>> rose: welcome to the program, as summer ends we take a look back at some of the year's best books, in this encore presentation my conversations with writers david mccullough, toni morrison and kazuo ishiguro. >> so many of these people we hear about them in school history courses for about ten minutes, and then we move on. oh, the wright brothers, they were those clever mechanics, bicycle mechanics and they invented the airplane. that's hard leigh a fraction of the story. the idea is they had tremendous interest in an art, and architecture. and photography. there was no -- they were fully alive intellectually, mentally. but they also had this driving sense of purpose that i feel is essential to

high achievement. >> there are privileges to certain kinds of color. these are social constructs. >> these are not inventions of science. that is descriptions of scientific, things human beings think of, for good reason. some profitable, some just personal, you know, thinking how can you feel really, really good about yourself if there's nothing to be othered if you can't separate yourself from something. bauz you're convinced is lower than yourself. >> i always tended to tell may stories through memory. people remembering about themselves, people putting up mem res from 30 years back right next to a memory from five or ten minutes ago or two days ago. and trying to assess these memories. are the memories accurate?

are they blood at the edge -- blurred at the edges. are they being distorted by the person rememberinged thing? it's a way of constructing a sense of one's self. >> rose: the best in books when we continue. >> rose: funding for "charlie rose" has been provided by: american express. >> rose: additional funding provided by: >> and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and information services worldwide. captioning sponsored by rose communications city, this is charlie rose.rk here, he had been called a master of the art of

narrative history. he twice won the pulitzer prize and is a recipient of the presidential medal of freedom. he has written 11 books called the wrighthistory brothers. it tells the story of two bicycle mechanics from dayton, ohio, who taught the world to fly. i'm pleased to have my friend david mccullough back at this table. welcome. >> thank you, sir. >> this is a completion of a triology of high achievement. >> that's exactly right. the first book was a great bridge about the building of brooklyn bridge. the second was my book about the building of the panama canal, the path between the seas. and now this. an all three of those extraordinary accomplishments took place in a handful of years in the late 19th century into the first ten years of the 20th-- 20th century. and each in its own way was a major breakthrough without any historic precedent. but this one more obviously changed the world.

in no time. because man had never flown a motor powered machine into the air before. and when that happened, it was clear to a few but not to all that this was one of the decisive turning points in history. what is so surprising, many things were very surprising to me in writing the book. but what is so surprising is he sort of imagined, okay, they flew the first time at kitty hawk in 1903 and everybody realized this was terrific. changed the world. but it wasn't until 1908 that the world was ready to realize yes, man can fly. because we had set our minds, that was impossible. and this-- as so often happens in many aspects of history and life, but seldom so dramatically,. >> rose: what is it about the people that do this? they don't quit.

>> that's right. they do not give up. and i really think it also had something to do with where they came from. ohio. midwestern america. this is not to say that there are lots of other people from elsewhere that don't give up. harry truman never gave up, midwestern american from a very humble origins. and they had purpose, charlie. they have a purpose in mind. and i probably sounds like a bad pun. high purpose that they were determined to achieve no matter what. and every time each either of them went up in one of their experimental planes and flights, he was rest risking his life. so it took tremendous courage and character. and surprisingly for me, was

to see to what extent their use of the english language was a major importance in their success. they were raised by an itinerant minister father who insisted that they learn to use the language both on paper and on their feet. and you read their letters and you think that neerlt one ever finished high school and is humbling their use of the language, their humor, their foresight, their everything. they grew up in a house that had no running water, no indoor plumbing, no electricity, no telephone. but it had books. and the father insisted that they read and only read what he felt was of importance in fiction and history. natural history and philosophy, and the classics.

and everything including the work of the famous agnostic ingersoll, even though he was a protestant itinerant preacher, the father, sow wanted broad mind. >> wilbur was the dominant brother. >> the dominant brother and a genius. orville was very bright and very inventive, ingenuous mechanically. but wilbur really was the geniusment and-- and the big brother, he was the leader. and it wouldn't have happened without both of them, two heads were better than one as it turned out. and the old idea that very little of consequence has ever accomplished alone, they are a good example of that. >> rose: when did they have the idea? >> they had the idea that they could learn to glide. >> to use wind. >> to use the wind, to ride the wind. and they studied birds. and soaring birds on the beaches. >> of north carolina.

>> i love that. just the idea of seeing them out there trying to flap their arms. >> and the local people all thought they were wacko, nutics from the middle west. >> but they were studying the birds. >> as orville said, learning to fly by studying birds is like learning magic from a magician. >> rose: they know how to do it. >> simple. >> and they figured it out. nobody ever had. and then, then they had to fly. there were theorists who had very exciting an often very ingenuous ideas. but they wouldn't fly. wilbur once said that there are two ways to train a wild horse. one is to sit on the fence and study the horse and then go to your comfortable chair and your living room and write your theory about how to train a horse. the other way is to get on the horse and ride. exactly as you know they were bicycle mechanics.

and exactly as if you said the only you can learn to ride a bicycle is to ride a bicycle. so they not only had the skill and the engine uity and genius to create a glider that would do more than any glider ever had. but they also had the courage to do it. and they were not defeated by failure. they learned from their mistakes. and that's a marvelous lesson for all of us to learn. >> rose: i guess it was orville who told a friend, he said it isn't true to say we had no special advantage. the greatest thing in our favor was growing up in a family where there was always much encouragement. >> intellectual curiosity. exactly right. i think howard brought up is more important than we realized. we put a lot of express on education. >> for better or worse. >> yes, of how you're raised. what were the manners you were taught. what were you taught about loyalty. what were you taught about

telling the truth. what are you taught about being kind to people. all of that begins at home. and the din are table, and the conversations about behavior and aspirations. their father was an exceptional teacher. and their sister. >> rose: kathryn. >> whose importance in this story, i'm very happy to say, i spent a lot of trouble-- time and effort bringing her front and center stage. because she deserves it. she was bright, she was-- she was bossi. she was funny. she was opinionated. she had a temper. she could get raspy as she said but she was always there when they needed her. and she was bright as can be. she is the only one of the group that went to college. >> rose: does she remind you of emily robely. >> yes, sir.

and and abigail adams, very strongly. and i think that the story would not have come out the way it did, the way it did had it not been for her. >> rose: . >> i think one of the joys of the work that i do is giving credit where credit is long overdue. and find unrecognized characters. >> and we need lessons in appreciation. and so many of these people that we just, we hear about them when school, history courses for about ten minutes and then we move on. oh, the wright brothers were those clever mechanics, bicycle mechanics from ohio and they invented the airplane. that's hardly a fraction of the story. the idea is that they had tremendous interest in the art, and architecture. and photography, there was no-- they were fully alive intellectually, mentally.

but they also had this driving sense of purpose that i feel is essential to high achievement, on that scale, on that level. >> what was that, they -- >> purpose, sense of purpose. >> i do too. >> they weren't trying to make a lot of money. they weren't trying to achieve fame. they didn't like the limelight. they avoided it. >> rose: were they trying to change the world? >> no. >> rose: they were just trying to show -- >> they were sure that man could do this. and they thought they had the answer. and they did. and they had no money. the entire expenses, all the expenses for the first plane to fly kitty hawk in 1903 were less than $1,000. samuel langley and his group at the smithsonian spent 70,000 dollars trying to

build an airplane that would fly and it just flew into the potomac river several times. >> rose: what didn't they understand? >> well, for one thing langley didn't understand that you have to get on the horse and ride it. >> rose: yes, yes, yes. what was the role of photography? >> well, they loved photography. they were interested in it for technical reasons. it was advancing very rapidly so that if you look at the photograph on the cover of that book or on the inside front page, that's as sharp as anything we can take today. you can see all the -- >> it's unbelievable. >> it is, unbelievable. from the original glass plate. and photography had been revolutionized. and they were fascinated by it. but they also wanted to record everything that they did in order to protect themselves from people who would violate their patents. >> rose: a supporter of the wright brothers compared the achievement to that of christopher columbus.

>> yes. >> rose: you? >> yes. absolutely. >> rose: could columbus discovered the new world, and they discovered how to go to further worlds. >> well, think of this. you and i, everybody today goes everywhere at 35,000 feet. last year at o'hare field in chicago, 70 million people flew in and out of that one airport. >> rose: 70 million. >> yes. and 1903 wasn't all that long ago. i could have known orville wright. he didn't die until 1948. i would have been 15 years and he could have been that nice old fellow around the corner that was fun to talk to. >> rose: 1958. >> 48ee. >> rose: right. >> and it is a fraction of time as history goes. this has all happened. you couldn't imagine a more dramatic change. and of course hugely changed the orders of warfare and he lived to see jet propulsion.

he lived to see rockets. it all happened very fast once they had got the key. >> rose: you have said that history fosters optimism. >> yes. >> rose: a comparison to a hubris. >> yes. >> rose: of the present. >> yes. i feel that way. >> rose: tell me what you mean. >> well, first of all t shows that there was no simpler time ever. and anybody who thinks that doesn't understand that times past were very difficult, very heartbreaking, destructive. suffering in the extreme. a terrific mistakes made, caused anguish of thousands of millions of people. but we came out of those dark times, we human beings. we do figure out what went wrong and how to fix it. and we do make extraordinary improvements in the quality of life. look what's happened in just

medicine here in my lifetime. >> rose: tell me, you call what you do a calling. >> yes, i do. >> rose: how is it a calling for you? >> is it simply you tell me. >> rose: i want:. >> i want to bring to life the best that can be found in the story of why we are the way we are and how we got to where we are. that doesn't mean it's all good news, all wonderful, admirable people, not by any means. i think that what really happened is not only as interesting as stories that are concocted, but often more interesting. and i have always thought of myself as a writer. >> rose: not an historian. >> but i'm writing about what really happened.

and i'm not going to make anything up. i'm not going to change any facts and figures. >> rose: what is the gift though? you have the calling but what is the gift? is it -- >> telling a story. there is no trick to writing history, tell stories. that's what it is. and great stories. >> rose: and stories about real things, real people. >> yes, i think one of the important points is that we shouldn't just think of history as politics in the military. which is a huge part of it. but it isn't everything. that's why i've done what i have done with this bock and others that i have written. they're not about politics in the military. yes, politics in the military enter into it but they're not about that. and i think that the future historians looking back on our time are going to be talking about other things in politics and military that we've achieved in our time or mistakes that we made other than politics in

the military. >> rose: you have said before that all of your books are about one of the first books that you read, little engine that could. >> yes, that's right. >> rose: that's the common denominator. >> i think i k i think i can, i think i can. >> rose: right. >> again as i was saying, it's how we're brought up. that is the kind of book that i was raised on. >> rose: i love this. wilbur wright said no bird soars in a calm. >> yes. >> rose: so fundamental and so true. >> yes. adversity helps. the old irish saying may the wind always be at your back, they just think that's the reverse. you need the wind. you need it to give you the lift. >> rose: it's great to see you. >> charlie, it's always a treat to be your guest, thank you. >> rose: david mccullough, the book is called the wright brothers, back in a moment. stay with us. >> rose: the one and only toni more ison is here, one of the greatest living writers won the prize of

fiction in 1988 for beloved. five years later she became the first african-american woman to win the nobel praise for literature. president obama has said that reading her novel song of salomon taught him to you ho be. he awarded her the nation's highest civilian honor, the presidential medal of freedom in 2012. morrison's new novel is called god help the child. i'm pleased to have my friend toni morrison back at this table. welcome. >> thank you. >> rose: this has been described as table-like. is it table-like? >> not to me but-- not to me. i mean look, bad, reinvention, good. i guess that's table-like. but i hope it's much more complicated than that. >> rose: i'm sure. but it's the first one you have written with a contemporary setting since tar baby. >> that's true. >> rose: 1981. >> that's true. >> rose: why did you go back to contemporary setting?

>> well, i was a little alarmed about doing it. i wrote home although hi started that book earlier, because the contemporary world was hard for me to grasp. i didn't have a hook. it seemed slippery. >> rose: always changing. >> yeah. >> rose: you don't know what it is going to be six months from now. >> so when i finally got a way to talk about "it" through the confusion of race and color and class, then i could do it. then i felt i could do it thatway. >> rose: when you you go through. >> when i began to think-- when i began to think of what was significant now in this 2007, 8, whatever period, one of the enormous topics was race, color, shades of color, reactions to it. >> rose: what is the difference between race and color? >> well, color is a

substitute for racism. race is just human beings. >> rose: right. >> color has some-- there are privileges to certain kinds of color. these are social constructs. these are not inventions of science, that is descriptions that is scientific. it's things human beings think of, for good reasons. some profitable, some just personal, you know, thinking of how can you feel really, really good about yourself if there is nothing to be othered, if you can't separate yourself from something. that you're convinced is lower than yourself. >> rose: are these troubling times? >> yes. these are. i think it's-- i'm not sure it's all that different but

it's obvious now. it's very obvious that the times are troubled. >> rose: and repeated. >> uh-huh. and a little cow ardly, i think. >> rose: how do you think cow ardly? >> well, when we think just about the media, and the journalistic stories, television stories about young, or middle-aged black men being shot by police obvious cow ard is of the police. i don't mean all police but those that we hear about. how are you afraid of a man running away from you? how are you afraid of somebody standing in the grocery store on a phone with a toy gun that you

could buy in the store? how could you be afraid of a little boy? and who are these people who call 911? who are they? you look out the window and you see a kid with a toy gun and you get on the phone? i like that policeman who was chasing a guy who had killed some people and turned around, faced the policeman and said shoot me, shoot me. and the policeman wouldn't. he said i'm not going to shoot you. i'm to the going to shoot you. he kept saying it. the guy obviously wanted to be shot, suicide by cop. but he didn't do it. and finally, took the guy down. but then i realized that that policeman had been in the military. he was not a you could ad. >> had different training. >> :cow ard.

>> had different training. >> entirely different. hes with brave, he stood up. but tess guys running around just popping people over and over again. >> rose: how can we change that? >> you have to change the police training. >> rose: that's the obvious. >> that's clear. >> rose: tell me who lula n bridewell is. >> she is a beaten up little girl, you know, sort of personally, threatened by her mother who was very up set when she saw her child because of her color. she's very, very black. really black. and this is what we used to call a high yellow woman who is looking at, she could be looking at, i don't know, a today as far as she's concerned. and she even thought i think a little bit about giving her away.

she doesn't, she tries to take care of her but she needs, she believes, to prokt-- protect her from people who will perhaps feel the same way she does. and in so doing, she disabled her. and until the girl can use that very thing, the blackness to her advantage, she is sort of a pitiful person, i think, sad, aggressive, young. and it takes the book for her and her-- who is also -- mother who is also traumatized to figure it out and become a three dimentional purpose. >> rose: this whole book is the bond between sweetness and lulu. >> most of it, yeah. >> rose: most of it. >> yeah. sweetness opens it. and she closes it. >> rose: yeah. >> she learns a little bit.

that she's encore i believeable. >> rose: in "the new york times" review carol walker writes that you are asking the reader to consider what happens to children who cannot forget the torement of an excruciatingly painful childhood to repeat. you're asking the reader to consider what happens to children who can't forget the torement of an excruciatingly painful childhood. >> it's true. i think we all have some level of recollection of maybe not serious trauma but unpleasantness. someone who should have loved us and didn't. and we sometimes think we have gotten over it. but many times it's distorting and shadowing our behavior. and it's debilitating. and you know, you have regrets.

but you do something about it. and i think as in the book, the les thing is to stop thinking about yourself and start thinking about somebody else. start taking care of somebody else. move it out. it's not always about you. >> rose: you say that you didn't appreciate the hierarchy of color until you went to howard. >> true, yeah. >> rose: so what did you learn about the hierarchy of color? >> that it was more convenient, easier, more comfortable the lighter your skin was. you could get into certain places and so on. and then there is the middle ground and some others. there were levels that i could even distinguished in soriorities, schools, departments, et cetera. where the obedience was and where the adoreation was. and the scorn for some people who were not light

skinned. >> rose: so how did you experience that? >> very differently. >> rose: yeah. >> i didn't know about it. i thought my little hometown was the way the who would world was. and the hierarchy in my hometown was almost the opposite, you know. so the only thing worse than that was washington d.c. i mean out there was serious business, you know. it was segregated in a very strenuous way. so that i felt safe at howard. but it was different. i didn't know these grades and levels of color, you know, class, all of that. i didn't know that. and i learned. >> rose: because you are accomplished, nobel prize for literature, what you mean to the world of letters

in america, do you fully comprehend that and do you fully believe that you, it's justified? >> well, there are really two people. my name is chloe wallford. and toni more ison is a name i acquired as an adult. and they're not two different people. toni morrison thinks about what you just said. whether or not she's important in the world. that she has medals, and she gets attention. >> right. >> and that's fine. she can handle that. the other person, the chloe person is the one who writes,

and thinks and invents and is wholly uninterested. >> rose: in toni morrison. >> yes. >> rose: likes what she does. >> the tall sent with chloe? >> oh, yeah. >> rose: and ton sythe sort of -- --. >> the one outside. >> rose: the wrapping, the package. >> that's right. >> rose: the beating heart is chloe. >> they're both nice by the way. >> rose: well, we like them both. >> they just do different things. >> rose: yeah. and you're happiest being chloe. >> oh, very much. >> rose: are you really? >> yeah. >> rose: see i think you like it. >> like what. >> rose: i think you like being toni morrison. >> i-- she, toni morrison can make you think that. >> rose: right. >> she's good at it. >> rose: okay, when did you start writing this? >> about three years ago. >> rose: three years ago. did the death of your son slade affect you? >> oh no. >> rose: i know it affected you period but did this book, because it's about parent child.

>> isn't it-- he died when i wrote "home" and i think i dedicated it to him. this one i just said for you. whoever you is. >> rose: who did you make the you be. >> doesn't it is a that. >> rose: i'm looking, for you. >> yeah. >> rose: you know, for you, and you know who you are. >> yeah, that's what i wanted to do, you know who you are. >> rose: but how did that affect your writing? >> it didn't. >> rose: the loss. >> no. >> rose: are you saying that because you're being protective? >> maybe. the death of my son is so powerful, so endless, so without closure, so

significant and important. i have every anticipation that it will always be this way. will always be this way. so it's, you know, it's beyond being effective. it's like losing-- like losing arms. and nothing-- . >> rose: you were reminded of it the rest of your life. >> oh yeah. >> rose: because you lose your arm are you lose your son. >> yes, and it should be that way. as long as he's dead, why should i forget. >> rose: you're interested in writing without the white gaze, that's what are you interested in, no white gaze. >> no white gaze. i did a play with peter sellers, there's demoana and i toll him i would only do des demona if i could get rid of the-- and jason said

he's the whole point. >> he said he's the whole point. i said i don't want him in there. he talks too much. nobody tells him the truth. he's in every scene. why does he dominate. the play is called othello. othello is never alone on stage so if i could just get rid of this fiago quite guy and concentrate on the moore othello. >> rose: yeah. >> we could get somewhere. and we did. >> rose: was jason your editor? >> no, no, he was pie boss. >> rose: a colleague at random, which publishing house was it. >> i worked at random, published at knopff. bob gotly is my-- gottlieb is my editor at knopff. >> rose: even though you don't write about ballet, you don't -- >> no, he's flawless for me. he's writing a biography. >> rose: of himself. >> of himself. >> rose: memoir biography. >> yes, yes, yes.

>> rose: what does he add to you, bob gottlieb. >> cause. >> rose: that's an old cliche. >> well, he does. >> rose: is that what it is. >> he's always putting them in. i'm trying to have a certain sound, a certain music. i don't want breadth here. i want breath over here. >> rose: see that's what are you though, cuz you're writing has music. >> i have to hear it. >> rose: and you have to hear it. >> and dow hear it and then you can put it on the page or if you put it on the page, can you hear it. >> i hear it first. >> you can hear the-- you know, i signed up to do audio books, of my own. in the beginning i didn't-- other people did that. and then really good actresses. and then i never listened to them. and then once i did, by a really, really first rate actress. and i thought that's not right. the words are there, she's not hearing the-- . >> rose: she's not hearing what i heard. >> so then i-- .

>> rose: you did them yourself. >> i did them all myself. >> rose: are you 84 now. >> 84. >> rose: and proud of it? >> well, i guess i have no alternative. >> rose: yeah, no, you don't. >> that is what my sister said, she is a year and a half older. she says what happened to us. i said lois we got old. and i said and i think god, i took such good care of you, body. what is the matter with you. >> rose: you said to your body. body, i took goodare of you, why are you treating me this way. >> why are you treating me this way. so i convinced her that it was just as well we stayed around because the alternative was death. >> rose: yes. you prefer. >> i prefer. >> rose: you prefer living with your body until the alternative. >> that's right. >> rose: separating yourself from your body. >> indeed, yes. >> rose: a recent article speculated about your legacy, speculated about your legs see. and it made comparisons with

william faulkner. >> makes sense. >> rose: why does it make sense? >> because, he had a relationship with black people that was very different from most of the other contemporary writers. i don't mean he was affectionate or stupid or contemptable. but he was easy. and clear. and also his language was explosive. and i don't know, the legacy thing, what i would hope is that at some point i would not be described as an african-american woman writer, and so that-- as though that were a category, i just want to be alphabetized. so you don't say william tolstoy is a white male

russian. >> rose: yes, i agree, i totally agree, totally, to theally. >> which has nothing to do with rejectsing any of those. it's just that might happen, too. it hasn't yet. and some of it is because african-american writers want to say that. look, i'm an african-american and i can do this. and i understand that. but at some point somebody's grandchildren are going to say-- . >> rose: well, you're just saying look, the comparison for me is with all writers. >> uh-huh. >> rose: not any race or any particular defining, or even gender, not race, not gender, not anything. just writer. >> writer. >> rose: no, i'm serious, aren't you. >> yeah. oh, yeah. i remember being at an event and i think it was el doctoro was going to introduce me. and he said wonderful things. he said i don't think of toni as an african-american

writer. i don't think of her as a female writer. i think of her as a-- he paused, and i said white male writer? and everybody laughed. but he was trying to say, i think, something alon the lines that we just described. i would like that. i would like that. >> rose: i think you've earned that? >> do you think so. >> rose: i do. it's great to see you. >> it's always good to see you, charlie. >> rose: i know. the book is called god help the child. god help the child. toni morrison. kazuo ishiguro is here. his books include never let me go and the remains of the day which won the mann booker prize in 1989. the very giant is his first move nell ten years. "the new york times" has called it the weirdest, riskiest and most ambitious thing he has published in

his celebrate -- 3 year career. i'm pleased to have him back at this table. welcome. >> nice to be here. >> rose: congratulations because of the, all that people are saying about this. my question is, is it about appropriate for to you take ten years to complete a move snell. >> well, i would like to do it pore quickly but, you know, i'm doing the best i can. and there's no problem with the quantity of books out there it seems to me. so you foe --. >> rose: you're going for quality. >> well, i wouldn't want to say i'm going for quality but if i put something out there, whether it's good or bad, i want to slightly change the landscape, slightly change the skyline of the pile of books out there, you know. so whether people like it or not, i want to offer something a little bit different. so until that gets into place, i don't feel i am ready to put the book out there. >> rose: you know some people believe this is a radical depar ture for you.

>> yeah, it comes as a slight sur pris that people think it's so different. because i always come at these things from the inside. you know, i never really d -- i'm a bit like someone's trying to build a kind of lake a flying machine, before aviation got going, all these guyed used to make funny flying machines in their backyards. i feel like i'm a bit lake that. i'm just 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, you know. but i don't really know what it looks like. it may look really weird to someone coming at it fresh. >> rose: 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 story but it's a love story of a certain kind. because when we say love story we usually mean a courtship story. a story of two people coming together and the story ends when they declare love to

each other. this is kind of a love story. i think there should be more love stories like this one. it's about the decades, you know, the years. it's a long distance of love. it's about all those years that you struggle to keep the flame alive. and this is about, you know, a man and a woman who are determined to stand by each other right to the end. >> rose: they suffer from a kind of am-- amnesia. >> when i was talking about getting my nyeing be machine together. this was one of the main problems. i start off with a kind of a story that i can almost express in two or three lines in the an tract. and i often can't find the right way to put it off, the right setting. and 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. >> do you have a point of view on that? >> my only point of view is that it's very difficult. it's very difficult to againize. because i think there are situations where-- let's take france after the second world war. >> a good example. >> okay, i don't want to pick on france but i'm being polite here. i'm in the united states. i don't want to talk about any buried giants in american society. i'm sure we can all come up with-- as a mather of ethical, i'm here as a visitor. i'm going to talk about france. the french after the second world war what are they going to do with this stuff? they-- 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 chambers without much help from the germans, betrading each other to the gestapo. what do they do with that? how do they move on from that? maybe there is something to be said, however outrage us, however unjust it seems for the position that de gaulle took to say let's all pretend that we were all brave resistance fighters. and let's just not visit this question for a few decades. there will be a time perhaps when we're stronger, when we can face this. but right now if we look at our recent past, we are just going to tear each other to pieces. at least we'll go communist. there might even be civil war. this society cannot hold. and if you look at situations say like, this is what i suppose is the starting point when i started to think about this. you think about situations like what happened in bosnia in the '90s, or rwanda. >> rose: or cambodia. >> or cambodia, yeah.

you have situations here where people seem to have lived together, different tribes, different communities had managed to coexist at least for a generation. and then some kind of societal memory was deliberately reawakened to mobileize hatred and violence. 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 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, parent child relationship, siblings. but that same question arises, you know, because most relationships that go on for a long time, you are never to believe there are passages that you agree to just keep buried. all right, that was

unfortunate. you know, it was painful. let's just move on. but the-- the couples in my novel 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? and on the other hand if we don't look at these things and they sense that their time together is limited them because they're a certain age f we don't look at these darker passages that we just put to one side for now, is our love genuine s it based on something phony. >> rose: but memory has been a theme of yours, has it not? >> yeah, i sometimes worry that it has become a bit of an obsession. my entire-- seems to be obsessed. but i think it is 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, you know. i think that's why there is a very intimate link in my mind and in my heart between writing fiction and remembering. because i-- . >> rose: you had us writing fiction, catalyze or stimulate memory. >> it's not some of to stimulate memory. i had left japan at the age of five 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 memories. it was like a memory of a whole world. a whole kind of way of being, a whole life, a whole atmosphere and a whole group of people. and as i got older i realized that that very-- that very personal

japan that was inside my head was somewhere i couldn't go to in a plane. and it was also fading with every year that i got older. and so i think i started off my whole writing fiction career by actually wanting to preserve these memories. you know, i couldn't preserve them just by writing down facts. i ha to actually rebuild the japan of my imagination and memory in a book. so i think right at the foundation of my writing ims pulse 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. i want to preserve it inside a fictional world. so that's how it started. and then i think it's a way of constructing a sense of one self. >> and what was the impact of that 14th certainly ree

poem called ser gei win and the green knight? >> not a huge amount, okay. most of that poem, maybe many people watching now know it. it's a very entertaining story. it's a story poem. most of it isn't particularly relevant to my novel, although i recommend people read it because it's so very entertaining poem. but i took there there was just one little stanza, the story takes place in two castles but there is a little, literally like a bridge passage where the young rides from one castle to another castle and you get a little glimpse of what britain was like back in those days. and the anonymous poet says you know, this young man there were no inns or anything sow had to kind of sleep on rocks in the pouring rain. what really struck me was that it says in the next couple of lines, it says something like, and i'm paraphrasing t says, you know, he was chased by wild

boar, by wolves and panting ogres were chasing up hills out of villages. then the story continues. he goes to another castle and it continues in some splender. but this little glimpse of this weird imagination ancient britain, i mean just those few lines sparked up a whole world for me. and i thought that will be a fun place to put down my novel. you know, i could suddenly see this very interest-- . >> rose: sounds like a pretty good place. when you find that, that is a huge benefit. >> yeah, yeah. and that does happen, i go to location hunting. because i go about things backyards. it is a stupid way to write novels. i get a story, i don't have a location or a settingment sometimes you ask why ten years or sometimes takes a long time to find the right setting. but sometimes-- . >> rose: how long did it take to you find the setting in this case. >> it took a long time, yes. i did actually think about

sky phi, a gal ax far away. but you know, that's what happens. sometimes you come across something and just a few lines spark up a whole world like that. i particularly like the bannality of the panting ogres. >> rose: the bannality. >> yeah, there was no surprise. the poem doesn't say, and do you know what, there were ogres, no, no, it's just a nuisance, these ogres made life very inveept. they were like, you know, not very friendly bulls that you encounter when you are walking across a farm field. that's the way. so i thought well, i will have that. your wife when she firstst read the book, hated it. is that fair? >> this is what you are getting at when you wanted to know why it took ten years. i see, getting these very

serious literary responses. you want the human-- no you are right. she didn't hate it. she didn't hate it. no, for encouragement, you know, i have done a lot of work. i found the settingment i worked everything out. i'm quite a long way into it by the time i write the proceeds, i had written about 60 or 70 pages. and i thought, you know, even i, you know, sometimes although i usually work alone, i need a little bit of encouragement like everybody else. my wife lorna will give it to me. so i showed it to her. and she said hmmmm, she said, you are going to have to just start again from scratch. and i-- . >> rose: and how was that moment between the two of you? >> well, it was a little bit awkward. >> rose: you have to start over from scratch. >> yeah, what she is saying is that she was saying that-- she's saying i'm not saying you have to alter this character or change it a little bit. not a word of this can

survive, you know. but she did say, you know, you don't have to abandon this idea. the concept, 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. but i don't mind this too much, you know. >> rose: did you take it seriously. >> yeah, i did take it seriously. i put it to one side. i wrote another book, a wrote of book of short stories. i had a couple of movies to worry about. i wrote some song lyrics for the jazz singer stacey kent. i did these other things but i always knew i would come back to this. ver let me go i had toot. attempt three times. there are two abandoned versions of that book back in the '90s. so now i have got to a stage where-- . >> rose: they build on each other much you didn't just abandon it, throw it in the ocean. >> i never abandon anything, actually. and because i have this kind

of strange maybe a naive confidence that you know, if i come back to it, some thing that was wrong before will have gone away. and there will be a solution rst time around, seconde time around, that will present itself. and that's been my experience. you know. never let me go is only the third time around that i came upon what you might call the sky phi con seat 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 very hard to con drive some 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 then old and then getting sick and dying and asking all the questions that people do over a larger lifetime. i wanted to find some way in which they could do this in like 28, 30 years.

and i just couldn't do that, do it before. but then this jigsaw, piece of jigsaw presented itself. >> rose: if you could have been a great musician would you prefer that to a great novelist? >> oh, that's a very difficult question. >> because i still love music. and of course when you're not allowed to do something, because i wanted to be a, not really a muss ig. i wanted to be a great songwriter. >> i love songs, you know. i'm not a composeer, that's too grand. i love line-- three minutes, four minutes, two minute songs. a beautiful emotion or world contained just in, you know, in a song with all these dimensions. lyrics, performance, the music, the orchestration. i think a song is a wonderful thing. if i could have been a songwriter, i might, i might swap it.

but a novelist isn't about-- its takes ten years to write a novel. >> rose: it's great to you have here. >> it's lovely to be back as always. >> rose: kazuoish guero, thank you for being with us, see you next time. >> for more visit us on-line at pbs.org and charlie rose.com captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

>> funding for charlie rose is provided by american express. additional funning provided by: and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and information services worldwide. you're watching.

this is "nightly business report" with tyler mathisen and sue herera. >> late day drop. the bears come out in force minutes before the closing bell, for what had been a relatively calm day into a tissy. >> i'll scratch your back if you scratch mine. how pervasive is that behavior that forced the ceo to resign? >> and what slow down? the facilitiering of the chinese economy could be a positive for the united states. all that and more tonight on "nightly business report" for wednesday, september 9th. >> good evening, every one. welcome. late day drama which saw the markets go deep entire reverse and swing 400 points. the dow started with a spark