>> rose: welcome to the program. we begin this evening with part two of my conversation with the former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, admiral michael mullen. >> in the vietnam war in the late '60s and watched us move through very challenging times. it is as complex as anything i've seen. it is as uncertain as anything i've seen. i think the united states is in a position where we can't do it alone anymore. i think we're also continuing to devolve out of the cold war, out of that bipolar, freeze-the-world relationship we had with the soviets then which when the wall came down that devolution started. >> rose: we conclude with kazuo ishiguro with his new

book, "the buried giant'. >> it comes as a slight surprise people think it's so different. i come at these things from tin side. i'm a bit like someone is trying to build a flying machine, before aviation when all the guys used to make funny flying machines in their backyards. i feel a bit like that. i'm trying to get this thing that will fly. for a long time it doesn't fly and i'm putting this piece on and finally it kind of flies. >> rose: yeah. >> rose: kazuo ishiguro when we continue. >> rose: additional funding provided by:

>> and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and information services worldwide. captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> rose: admiral michael mullen is here. he served as the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff from 2007 to 2011. he was the top military advisor to president obama and president bush during the wars in iraq and afghanistan. he was also influential in the don't ask don't tell and america's relationship with pakistan. his parting piece of advice to the american public after four decades of service was to take care to have generation who mas fought a decade of war. his message holds zig as president obama continues to end two wars along a slough of global crisis. pleased to have admiral back at the table.

welcome. >> thank you charlie. >> rose: how is retirement? i think it's terrific. i think best put by the younger of my two sons when someone asked him about that. he said, well my dad has about half the schedule and 2% to have the stress and i think that was a pretty good formula. so it's been good. i'm teaching at princeton in the fall. they asked me to teach a course in the woodrow wilson school on the use of u.s. military power and u.s. diplomatic power and getting the right balance. i'm on a couple of boards, general motors and sprint. deborah and i spend a lot of time with veterans and families with the issues that are challenging them, these extraordinary young men and women who served so nobly for decades but certainly the ones very close to us in these two wars. >> rose: every person i admire who served with distinction in the pentagon as an officer or as someone appointed as the president let's say secretary

of defense, has always come away in their most important thought is how well did i do for the men and women fighting for america. >> yeah. >> rose: it is the single thing. i take them at their word that burns in their soul. >> well, certainly and i think that's true for everybody. >> rose: for everybody. seems to me this time we live in right now is as difficult as we have seen in a while. >> it certainly, from my perspective, i came in in the vietnam war in the late '60s and have watched us move through very challenging times. it is as complex as anything i've seen. it is as uncertain as anything i've seen. i think the united states is in a position where we can't do it alone anymore. i think we're also continuing to devolve out of the cold war, out of that bipolar,

freeze-the-world relationship we had with the soviets then which, when the wall came down, that devolution started and i think there are still vestiges of that very much a part of what's going on now. >> rose: i just returned from syria, had a conversation with president assad when i was there last week. you see the interesting circumstances with america on one side and iraq not coordinating or working together and you saw in tikrit once we had an air strike they pulled back and iraq seemed to insist on that. but there is worry on the part of the people in iraq that ir will flex isthmusle which is being used there in some permanent relationship. >> i think that's a great worry. i think where iran clearly is now in iraq is a place that none of us anticipated they'd be so strongly and i think that was also facilitated, obviously, by

i.s.i.s. and -- >> rose: by the threat of i.s.i.s.? >> by i.s.i.s. being in iraq. i think that's what generated the force flow of iranians into iraq and effectively iran has become the defense minister, if you will at large for what's going on in that country. and at the core of this becomes this whole issue of, you know, can shia and sunni figure out how to live together, and are there leaders in the world and particularly arab leaders, that can figure this out? and as iran gets stronger in these countries you see saudi arabia, you know, striking in yemen very specifically, and there is this historic tension -- >> rose: supporting the houthi rebels. >> in the complexity of who's on whose side i think is representative of how difficult

are these issues in that part of the world. >> rose: what role do we play? i think my own view of this is we have to stay engaged. we have friends in that part of the world. clearly, the saudis are concerned, for instance, about any deal that we make with iran. and i think we have to work hard to make sure that we can alleviate those concerns. we will, i believe, and i think the president said it again today, we're never going to walk away from israel. we will always be there for them in support of them in whatever they need and certainly in terms of their security. they're our closest ally in that part of the world but i think we have to stay engaged. and i worry -- and it's not just us. this deal or the framework is a p5 plus 1. there are six countries involved. this isn't just for the united states. >> rose: and 6 includes russia. >> yes. >> rose: the p5 plus 1 includes russia. >> that's true, and china.

i think what they've done, in a way the deal sort of could be a signature effort in terms of how do you address issues in that part of the world? a good friend of mine three or four years ago said if you think the sectarian violence in iraq was bad and it was, stand by for syria, it's worse. and, so -- >> rose: the worse is the the majority have the power. >> the big question is if they lost the power, what would happen? if you look at what happened in iraq as far as shia going after sunni -- >> rose: that led to the rise of i.s.i.s. did it not? >> that's right. so is something like this the p5 plus 1 or the right leaders at the table on what's going on in syria now a way to get at stopping the killing in that part of the world literally in

syria when you have countries that i believe for a long time we couldn't get iran anywhere close to right without putin and russia and they and syria have a long relationship. is there a way to frame a political outcome through negotiations with leaders from those countries, very difficult relationships, as i understand it to include tooky, iran, hesbollah i'm not sure. >> rose: but stopping the killing and negotiate a political outcome and if you do that you have to include all the parties who have a border or a long-time friendship or some other reason to sit at the table. >> yes and generate a strategic view of, okay this is how we're going to get at it and deploy the diplomacy and if necessary deploy the military, inside a strategy -- >> rose: if necessary deploy

what military? >> i think that becomes a question of how it's going. certainly, i think from the standpoint of let's say the 40,000 arab force which has been talked about very recently, putting that together, certainly i believe, and i think many, many people believe they need to lead on this. but there is support that we can provide that -- i mean, we have the best the most capable force in the world right now. we have been through a lot. there's a lot of things i think we could do to help get that to the military outcome inside this strategic framework. >> rose: so you need a political solution in syria. it seems to me that we have clearly had to make a decision that the removal of assad was not the primary priority. >> i think that's true. that said, my own view of that long term -- and i think we need

to take a long view, by the way. long term, i don't think assad is going to last. i couldn't tell you how that's going to happen, but i don't think that should be the principle objective of interaction there now. >> rose: so for those rebels and those people who demand assad's removal before they negotiate, that's a nonstarter because he has the power? >> absolutely. and i think that also becomes a part of how do you get to a political outcome everybody agrees to and how do you enforce it? and those are tough and complex issues. i don't know how syria concludes right now. it's just getting worse and worse. i don't know how it comes together in a way that stops the killing, restores the millions of refugees to their homes and starts to generate some kind of stability there without the

political, diplomatic and obviously, where its needed, economic and military capability coming together. not just let's hit them with the military and see how it comes out. we've done that too many times and i would argue it hasn't come out that well. >> rose: let's turn to russia and ukraine. where are we there? >> i don't think we're in a very good place. i've worried about russia and in particular president putin for a long time. i think -- >> rose: because? well, i actually, when i was the commanding officer of a united states navy cruiser in the '90s took my ship up there when it was really bad. the ruble was worth less than a penny, going down every single day, nothing on the shelves the people there were disdesperate about the future.

what strikes me in retrospect going back to that time frame is, when the cold war ended we gloated. we didn't do what we did after world war ii was focus on germany and japan and restoring it. we gloated. and many russians remember that. >> rose: especially putin. and especially president putin. he comes into power in 2000. obviously he is resourced heavily because of the energy shift in the world, if you will and the bountiful energy resource they had and he saved the country and so, here's a man who's got a terrible demographic problem, he's got a terrible infrastructure problem, his economy is in really bad shape, almost doubled because of the sanctions and the oil and, yet, he is an important player in the world, and i worry that

we've got him actually cornered and it's not going to get er? better. >> rose: how will he respond? i think as we've seen, with strength, with abject, in some cases military power or certainly he's adopted now -- >> rose: do you think he wanted this or he saw an opportunity to do something he long wanted which was to grab crimea but he doesn't want to be in the place where he is now with the separatist and ukraine and all it's brought down on him and he's looking, therefore, for a way out? >> i think we need to figure out if there's a way out. i also think he's an individual that responds to strength and, so, he needs to know there you cannot do this anymore. i used to take a temperature about how russia was going with my ball tick counterparts --

baltic counterparts. i can't imagine how nervous they are when you have countries where 25% of the population speaks russian. >> rose: but in those countries, we are committed, if they're a member of n.a.t.o., to their defense. >> we are, indeed. >> rose: i talked to a member of the administration who says we will stand by that and -- >> i think if we didn't do that it would fundamentally break n.a.t.o. apart. >> rose: so if he moves into any n.a.t.o. country, then we will respond. but you say we need to fight strength with strength. how do we do that that we have not done that? what's your criticism of what we've done before and how have we not been as tough as we might have to have get his attention? >> when i was chairman, the russians actually went into georgia and i was taken in conversations and what was written back then by the essence of what georgia and the ukraine

are to russia and i think on the western side sometimes -- the western view is that these are country that want to come into n.a.t.o., these are countries that want to come toward the west and we're at the heart of where russia started and i think we just need to be very careful about opening those doors or being forcible about pushing them in that direction. >> rose: it was wrong to encourage a n.a.t.o. expansion into certain parts of the eastern end of europe? >> i thought we were accelerating that far beyond. >> rose: and it's scared to death of him. >> absolutely. this is his homeland. the wonings empire started in kiev -- the russian empire started in kiev. when you start talking about kiev being into n.a.t.o., it's like putting a hot poker in there, in my view. we've started rotating forces in eastern europe, rotational

forces, eastern forces as well as n.a.t.o. i think we need to stick with that. i think we need to be careful about any rhetoric with respect to removal of u.s. forces from europe. i think n.a.t.o. -- i worked long and hard, as this president did president bush and others, to get n.a.t.o. countries to spend more on defense. they don't. i think n.a.t.o.'s got to recalibrate itself in terms of how they're going to provide the security for their own country as well as n.a.t.o., given the change that's there. i think where we were headed with russian, we're in a completely different position. i've spoken for the last couple of years, one of my worries, i partially negotiated the new start treaty for nuclear weapons, that we get this wrong and somehow bring the weapons of mass destruction back into play

and president putin in the last few weeks mentioned nuclear weapons twice. >> rose: he was prepared to go on nuclear alert about crimea. that's crazy. >> it is crazy i agree. >> rose: but you have to ask yourself is he serious and why is he serious. >> correct. and i think he is serious because he is caged and he's caged at an 80% approval level. >> rose: what did the assassination of nemtsov, what signal did that send? >> i mean, i wasn't shocked. >> rose: the political assassination. shot in the back going across a bridge. >> i worry a great deal about not knowing the facts but i wasn't surprised it comes out of chechnya in terms of the possibility of originating there. so i think that's part of the control. he has great control of that country right now. and he's somebody that is formidable and that i think we

have to figure out how to deal with. >> rose: at the same time china. >> yeah. >> rose: is developing a better relationship with him. >> yeah. >> rose: he's sending a whole bunch of energy over there. >> yeah. >> rose: what's he getting for it? >> so back to sort of my early '90s -- this has been evolutionary. it's not just been what's happened in the last year or two although that's important and topical. but again i think if we get this wrong -- >> rose: get what wrong? if we are unable to reach out to him and figure out a way forward that is peaceful and recognizes the challenges and the needs on both sides here, but essentially to a point where he stops doing what he's doing i think and back to his being in a corner, i think we almost weld a relationship between him and

china, and that's not a relationship that's easy historically it's not natural -- >> rose: in fact, it was kissinger who did the reverse when he drove a wedge between that relationship by recognizing china. >> and i think there's an opportunity to make sure that doesn't happen. i think the two of them aligned against us the next 50 or 60 years has a bad outcome not just for us but the world. i worry about the totality of the impact of not having a relationship with putin now. >> rose: here's what you seem to be saying as a military man who spent his life into military, who rose to the highles job you ever had, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, you say we're not doing enough diplomacy. >> yes. we've been through a lot, but i don't sign up to this we're tired and can't do anything. this goes back to the essence of the course eput together at

princeton because we have been using the military too much and have not been able to deploy the other forces of government to generate outcomes as we used to do. >> rose: that was bob gates idea, too. >> well, believe me, i'm tired of living with the answer, okay, let's pull out the gun and see what happens. the gun may be a part of the solution, but i want it a part of a strategy, not just hope. >> rose: okay. and i assume, you know, the cry is that we ought to be arming the ukrainians. >> yeah. >> rose: we ought to be sending bigger and better weapons to them. not troops but bigger and better weapons. >> yes. >> rose: would you be resistant to that? >> no. >> rose: because that fuels the flame? >> well there eelsries -- well there's risk associated with it. there's a question do we arm our friends in syria. it's the question of who's got them and how will they be used. >> rose: and whose hands will

they fall into. >> exactly. but i think in some cases you have to take that risk and on the other side of that there are individuals in ukraine or in syria that don't understand why we aren't there to help in that regard, given what they're up against. and some of this -- and the longer this takes, the more difficult those decisions become. >> rose: let me get back to syria for a second because a lot of people look back at that point where the moderate forces were begging for equipment like john mccain and at the same time hillary clinton, bob gates, david petraeus and others at the c.i.a. said we ought to do this. the president made a decision phot to, basically said it was a fantasy. was it a fantasy? >> i don't know. >> rose: you know a lot more about it than most people. >> i think what we find ourselves in, now that we have

arrived at a position where we're providing some weapons is -- my own view of that is, had we done that earlier, the potential is there to have a bigger impact than it does right now. >> rose: you could have built up a moderate force in opposition, too. >> well i think so, but also -- i mean even at the time the discussion was going on, this idea of what was the free syrian army, and there were a lot of views of who they were. >> rose: what's your view? well, they were more coherent a couple of years ago than now because of what's happened. >> rose: there are some who argue that assad wanted to see the rise of i.s.i.s. because he wanted the circumstance in syria to be this -- it's either me or i.s.i.s., not it's either me or moderate reformers. >> i'm not sure i'd give him that much credit. >> rose: you wouldn't? i'm not sure i'd give him

that much credit, that's all. to me, the analysis -- >> rose: because most to have the bombing -- because most of the bombing -- >> yeah. >> rose: some say he used his moderate forces against i.s.i.s. as they were rising the power and that's the reason they rose. you're not giving him that much credit? >> no, i think that may analytically viewed in hindsight as to have some kind of value but that's, as i recall going in and being on the front end of this but there was no discussion. >> rose: but in the near term he has to stay in power? >> it isn't a matter. i think he will stay in power. >> rose: what do you think china wants militarily? >> well i think china would like to see us leave the area. >> rose: leave -- leave that part of the world. i think they would like to become the dominant a force in that part of the world. >> rose: we have to recognize that they have significant influences in the region. >> absolutely, absolutely. >> rose: and they have to recognize that we have significant friends in the

region. >> absolutely. >> rose: like india like japan like south korea. >> but, believe me, i think that if we picked up and left they would be happy campers. that said, we're not going to do that. we have too many friends. it's such a critical part of the world from many perspectives but economically, that's the engine, sort of the india china asia, you know, american, sort of being the century of the pacific, it's going to be -- >> rose: the 21st century. yes, and it has to be stable. >> rose: can it be the century of the pacific and an american? >> i think the question on china is are they going to be construct nigh their revolution and if they develop their

military and do it positively, that's a potential outcome. if it's the other way around, it becomes destructive. but they're going to have a very difficult time getting where they immediate to go economically if they have a destructive military force. destructive to the region. destructive to stability. >> rose: because they need a lot of trading partners. >> they do. globally, they need them. but certainly in the west as well and certainly as the top two economies in the world between the united states -- that has to be the case between the united states and -- >> rose: i want to talk about two things and let you go. number one is cybersecurity. >> yeah. >> rose: a lot of people i talk to worry more about that than almost anything. >> i think i try to frame my view of the world in terms of security with respect to existential threats. there are only two existential threats to us as a nation. one are the nooks we nukes we have and we talked about that and our inability to deal with putin

that makes sure they're off the table and the second one is cyber because so few people understand it, it is represented in the scale kinds of issues that you've seen at target and jp morgan and it's tens of millions of impacts and -- >> rose: and there are hackings taking place every day. >> they are by the hundreds or thousands. and there's certainly a great deal of work going into that but that is a capability that could shut us down. it could shut our financial system down if we're not careful, it could shut our electrical grid down. and if they're able to sustain that, whoever they are and it could be state-sponsored individuals or states themselves, that becomes a way that our life changes. that is existential to our future and it's a very tough space to understand technically and i encourage leaders everywhere to understand the

technical details because they're the ones that supply the resources, hire the people create the policies to deal with them but we're behind. >> rose: one last question about terrorism and i.s.i.s. and caliphate and what we see happening in yemen and kenya -- today! >> yeah. >> rose: and the reports of people being romanticized over social media to slip through the borders and to go to syria and to get training to do whatever they want to do. are we winning that battle? >> you know, charlie, i've thought about this in terms of just my own upbringing and i know that you were there for this as well, but when we were going through such difficult times in the '60s and the '70s, and the number of disenchanted, disaffected young people, even in our own country, that went in different directions if you will, that

certainly was my experience here. so i take that, if you fast forward that and accelerate it with this explosion of communication when you have disaffected, disbelieving young people with no future all over the world, it doesn't surprise me at all the draw is there and that people come from all over the world to address these -- to be engaged in these things. >> rose: no it gives them purpose and direction. >> it does. what we as leaders have to do is figure out a way to create hope. >> rose: this has to come not just from the united states but from the west and from the middle east and from the muslim community. >> i think the fundamental issue is in the middle east leaders have to figure out a way to provide hope for their people so that what particularly -- they all have youth -- particularly what they have been, what they see as a future, which is very

grim, actually changes. >> rose: a thrill to have you. a pleasure to have you here. hope you will come back. >> ogd to be with you. >> rose: former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff admiral michael mullen. stay with us. >> rose: kazuo ishiguro is here. his books includes never let me go and the "the buried giant' is his first novel in the ten years. the "new york times" called it the wastered and most ambitious thing h he's published in his celebrated 33-year career. welcome. >> nice to be here. >> rose: congratulations because of all people are saying about. this my question is -- about this. my question is, is it about appropriate for you to take ten years to complete a novel? >> i'd like to do it more quickly but, you know, i'm doing the best i can. and there's no problem with the

quantity of books out there, you know... >> rose: you're going for quality? >> i wasn't necessarily going for quality, but if i put something out there, whether good or bad, i want to slightly change the landscape slightly change the skyline of the pile of books out there. so whether people like it or not, i want to offer something a little bit different. so until that gets into play, i don't think i feel i'm ready to put the book out there. >> rose: you know some people believe this is a radical departure for you. >> yeah, it comes as a slight surprise that people think it's so different because i always comat these things from the inside. i never really -- i'm a bit like someone's trying to build kind of a flying machine. before aviation or these guys used to make funny flying machines in their backyard. i feel like i'm a bit like that. i'm just trying to get this thing that will fly and for a

long time it doesn't fly and i'm putting this piece on, too. finally it kind of flies. >> rose: yeah. but i don't really know what it looks like. it may look really weird to someone coming to it. >> rose: but do you know what it is or does it have to be something in your mind? is it, for example a love story? >> it's certainly a love story. i knew that it's a love forebut story but a love story of a certain kind. we usually mean a courtship story, a story of two people coming together and ends when they declare love to each other. this is a love story. i think there should be more love stories like this one. it's about the decades the years. it's the long distance of love and about all the years you struggled to keep the flame alive and this is about a man and a woman who are determined to stand by each other right to the end. >> rose: they suffer from a kind of amnesia. >> yeah well, this is kind of

what i had. when i was talking about getting my flying machine together, this is one to have the main problems. i is that right off with a kind of a story that i can almost express in two or three lines in the abstract, and i often can't find the right way to put it off, the right setting. one of the things i started off with is i want a situation where there's a whole community, a nation suffering from some kind of selective memory loss and the nation has to decide, as a nation, you know, do they want to remember everything. maybe there's been something very traumatic buried in the recent past and maybe there was a very good reason for these things being buried. and -- >> rose: and do you have a point of view on that? >> my only point of view is it's very difficult. it's very difficult to generalize. i think there are situations -- let's take france after the

second world war. >> rose: a good example. i don't want to pick on france. >> rose: no. i'm being polite here. i'm in the united states. i don't want the talk about any buried giants in american society. i'm sure, you know, we can all -- >> rose: absolutely. as a matter of etiquette, i'm here as a visitor, so i'm going to talk about france. >> rose: right. so the french, after the second world war, what are they going to do with this stuff? you know, they seem to be on the winning side but they spent a lot of their time collaborating with the nazis, sending french jews to the gas chamber without much help from the germans betraying each other to the questionguessgestapo. what do they do with that? how much is the goal to pretend they were all resistant fighters

and not visit this question for a few decades. there will be a time when we're stronger and can face this but right now if we look at our recent past we'll tear each other to pieces. at least we'll go communist. there might be civil war. the society cannot hold. and you look at situations, say like -- this was i suppose, the starting point when i started to think about this. you think about situations like what happened in the bosnia in the '90s or kosovo or rwanda. >> rose: or cambodia. yeah. you have situations where people seem to have lived together, different tribes different communities have managed to co-exist at least for a generation and then some kind of societal memory was deliberately reawakened to mobilize hatred and violence. >> rose: do you start with that idea? that situation and then create

characters? >> kind of yeah. i start with that situation but the other thing i was very concerned about that same question about, you know, do we want to remember certain things, are we better off just keeping some memories buried, i was wanting to apply it not just to a nation but side by side with that, i wanted to apply it to a marriage, because i think the same questions apply to a marriage, you know any kind of long-distance marriage, as it would, i guess, to any long-term, you know like parent-child relationship, siblings, but that same question arisings because most relationships that go on for a long time, inevitably there are panels you agree to just keep buried. all right, that was unfortunate you know, i was painful, let's just move on. but the couple at the center of my novel, they have this very

difficult question -- would our love survive remembering some of these things? do we want to remember some of the things that we have buried? but, on the other hand, if we don't look at these things and the sense their time together is limited now because they're a certain age if we don't look at these darker passages we've put to one side for now, is our love genuine? is it based on something phony? they're very similar to the questions. >> rose: to individuals have what states have. >> i think so. >> rose: in the sense of having to -- >> that question of when is it better to remember, when is it better to forget, is a very difficult one that applies to nations and families and marriages. >> rose: this is the scientific aspect of this and i'm not knowledgeable about it but i think there are some experimentations going trying to

understand the brain so that there are things and drugs that can affect what you remember you know that can tamper with memory. >> well that kind of thing might have been very useful for me. >> rose: exactly. at the stage -- i came to a stage right -- this is what happens to me. i don't write novels in a sensible order. i start off with a story without a setting. now, if you had said that to me at a certain point in my kind of attempt to compose this novel, i might have said oh that's good. you know, maybe that's what i need. i'll go with that as a kind of a sci-fi-ish, modern kind of device. that would give me what i want because i need a situation where everyone has to make that decision. do we want to turn back, you know, the force that allows us to forget or actually, is it

terribly useful. do we depend on forgetfulness to carry on? and, so that's a very good -- what you just said is very interesting. i didn't, in the end decide to go down that kind of path. i decided to go back into some kind of mythical past where i thought i could rely on very ancient kind of storytelling devices so i could have kind of a supernatural mist. >> rose: it's worth looking up. you will find out a number of things as we explore the brain, as everybody does, and the academy and science and everybody else. we're finding out interesting things and that's one aspect of it of which there are many. but memory has been a theme ofous, has it not? >> yes, i worry it's become a bit of an obsession. >> rose: seems to be. my entire obsessive memory. i think it's probably changed and evolved over the years because when i started to write

fiction as a very young man, i think it was in order to remember. i think that's why there is a very intimate link in my mind and in my heart, you know between writing fiction and remembering, you know, because -- >> rose: how does writing fiction catalyze or stimulate memory? >> it's not so much to stimulate memory. i had left japan at age 5 to live in britain and i think, all the way through my growing up, i had these memories of this place that was very precious to me, and it was the place i thought i was going to return to at some point. i had these memories, and it wasn't like a specific series of memory. it was like a memory of a whole world, a whole kind of way of being, a whole life and whole atmosphere and a whole group of people. and as i got older, i realized that that very personal japan

that was inside my head was somewhere i couldn't go to in the plain and it faded i've write year i got older. so i started off my whole writing fiction career by actually wanting to preserve these memories. i couldn't preserve them just by writing down facts. i had to actually rebuild the japan of my imagination and memory in a book. so i think right at the foundation of my writing impulse was this notion that creating a world in fiction was an act of memory. memory preservation. so i could say actually, now, it's safe inside that book. >> rose: i have to call on my memory to inform my book. am i right about that? your memory is going to have to influence the setting and

character development? >> i didn't even really have to call on my memory. it's almost like i've got this world that i've built in this world naturally, not because i'm trying to write but naturally as a kid growing up, this world builds up in my head. it's a mixture of imagination, speculation and memory. and then i get to a certain age, what am i going to do with it? do i let it just disappear as time goes on? if it's a very special place and only i have access to it i actually want to get it down in some kind of way and i think that was the original impulse you know. i want to preserve it inside a fictional world. that's how it started. and then i think as i kind of carried on writing i never lost that fundamental idea that there's something -- you know writing is something about memory, and i started to look at other people or other characters

in some depth, but i always tended to tell my stories through memory. you know, people remembering about themselves, people putting a memory from 30 years back right next to a memory from 5 or 10 minutes ago or two days ago and right assess these memories and are the memories accurate, are they blurred at the edges or are they being distorted by the person, the thing? i mean it's a way of construct ago sense of one's self. >> rose: and what was the impact of that 14th century poem called sir gay wynne and the green mouse. >> not many people watching know it. it's a very entertaining story poem. most of it is not particularly relevant to my novel though i recommend people read it because

it's a very entertaining poem. i took -- there was just one little stanza -- you know the story takes place in two cast castles, but there's a bridge passage where one rides from one castle to the other and you get a glimpse of britain in those days. there are no inns or anything so you had to sleep on rocks in the pouring rain. i don't know why he had to sleep on rocks. he should sleep under the tree but he slept on rocks. >> rose: you don't know why? what struck me is it says in the next couple of lines, it says something like and i'm paraphrasing it says he was chased by a wild boar by wolves and panting ogres were chasing up hills out of villages. he goes to another castle and it continues in some splendor, but

this little glimpse of this weird, imaginary, ancient britain just those few lines sparked a whole world for me. i thought well, that would be a fun place to put down my novel. i could suddenly see this -- >> rose: when you find that that's a huge benefit. >> yeah. and i go location hunting because i told you i go about things backwards. it's a stupid way to write novels, but i get a story, i don't have a location, i don't have a setting, and sometimes you ask why sometimes it takes a long time to find the write setting. >> rose: yeah. how long did it take you to find the setting in this case? >> it took a long time. i tid actually think about sci-fi settings. >> rose: yeah. but that's when sometimes you come across something and a few lines spark a whole row.

i like the banality of the panting ogres. there's no surprise. it doesn't say, you know what? there were ogres! no, it's just a nuisance. they made life very inconvenient. they're not very friendly bulls you encounter. so i thought, well, i'll have that. in my world there will just be ordinary things in the background. >> rose: it is said that your wife, when she first read the book, hated it. is that fair? >> this is what you're getting at when you wanted to know why it took ten years. (laughter) i'm giving serious literary responses, you want the simple. (laughter) no you're right. she didn't hate it. for encouragement, you know, i'd

done a lot of work found the setting, worked everything out, so i'm quite a way into it. i'd written 60 or 70 pages and i thought, you know, even i sometimes, though usually i work alone, i need a little encouragement like everybody else. like my wife would give it to me. i showed it to her and she said you're going to have to start from scratch (laughter) >> rose: how was that moment between the two of you? >> well, it was a little awkward. >> rose: you'll have to start over from scratch? >> yeah. what she was saying is i'm not saying you have to alter the character or change this. not a word of this can survive. but she did say you don't have to abandon the idea. the concepts the ideas are very interesting. >> rose: but you have to start over. >> yeah, not a word. the execution is all wrong.

you're going to have to start from scratch. and, so, but i don't mind this too much because -- >> rose: did you take it seriously? >> yeah, i did. i put it to one side. i wrote another book. i wrote a book of short stories for nocturns and these other things. this happened to me a lot. i had to attempt three times. there are two abandoned versions of the book in the '90s. >> rose: but they build on each other. >> they build on each other. >> rose: you didn't throw it in the ocean. >> no, i never abandon anything actually, because i have this kind of strange maybe naive confidence that if i come back to it, something that was wrong before would have gone away, and there will be a solution that hadn't occurred to me the first time around, second time around,

that will present itself, and that's been my experience. never let me go it was only the third time around that i came upon what you might call the sci-fi, that this should be a story about young people who had actually been harvested as clones for organ donation. that wasn't there in my first two attempts. i was trying hard to contrive a way in which young people could go through the experience of old people, you know, that they could go through the struggles of the whole thing of becoming middle aged and old and getting sick and dying and asking all the questions that people do over a larger life span. i wanted to find some way in which they could do this in 28, 30 years, and i couldn't do it before. but then, you know, this jigsaw, piece to have the jigsaw presented itself. >> rose: if you could have been a great musician, would you

have preferred that to a great novelist? >> that's a great question. >> rose: because? because i still love music. of course, when you're not allowed to do something, you know, because i wanted to be a -- not really a musician. i wanted to be a great song writer. >> rose: yes. i love songs. not a composer. that's too grand. i like the three-minute, four-minute, two-minute song. you know, a beautiful emotion or world contained in a song. the performance, the music, the orq administration. i think a song is a wonderful thing. if i could have been a song writer, i might. it takes ten years to write a novel. >> rose: why does it have to be either/or? because they're both so demanding? >> it doesn't have to be

either/or in theory, but in practice i'm not a good song writer. >> rose: that you know. you're great writer. you don't know whether you're a good song writer. >> i'm not a bad lyricist. i work with a band leader and saxophonist and he writes all the music. >> rose: yeah. as i got older, when i was in my mid 20s, when i moved from songs to short fiction to novels, i started to feel that there were certain things i wanted to do that i couldn't do in song, but nevertheless, i think many of the things that mark me has a novelist today -- my style my priorities -- they derive directly from my decisions that i made about song song writing. in the back of my head, i'm

still writing a song. this is why i like first person narrative. novels are like songs it's just one -- not like big band songs, they're like something a guy with an acoustic guitar or a woman with an acoustic guitar singing to about 17 people. >> rose: that's kind of in your mind. >> that almost con tensional thing somebody's telling the story of their life to a small audience in an intimate setting. that's why i love the first person actor. >> rose: can you play acoustic guitar? >> i'm not a bad guitarist. i can play many styles -- jazz, folk i can play bad piano. i wouldn't mind being eric clapton or b.b. king but it's not that kind of guitar.

to me, a guitar is something that helps pin down a song. it's a good instrument for songs because it holds down rhythm harmony and meldy at the same meld -- melody at the same time. >> rose: what's interesting about the conversation about guitar, lyrics song writing and music is i have a friend who's a brilliant writer who has a son and his son has been almost a prodigy at a series of things, really good at chess games and things like that. he now is in college and has become obsessed, which happened right before we went to college, with the guitar p. i thought that's a strange thing, to to be obsessed with the guitar, having excelled in so

many things. and you helped me understand it. it's the complexity that gives you the great challenge. >> i don't know what kind of guitar he's interested in, but there is something about a guitar that it just implies all the other stuff. you know it implies a whole orchestra. >> rose: yes. it's a very good instrument for that. there is something about a piano where it's almost a substitute for an orchestra, whereas a guitar has six strings it has simply to imply. it's like a japanese brush stroke, a few lines implies a whole world. so i think that may be your friend's son maybe that's what he kinds fascinating, you just arrange a few little chords, a few harmonies in this way and suddenly it implies a whole orq administration. >>administration -- orchestration.

>> rose: "the buried giant' kazuo ishiguro. thank you for joining us. see you next time. for more shows, visit us online at pbs.org and charlierose.com. captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

>> rose: funding for "charlie rose" has been provided by: the coca cola company, supporting this program since 2002. >> rose: additional funding provided by: >> and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and information services worldwide.

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