upon us, a biological weapon. it's not as simple as putting them underground and your point is well-taken. it's complementary to what we say. if you think it's sufficient, we may not need to do this but it's something that we are generally in favor of the operation of. anybody else want to jump in? okay. do we have another question? if not, we can turn to the second panel. so i'm going to turn it to tom mann who >> today on washington journal, a look at the week ahead. discuss u.s. relations and

president obama's trip to russia. california governor henry waxman talks about the last of the report of how congress really works. live on c-span. today, a look at the moss queue schmidt. live starting at 1:00 p.m. eastern on c-span

>> when did you decide to name your book? >> when my editor suggested it. op the notion that we are not very honest in this country about what happens when students are shipped off to that wonderful fairy land. i had a hard time with it. i was lost in many ways.

i had a story to tell that was intended on a non-fictional title based on my real experience. i didn't know that it would have much relevant vens to people unless they were assured that it actually happened. >> you say up front that this is a record of memory, it attempts to be truthful in its narrative there are, i suspect, a number of in5:0 rasies, no deliberate intentions. uncle admiral. >> he was someone that was a hero to me. he was a retired admiral whose

job had been to survey the coast of alaska and south california. he at four years old baby sat me almost constantly when my father was in law school and my mother was a nurse. he gave me an unparalleled geographic education that i think spotted me through education. it was the last time i truly learned until i got out of princeton. >> someone asked how do you remember quotes out of uncle add meer el? >> when you write a book of non-fiction and put it in story form, recalling conferences and events you don't recall photographically, you reconstruct them as best you can given your memory of how people

spoke and certain spots of time which were especially vivid to you. there was no pretense to anything being tape recorded or true. these are the interpretations i remember. this is a story i would tell to a child or a friend. when do you say when you are telling someone else the great work, that's great writing. >> the hair stood up on the back of its neck. i think it's a sort of understand al response. you lock in like a fiert pilot locks in on his tarring elt. you go, i'm there, i feel it, i'm transported. i know it when i see it. >> who is the finest writer you've ever known? >> personally? well, that would be the great

leg an dairy argentinian master novelist. i met samuel beck et too. robert stone is somebody i admire a great deal. dennis johnson won the national award a couple years ago. when do you conclude they are good writers? >> when they lead me to make associations, connections, leaps in my mind that i don't feel i could have made otherwise but which when i've made them feel inevitable somehow.

what do you think is a good non-fiction political writer today? >> i'm a fan of a lot of writers. it is not important for me to agree with political writers. it's important for them to be able to carry me along with with their arguments and entertain their point of viewfully. other writers. there's people at the atlantic i like quite a bit. as far as columnist-type, i like frank rich at the "new york times." it's hard to go through it all. where do you live and write? >> i live in livingston, montana. i have a commercial building

downtown, the top part of which is an loft. i found it necessary for my to self to remove myself from metropolitan reserve and observe america. i have worked for all sorts of magazines based in new york. they were always willing to feed me everything west of the hudson river and east of los angeles. it's worked out. go tlut places you've lived. >> i was born in akron, ohio. i grew up in a little town in minnesota. from there, i went to princeton university, which is the subject of this book. this town was a little farm

town. princeton could have have been more different. i went to oxford university on scholarship for one year. one day on assignment in montana, i saw my opportunity. you can imagine how the end of the world affects house prices. i was covering a cult which at that time about 3,000 people strong in a county that only had 10,000. people were literally selling their houses foregoing underground and riding out a nuclear hole owe cost. >> i was betting against that 

hall cost. >> it's no aspen. it's a down on its heals railroad town. a lot of hippy, intellectual artists settled there. it was an easy life and sort of misbehave out of the limelight. it has attracted a few celebrities. a lot of these places out west, they come in on their private jets, take a car to their ranch and get out. that's not true of brokaw. some other folks, you'll never

see their face. it gives the place a representation. it's a low-earning, hard earning town. your ex-wife was margo kiter's daughter. >> yes. we have now divorced. we have two kids. 10 and 7. where are they now? >> they are in livingston. charlie is in the hospital for having broken his arm last night. i'm at a loss forewords. i feel sad for him today. go back to the story of your father and being kind of lost. where you lived and where you went. >> my father ended up going to

princeton. afterward and before, he was not, what you call princeton material. he was a football play under akron, ohio. he was recruited for the football team by several ivey league schools. he said he didn't note difference between them. he studied engineering wanting to have something practical incase his football career didn't work out. after he left, he moved to washington and became a patent attorney. my father reacted badly to corporate life and his ivey league education such that he moved our family to a tiny little farm well beyond the outskirts where we farmed with

horses. i went to a public school with no real idea about the places he had been or the kind of places i was going to end up. how did the morm annism thing come into your life? >> when i was about 12 years old, my father had a difficult year. living in phoenix, arizona. we kind of split the mid-west in a hurry thinking it was the land of opportunity. it turned out not to be. the family was under great stress. the mormans came to the door and had a rare success.

i became an morman as a teenager until i was 18. >> how did that change your life? >> being an morman in the mid-west made me feel like an outsider. it allowed me, because there is no paid clergy, to do a lot of public speaking in sunday meetings. that experience sort of allowed me to hone -- i hesitate to say glibness that probably served me in good sted as i attempted to get into princeton and then survive. what does it look like in the

morman church inside as opposed to us looking from the outside? >> the churches themselves are open to the public. it's the temple that are not. really what goes on are lessons on the book of mormans. they are rather peculiar skrip ters. it's important to realize that mormanism is not the same as fundamental christianity. it has a different history. morm

morman. no one looks more establishment gashed than mit romney. they still cannot crack the main street barrier against hem. >> why did you leave them at 17? >> at that age, morman males are expected to go on missions and ee van gellize. i were more interested in getting an education. >> where did religion take you for the rest of your life? >> well, i can confess without any real apologize to being a religious person, probably a

christian of some description. it took me to a place where you remain a permanent skeptic of the claims of rationalism. i exist in a kindd of nether world in a belief in something. >> that loft in livingston, are you still there? >> i still use it. >> what hours of the day do you find yourselves there? >> all hours. it's my privilege to command my own space and have no neighbors so i can work any combination. i wish i were a more scheduled writer. i do depend a little bit on the

spirit for inspiration. >> when would we normally see you working? >> reliably at 2:00 a.m. or 2:00 p.m. >> do you use a computer or longhand? >> i write on legal pads. my father was an attorney. there were legal pads all over the place. i find it kind of frees me in a way the computer doesn't. typing on the computer makes for a digital expression and a constant self editing. once i finish the draft, i move over to the computer and straighten it out. you put your own words on the computer? >> this book was written in

livingston, montana. it was finished at the university of montana. i taught on the robert bare fellowship. the last prt was written in an academic setting. that made for an odd view as i finished my book. >> i don't know that i'm a good teacher because i don't know that those things crucial to writing can be taught.

>> how many students in your sem far do you teach? >> 12. >> i've been writing a lot. i say give me three things >> i would tell you establish your authority to speak or write. you must up front establish your expertise, knowledge with the subject. where did do you that in this?

>> i do that in this book by saying in the very first pages of it, my authority is that af bewilders young man that ends up in princeton. it's written all over the book i attended princeton, so i have the authority to speak of it. i have the ability to speak as an outsider by being a person of coming from a small town. how much of this paragraph is part of establishing the authority and to the humane and he had indicated ducated

>> it's my luck in time that i should be presented this set of contact was individual teachers. i had a great teacher at the beginning of my life in uncle admiral. i was able to brush up against some other ones as life went on. these people to me were the exception that's proved the rule. they saved me or picked me up at very difficult times because the machine or the system itself was very hard on me.

>> why kneel reuben stien. he took me out to lunch to say we've nominated you for this 7n

fellowship. >> joyce was never a teacher of writing to me. i took an academic class. she used to be a great friend. she would have me bar tend at her house when the new york lit rareries would come around. it was by letting me into her home that i thought this is a job done by people, not great bearded sajs in the sky. that simple friendship boosted my moral hugely. >> james richardson?

>> a poet who was my creative writing advisor. when i got to the end of princeton, i wanted to be a poet. i was not a practical-minded man. i had no idea, nor into interest in job security. we'd sit together and smoke cigarettes and talk romantic poetry. it was a confidence in me that i didn't have in myself that made him valuable. you mentioned smoking cigarettes, a lot of reference to taking of drugs were you a big drug user? >> i wouldn't like to think of myself as a big drug user in the sense that it takes money and i

didn't have any. a lot of drugs floated around princeton in the 1980s. where they floated, i floated with them. a lot of marijuana, sort of a hippy culture. that's the kind of drug use i was exposed to. how ex-tensive was it? >> fairly ex-tensive. princeton was a strange institution in 1980. this has come out a little bit with sownia znia sotomayor. they had only started letting in

women a few years before. and only started letting in the unborn into. they started letting in different races and ethnic backgrounds and who did sell on the s. a. t. tests. they didn't mix all that way. there was an alienation. when that occurs, there are drugs and other forms of bad behavior. >> did you ever get caught? >> no. princeton is a largely unpleased island. it reminds me of the island in lord of the rings. they bring these bright kids in there and let us loose. i wasn't aware of much super virgs even from afar.

going back to reubenstein. did you win that in >> i did. the roeds ask you in interviews questions like, what is the world's greatest problem. i answered communication and said that man and animal weren't communicating well. >> i got to the other interviews. they asked me, did i like to take walks. they asked me why i had gotten bes on my spanish test. i said i was drunk. they all laughed. it was to take a young american and send him to finishing school. i fit the bill strangely.

i think i was half witness but improvable young man. did the professor make the decision on the kasby? >> this was open to a few establishments. i was selected as well as the quarterback of the football team to be nominees. i never thought i would beat out the quarterback for any distinction, that's what happened. the year you graduated from high school? >> i didn't grat wait. i took the s. a. t. test and was offered because of high school immediate admission to mcalice center college in st. paul which i went to after my junior year

of high school. then i transferred to princeton. >> how close to 1600 did you score? >> this is an honest answer. i don't know. i think around 1500 or the high 1400s. >> when you ended up at princeton, how old were you? >> i was 18. i went to college barely at 17. i was a sophmore. they asked me to start again as a freshman. being kind of cocky said i'd rather not go if i had to be pushed back a year. what year did you graduate? >> 1983 and when did you do the

oxford experience. 1983-1985. >> your first full-time job? >> teacher of english as a second language at a grungy low-class business school in new york for $10 an hour i helped immigrants learn english. not very well because i didn't understand their language. a princeton classmate saw me really living hand to mouth. she worked at vanity fair magazine. she said, walter, what are you doing. you are worth so much more than this. common over to vanity fair. what did do you there? >> brought beg wills and coffee and wrote clefer headlines.

when did you first write? >> i had a job as a result of having gone to oxford, interviewing american cultural figures for the bbc radio back in england. in new york, i interviewed a fiction editor. famed as the man who made ray monday car ver a great man. he said at the end of the interview. i didn't have one and i lied and

said, sure. he said give me a look at it. iú went home and wrote a short story and received my first contract. we were first introduced to you. i had never heard about you in my life. >> in about 1992 or so, the producer of the show dropped this magazine article on my desk. she was some what incessant about what you wrote. i had a different reaction. i want to read it back to you. >> i remember writing it and the sentiment but not the sentences. >> i want you to tell me where you think the world has gone since this. the headline on it is "rahm tv." if television is a plug in drug,

then c-span is the antidote, the network to watch when you want to come down. the programs are shot in color but might as well be in black and white there are no commercials. the almost total lack of editing and super sluggish camera work, create a world as flat as a desk top. the sets when used are non-sets. the earnest, polyestered host make brokaw seem like errol flin, the classical music played during the breaks reminds you. >> i have never had a chance to talk to you about this? >> what got you there? >> i turned on c-span, my job was to comment on the media in a

monthly fashion for mirabella magazine. right. a now dead and gone magazine. i turned on one channel which did not resem bell others. that was c-span. it fascinated me. >>

once we did. we saw it in some sense they are both much less dramatic than we might imagine and some what -- how emtit chambers of congress really are. i didn't bring this up to ask you -- it's always fun to hear somebody feedback what you were seeing. >> you war watching from

livingston at the time? >> what's happened since 1992? . >> i really was wondering what you think has happened since 1992 to the american audience. >> it has grown progressively

less serious, less nourishing intellectually. it has grown more super initially. if you are some what nor alice tick straight down, i never thought i would be watching network news and see 75% of them are taken up with discusses of britney spears mothering or the woman who had eight kids. when patty kaofsky wrote that

work, he had no idea that he would be raised and double raised by reality. >> you have written six fiction books? >> yes. just grave me a sentence on eacv one of them. taken us away from a sort of willederness surslens that has confused our social relationships. mission to america? >> about a 19th century

religious cult, which i pretend has survived in the mountains of montana and sends out stwo trapped in time missionaries to look at the america of 2005 or et now? >> any religion in mind? >> it was a take of seventh day adventist. >> up in the air. >> that will be made into a movie out this fall. it is a book about a corporate management consultant who special eyes in firing people, terminating executives. his heart and life is so empty.

he has only onepre ok u patient, which is collecting frequent flier miles. >> where did you get that from? >> i met a guy on a plane one time and asked him where he was from. he said right here. seat 3 a. i met a guy that displayed a lot of the signs of the times of the transients. you have ever seen him up there? >> no. but i know he's up there. thumb sucker is an auto

biographical novel about growing up. i had a terrible, unbreakable thumb sucking habit which caused me great distress. it's really a true story of a boy like that. >> how long did you suck your thumb? >> until i was 17 years old. >> how did you break it? >> shame and mortgage if i indication of girls i liked seeing me do it.

i had a lot of gay fans for that book and others thinking it was ethical differences. >> mom and dad still alive? >> mom in minnesota. dad -- they are divorced. dad lives near where i live. he retired to a place in the mountains near livingston, monta. what is your relationship with them? >> pretty good. they have a son who is a writer. it frays a little around publication time. i use my life even in my fiction. even in my non-fiction. woe the tides of parents who have a son that wants to be a mem wearist. >> how old are they? >> my dad, 70.

my mom, 69. >> my dad is retired. my nom is a retired nurse. >> next novel was, she needed me. that's about abortion. it dealt where the culture wars. the last book, my heart bargain.

the theme to that is thoughts of mormanism. >> which one was the biggest seller? >> i think up in the air. that was a different book. it was really a book trying to grapple with a society starting to become infat u waited with mobil phones and business travel. it was set in air planes and airports and ht miss for tur of being published happened. rss it sold very well until 9/11. the cover showed a bunch of businessmen traveling around and

one crashing. it didn't sit well. the sales crashed. >> going back to your mom in hassle ton, well-known drug treatment center. did she know you were using drugs? >> i was away at princeton. she had no idea. even funnier i was born in a hospital in akron where alcoholics anonymous was born. >> in your book, you have a couple of notes up front.

>> at the end of this getting of age and winning of golden stars, there was going to be some celebration. >> were you an only child? >> i was the older child. my brother works as a parallel

for a financial firm. then you quote f. scott fitzgerald. >> i see now this has been

i wanted to be accepted by a real american hierarchy, whose accept answer i praised and whose accept answer and power i also resented. >> i realized princeton was not cheaply about learning the american substance. >> how big is princeton? >> princeton is an island of squirls and overly manicured grass and sued owe gothic buildings in new jersey, far from the manning crowds. it is a society of itself.

it's not like yael or harvard. students live an ideal yik existence. growing into what princeton likes to think are well-rounded american comers. they tend to go out into finance, government, business and so on. but princeton is a small campus for the ivey leagues. it doesn't have big graduate schools, it's chiefly an undergraduate institution. it is a place where you are supposed to be happy and we have the pen nent and go to the football games. it's really, shut up if you are not happy.

i couldn't shut up for my whole life. what did your education cost you? >> it's hard to say. ied a national merit scholarship and some other loans. my parents paid for all of it. i think at the time, it was ldz $20,000 something a year. i can't understand why these places with these endowments that are grown to the size of small country gdps should be so expensivesy

>> this is about page 122.

>> a european school or lit rarery criticism which taught that words and writing were really this sort of stej instruments of the ruling class meant to keep people ina of traditional institutions, women subjew gated by men. their alleged greatness was really dubious

>> what kind of a break down did you really have? >> i had a break down described in the book. people have said, do you exagerate? i said new yorks i minimize. i was sitting in a lecture one day. between the drugs and the keeping up and trying to keep up socially and academically, i just lost the ability to process information. words become non-sense, i couldn't understand what was being talked about.

i lost the ability to read. words swam in front of my eyes. i couldn't write. every he is an i tried write become some cross word puzzle i couldn't complete. it really was a matter of months after a >> in the meantime i ditched and dodged. it took months to recover. i got a job in the main libel requirery reshelving books. weed a break every half hour and we could sit down and read. between reading the dictionary, really doing the a, b, c

dictionary reading, i got some traction again mentally. >> in the end, how did you finish in your class. i had two ds in spanish. i graduated suma cum laud, which means with highest honors.

the knocks along the way have been profound. >> have you been back? >> i've been back once. it was an a stonishing experience. why? >> in the years i have been at princeton, they have received massive gifts.

i'm a little appalled by the outside nature physical plant as compared to the yawn going nature, which is some what at the same level. their presence and0 virt u the are adding are not in proportion. >> our guest is walter kirn. thank you for joining us. >> thank you very much. >> for a dvd copy of this program, call 1-877-662-7726. for free transcripts or for

comments, visit us at "q&a."org. programs are also available as c-span pod casts. . .