an e-mail that i talked about the brother, that his brother had all the

gifts of writer, but none of the failings that make a writer, and i said and saul had all the gifts and all the failings. >> all the failings, yeah, that's correct. [laughter] you know, i mean, that's absolutely true. >> he was a difficult person. he was, you know -- >> yes, sorry, go ahead. >> jean, the reason i trusted him with the script was because, you know, he's known saul since the early 50s; is that correct? >> well, since the 60s. >> well, we were in bars 37 >> we were together from 58-62 is when that was bar. i got to know him. >> okay. so i have known him for whatever -- 2013 minus 1958 is, you know, and, you know, i trusted his judgment, and i was pleased to have it. you know, and, you know, he was thin skinned. i mean i make a distinction in the book between what i call the

young saul and the old saul. the young saul was, as i said, the father who raised me, and the old saul was the literary patriarch who was, you know, the cultural conservative you eluded to, and he was thin skinned throughout. you know? you know, this is an amusing story that as a result of -- i startedded out talking about the funeral and leon being at the funeral, and i talk about all the young men who i thought wanted to be, you know, my father's son, and how angry i got because i was his son, and i sent him a copy -- somebody sent a copy of the book and there was an angry e-mail saying, no, i fought with your father. you know, i didn't want to be his son. i went to washington, but, your a symbol to me, all these people, there was a parade of people who wanted to be his son,

and, you know, if you -- i'm not -- i take your word for it i didn't understand you completely. well, that mull mid him a little bit, and i went and had a cup of coffee with him in washington, d.c. when i went to visit my daughter and granddaughter a month ago, and he told me the story about the fact that he, you know, he would go to vermont and talk philosophy with saul and felt they had a good relationship, and then the heart break came out, reviewedded it, and said, he thought i put three sentences in about how his father talked about women. the next day he was on larry king insulting me. [laughter] he said, i was furious. i started to latch. he said, well, what's funny? i said i heard that story 50 times. [laughter] now, if you said something, you know, tell me the same story. if it's bad about the book, that was it.

>> made a distinction between what other people said about the books and what he said about the books. he was prepared to be very harsh about the work. >> absolutely. >> he wanted the criticism to be on his own terms. >> i would say, you know, i mean, since, you know, i'm going to bring up something, you know, the story you told me about what he said before he passed away because i really feel there's something important about my father. he was ill, memory lapses, he, you know, had -- probably had a stroke, and, you know, there were, as i say, islands of lucidity in a sea of dark silences, and the silences got darker, and the island got smaller, wouldn't you say, will? >> it's true. >> but then, you know, he could, you know, ask questions. i went to visit him a month

before he died, and i, you know, says, you must be near retirement, and i said, yes, i am, asked about my kids, and he remembered all of that, but then i don't remember who told me the story, but he said to you before he passed away, you know, was i a man or a jerk? >> well, -- the context was this, he was not speaking for days b r and will said he was not speaking. could i somehow provoke him to say something. i -- >> and you did. >> i said, well, saul, what do you have to say for yourself? >> oh! >> he said, i was thinking, am i a man or a jerk? i said, well, will you believe my answer? he said, yes. i said, you're a man. >> wow. >> and at the memorial service in new york, mark neemus heard the story and altered it

somewhat. he said that saul said, am i a man or a joke? so i heard "jerk," and the question is what is the write word because writers are concerned. >> oh, no, no, no, no, no, i didn't know he was the force of distortion. >> but amos said joke. >> let me say this. you know, how much more courageous a thing could one ask one self on one's death bed than that question? that's, you know, that's why my father is so special because he was, you know, missy says, you know, your mother was a truth teller, and there's a story she told about herself on herself after my parents got divorced, which is a lengthy story, you know, and i don't want to tell it, but she was honest, and saul was honest, and they were honest. they communicated that to me.

when i spoke about a duty of truth, that's where it comes from. questions like that that my father asked myself. now, you know,ly just say about the difference between the joke and a jerk, my father knew the difference in the end, and we know it. more questions, please. having been there before, when your book came out, if you haved a vice about what to expect now psychologically, socially -- >> i think greg is doing great on his own. i was just thinking about joke and jerk, and i was thinking about the honest answer is a little from column aand a little from b for most of us. you know, it's not either/or. probably some of both. i don't have advice. he's doing what he wants to do,

and i think that, huh -- i don't know. i mean, it's just so depends on what angle of all this is of interest probably, and what -- >> you've gone on to write more books about not only your dad, but creativity, and there's a new book which i enjoyed very much about regimizing, and you used a number of examples from various arts and exa the components are, a very brave book to have written, speaking of brave book, and i enjoyed it very much, and i was going to bring it up, and she talked me out of it tonight. you know, there are directions. you know, there's something else, which is been occurring to me, which is that i went to talk

to synagogues in los angeles, and i talked to the planet, which i think is the pivotal book in my father's development, and as i say in my book, i think he changed from the position of a son to the position of a father in that book, and, you know, from the questioning young man, the person who took op on to somebody said, you know, there's a right way to read a book and a wrong way to read a book. i don't think he would have said that, but i may be right, and i may be wrong. i was thinking about my father being the -- sam, being a one of number of holocaust awareness amongst american jews. you know, there was the trial in 1961. there was the pawnbroker in 1964. i looked all this up to get the dates right, and then saul wrote sam in 19689 basically

confessing to having blood typed himself -- blinded himself of ideology by misunderstanding history and the holocaust, by not taking it fully. now, you know, he was not the only person who said that, and he's been, you know, a burgeoning of this in the last 20 years, but it occurred to me that he sort of like vir jill going through hell. you know, he went, you know, what happened around the issue of the war is that -- i'll just tell the story. it's important. i was in social worker school in 1967, in chicago. i called him up, and i didn't get an answer. that was not unusual, but i called two or three times over the next two or three days and still didn't get an answer. somebody said he went to israel to cover the war. i called up phil, got a press credential, who was the editor of news day at the time, and he we want and covered the war, and

i believed, you know, the site, the smells, the blood, the gore of the war touched him, you know, this cut right through, you know, his rationalizations, and he confessed to having bylined -- blinded himself or partially blinded himself, but then, the more i thought about this, the more i imn -- began to see it was the scene of the pawnbroker where the assistant is begging for humanity from the man who owns the store and debted himself to the holocaust, and he pushes his hand down on a spike in the story, you know, where you used to put receipts, pushes his hand down to make himself feel something. i think something's happening to saul in going to israel. i'm not sure whether he saw himself as, you know, virgil

taking dante through hell, but it's clear in order to get to help, you have to go through hell in the comedian, and i began to see a lot of parallels, you know, between sandler and the comedian. maybe i'll write an article of that, speaking of something to do in the future. yes, please. did you want to say something? >> i think you touched on such an important, sort of historic moment that i have come to feel the best fiction is always written by that first generation that has a little separation from the life, but still shares all the richness of the life it tell the story of it. i remember saying that to how the canadian writer, saying, well, you need a chair before you write. there has to be enough prosperity so that somebody can sit there and write, but it's

this poised moment, and what both writers shared with ross, the junior who was the third in the tree yo really in the historical moment where there was space to come to terms, not only with russia and eastern europe, but also with everything that had gone on during the second world war, and i think that that in their own ability to lead their families and look back on that and look back on all of jewish life through that was profoundly what carried their work, and i think what carried ross' early work. i think some of the later work, i guess, but we don't have the expertise for that completely, but i think that that's part of what you're captureing, greg. >> how i capture that has to do with the division made in the

chapters in the book. the first chapter is called "paradise," doing with the years in montreal, a time of physical derivation, my grandfather couldn't make -- couldn't succeed at all in the new world, his relatives were succeeding, he was not, kept failing over and over and over again, and yet saul found a stability that really basically he never had again in some respects. i call my second chapter "paradise lost," going to chicago, became middle class, and then all the self-interest played itself out mongs -- amongst the family, all that need to stick together because we're going to swim together, float together, or we're going to sink together. you know, when you're up against it, you have no choice, and, you know, there was a wonderful story at 5 years old, there was

a pickle barrel behind the house, and he would go out in montreal and breakthrough the ice to get a pickle for the family and loved the idea he was only five years old, but he could do something for everybody else. his version, you know, my uncles and aunt were solid, middle class people. his version of selfishness was to be a writer. that's what he wanted to do. it was not -- i mean, certainly didn't, you know, it was not communal as a way he might have done, you know, had they not been successful. i mean, he venn toured out on his own, had his own desire, and, of course, in it, made them real. he also knew what the costs were to other people. i mean, many, many, many of the friends didn't -- his writer friends didn't survive. you know, it's a very tough profession, and one of the analogies i make is like it's climbing a high wire, paul, and grabbing on the wire with both hands and holding on as you let the current run through you.

that's the closest i get to describe for what it was like for him to write. i see a hand. yes? >> yeah, i think i want to throw you a curve ball. >> good, please. >> to both of you. first, it's good to hear you both speak about your fathers, a daughter about a father, and a son about a father, a psychotherapist about writers. i want to ask you, one or both of you, to speak on however you're going to speak on how your father's addressed violence in america in their fiction, and this is a wednesday night in cambridge. you came from berkeley, and, personally, i'm thinking of monday in cincinnati, high school, catholic high school student went to school with a gun to commit suicide. it's a curve ball, but i want your comments on that or about your father -- how your fathers

addressed violence in america in that fiction. >> you know, my father announced his ambition to become a great writer within six months of the time his mother committed suicide in a menial institution where she had gone because nobody could treat schizophrenia at that time so they put people in asylum. it could have been pneumonia, but we felt the way his father didn't answer questions about it that it had been suicide. i think that it's a way of art tries to address violence. it's not as much about the particulars as this root versus that root, but the fact that one of the thing they do is steal the football and run with it in the direction they want to. they are trying to take what's happened to them and made them helpless like vieps and turn it

and transmute it, something that's making it for other people, that you might be calledded redeemtive at moments and make a coheerpt narrative and violence is all about creating chaos and incoherence, and i think that probably -- i'm convinced that one of the reasons it's important that both writers' mothers died young is that loss is such a provider of urgency in that mission. the rest of us have some urgency, but not that, i don't think, to try to put it all back together with some beauty to get out of the helplessness, out from under the shame, and to try to create something that transcends all that. >> i -- sorry, a different answer. i think that the collective violence bothered my father.

i mean, there was personal violence in many places, but the thing he took on with such force was anarchy. i mean, he took it on in the 60s. i think he took it on in heart break. the dean's december basically, he went to row romania with the fourth wife, and he watched the state essentially allow alexander's mother to die. she was a political persona, and she, you know, she was ill. i'm not sure her life could have been saved, but the inhumanity of the way in which a the state dealt with the family crisis, basically, not allowing her to

spent last precious hours with her mother, but then he came home to chicago, and to anarchy, and he just described the social di sin gracious full of violation, anger, full of droughtiveness, and, i mean, he -- and i asked him about, you know, this. i said, well, you're talking abouts difference between violence, you know, both sides, and he said, yes, i am. he said it's not different, but takes a slightly different form. the other thing i would speak about had to do with views towards the relationship between the idealism of his youth as a young marxist, his hopes for a better world, a world where everybody had enough and art would flourish, i think he and his friends hoped for a renaissance as a result of the revolution, and, of course, they

brought genocide. you know, millions of people were killed in germany which was not markist rev niewtion, and my father, you know, was just angry and disappointed, and enraged that these ideas had been so perverted they really ended up being -- becoming an excuse for mass murder. i would -- and i think he -- his -- what he attacked was this sort of collective use of violence, you know, violence for social purposes, violence masking perm -- personal ambition, statism, but, you know, we're starving 30 million, you know, pes cants to death to have a worker state. i mean, that's a tough argument to support so that was a slider,

maybe, not a curve ball. a good question, though. was there another hand in the back? yes. >> i had a question regarding both of your professional tracks. it was interesting you are both psychotherapists, and i'm sorry, hellen? >> janna. >> sorry. >> that's okay. >> your answer to the previous gentleman's question of violence is oppression trying to bring coherence into an incoheerpt world, really, and i wonder your own professional experience was an experience to go to your profession as well as a writer, but i thought that was an interesting and your father's work is psychological, and so transformation, and forces,

ect.. >> i was laughing tonight about the overlap of teachers and sike therapist, and that mindedness of literature and good psychotherapy, and you are are spot on, and a good therapist works to create a coherent narrative also. a funnier piece of this i think is that you grow up knowing that a narcissistic parent needs a good listener in the house. i think you, you know, you learn that kind of attunement probably, and, you know, there's power in that. it's not all benign. it is not just that you're a nice person, but you make a certain relationship with the power politics of the household, and a listener is a position up for grabs. >> there's a vacancy. >> veigh cap similarities --

vacancy, yeah, right. [laughter] >> the answers to the first question had to do with individual, you know, anarchy and collective anarchy, and what i prize most about my relationship with my father is when i was maybe 10 # years old, he said, gregory, how's your inner life? at first, he met, are you happy with yourself? i think he was generally concerned about whether i was happy, and then we started discussing ideas and that, you know, the topic of conversation changed, you know, all about the inner life, but he was mixed in on why i divorced my mother, you know, part of, you know, his message, and timely, that wore off, but, you know, i, to this day, i don't think he feels i

forgave him, but in a way, i did. there's an interesting story that i had read on the plane coming to visit him, and i talked to him about the power of the per miss have to, you know, over their clientele and how easy it is to abuse it, and he said to me, i never would have been wanted to marry any of my characters. i just sat there in utter mystification, and i said, pop, wait a minute, how could you have written these other books? he said, i couldn't have done it any way. i mean,ings you know, there was a huge gap, and i take this up in great detail in the book about the gap between the inner life and outer life between the writing and the living protecting his inner life, but he also, you know, cultivated my understanding of what it was, and that is absolutely probably the primary influence op why i

became a therapist, because, you know, looking back on my career because i'm retired, what i describe it as strengthening people's sense of their own subjectivity. you are who you are. if you have the courage to be who you are, my job is to help you develop the courage to be who you are and be comfortable and be happy with it. in a way, that's a set of somewhat of a transunitting of my father, but it's very close to what he said to me. he always wanted, you no, always wanted to know, you know, we fought like cats and dogs, particularly about political stuff, but, you know, religious stuff, and stuff like that, but, you know, you could always get back to that core, you know, and somebody asked me, maybe it's good to end with, asked me 20 read a passage from the end of the book. do you want to say something about your dad and how you look

at his work? >> sure, after you. >> well, anyway, it was the last conversation. we were in boston, not too far away, and it was time for me to go home, and he said, i wanted to see my -- i wanted to see my sonny boy one more time. you know, and well -- should i stop the story? all right. i know i can see it's affecting you. i said, you know, pop, i'll always be your sonny boy, and that's the way i left it with him, you know? there was that little childish part of me survived all that stuff, you know, all the fame, all the money, all the arguments, all the disagreements, all the everything. we were able to get back to that, and my last moment with him, that's what we ended with. very powerful. >> i think that's a good place to stop. >> okay. thank you, all. [applause]

oi like the russian mode where you applaud your audience. thank you. >> thank you. >> what's on your summer reading list? >> i just finished "the victory lap," talking about persuasion, digital that in data, how the world campaigns changed. i hope, this summer, to get to the biography on jefferson which i have on the pile, and i have a new one on roosevelt, a big fan, and the reform movement, his energy and style and also i've got one that deals, i think, mainly with his time down in south america, so it's -- it should be interesting.

>> let us know what you are reading this summer, tweet us @booktv, post on facebook, or e-mail us at booktv booktv@c-span.org. >> here's a look at books published this week:

>> at the political conservative action coarches in washington, d.c. with the author of "return to order: frenzied economy to an organic christian society," tell

me about the book. >> it talks about the lack of restraint in modern economy, and how it became frenzied and out of control. we talk about the need to return to the fundmentals of family, community, and faith that normal keep a economy in balance. that's what "return to order" is about, a look at the present crisis, and we propose real solutions based on timeless principles. >> how do the social parameters affect the economy? >> oh, definitely, it does affect the economy. what we've lost in the economy, and what i say in the book is that we've lot that human element that creates the bond of trust and confidence that makes free markets poll. what the sociologists call social capital. those necessary bonds of trust that make and create prosperity for happen. >> what's the thought on the congress right now? >> it's a symptom of the

problem. i copy a term in the book called ifer deference talking about the lack of restraint. this idea you have to have everything now regardless of the consequences that this spirit in mod earn economy has implications, of course, in government and in other fields. >> what's the fix? >> our fix would be or gappic christian society, a society where people are treated like living beings, not machines, a society rooted in community, family, and faith, and with a lot of social ties and natural leadership, and, of course k inspired by christian principles. >> author of "return to order," thanks so much. >> all right. >> i'm robert of the washington editor of national review with a lot of books i want to read this

summer, but as a political journalism, looking at the candidate who runs, especially on the republican side, and i picked up a book called "chris christie, inside story of rise to power," and it's a follow-up read so far, and it really takes you back into the political assent in new jersey, before he was u.s. attorney, there was a freeholder, involved in a lot of politics, taking us behind the story and politician on the magazine covers with president obama in new jersey asking and it's told by people to fund, and it's a likely contender, know where he came from, and what politics mean ahead of the election. second back on the list is by kevin d. williamson, wrote a book called "the end of near," and it's going to be awesome, how going broke leaves america

richer, happy united states of america and more securement -- secure. the reason the book is fun because the fiscal cliff in 2013 was a story covered, but later this year, there's the debt limit consuming congress, and they look at the debt from a political perspective, historical per perspective talkg about the consequences of the debt, how it takes up a lot of congress' time, how it could potentially ruin the country, make the country go broke, and he does it with whit and fun, and it's a great book, and third on the list is this town by mark, and as a journalist here, there's goes tip, and how stories are written, who leaks to who, the power struggles, not only within politics, but the media. mark who has the ear of the beltway crowd has a book in july, and this town is about that, the inside scene in washington in due --

dupont sierk -- circle and what the political media establishment is about. for fun, a book i'm looking forward to reading is called mickey and willie, the parallel lives of baseball's golden age by my favorite sports writer. i was down in spring training in arizona watching the indians and cubs play, and i ran into willie getting up there in age, but this book is great, k looking at two men, came of age at the same time, and they were stars at the same time, and formed a lifelong friendship, something i never knew. that's a great book, a big book for baseball fans this summer, so that's my list, and i'm looking forward to reading them all. ..

[applause] >> good afternoon. it is an honor and privilege to be speaking with you here today. several years ago my father told me about a german ship sunk at the end of world war ii. he didn't know much about it other than its name and that was incredibly devastating