>> rose: welcome to the program. it is the end of summer we're looking back of some of our favorites guests in the past year. tonight writers, encore presentation of some of my conversations including terry mcdonnell, marlon james and julian barns. >> i found all kinds of stories, photographs, whatever of the relationship i had with the writers and then i thought well, the best for me to show my own writing would probably be to write about these writers. so i started telling those stories. >> rose: writers on writing when we continue. >> rose: funding for "charlie rose" has been provided by the following:

>> 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: terry mcdonnell is here. his career in magazine journalism spans more than four decades, 40 years. he's edited some of this country's influential magazine including outside, esquire, rolling stones and sports illustrated. he also worked with and befriended many literary writers. he chronicles his long life in publishing and in the world of letters in this new memoir, it is called the accidental life, editor's notes on writing and writers. he's a friend and i'm proud to have him at this table. welcome, sir. >> it's great to be back. >> rose: good to have you here. so why did you decide and what

was the point here for this particular book? is it one you always knew that you had to write because it was your life and it involved the ideas writing and the people, writers, that you cared the most about. >> it feels now like i was always going to write this book, but it didn't at the beginning when i started. when i was leaving time, inc., i went through files i carried with me 13 different magazines. i thought i traveled light. maybe not so light but anyway i found all kinds of stories, photographs whatever, of the relationship i had with these various writers and then i thought well the best way for me to show my own writing would probably be to write about these writers. so i started telling those stories and then i started adding in things about the media business from the peak of the new journalism all the way to now which made it a little bit about money. so it became a little bit about

that too and what you have to do to be a writer. but finally, it turned into a book about writers who became my friends. some of them now dead, so it was about that too. >> rose: does one stand out more than anybody else. >> george. hunter thompson. we were just talking about, those guys. but also jim salter. it's a long list for me. >> rose: author's note. this is a book about writers and their work and working with them. editing is what i want to write about but it's also about friends, some of them are dead. so it is about that too. what follows is not strictly chronological, it bounces around a little. so did i. >> i did. >> rose: so you call it the accidental life because it was an accident the life that you had. >> well yeah. the guy who made me an editor his name is bob sherrill. when i was in my 20's, always said you got to watch out for the classic career path in

journalism. you get stuck at a big paper, you're stuck at a beat, you work your way up, you know. my son treadwell he said the accidental life is where the joy is, so you have to take chances and get fired. >> rose: that defines me. i never had a traditional life at all. >> that's true. >> rose: you choose azra pen go in fear of abstractions. >> i want to be very specific about these writers, because it was in the detail and the specifics that you learned what they were really like, i think. >> is there one common denominator they share beyond curiosity and talent? >> no. and that's not about that a lot. i think the most attractive thing that they had was

that's any good at anything works harder than you ever imagine they work. they work in different ways when they use different kinds of things that enabled them to get them. >> jim harrison who once told me i had lynched his baby, used to resist editing. his idea was that he had worked it all out in his head so far in advance and thought it through that he was done when he turned the thing in. why would he listen to an editor. they weren't after all writers. hunter was the opposite of that. he would rail against writers through his prose, he would say but he knew he needed them. when he was filing a story, he would file a number of false leads. one after another after another. the editor's job was to figure out how those went together into a piece. and this over the course of a night or two would finally result in one of his. >> rose: are you good with an

editor. >> you mean as a writer. when i'm edited? >> rose: yes. >> i don't know. i've heard both sides. george clinton was very difficult on both sides of that desk. had him both ways.ough on an but in the end, i realized he just cared so much about me. i mean the specific word. he want to just have it exactly right. so you know, you worked. for me it's true. any way it worked relentlessly. >> rose: and that commitment to quality is there too. i know of no great person who i think doesn't take the work seriously. no great painter, no great writer. >> writers can have a problem with some of that because they're also insecured. >> rose: they think it's some gift from the muse. >> unless they're involved in

relentlessly in journalism they're isolated and their circle of friends is small. and they think about it and they think about it and they wonder why they were invited to that party maybe. >> rose: insecurity. >> there's a lot of that in the book because we were all human. so that's what we were doing. >> rose: you said second best answer an editor can give is no. >> yes. >> rose: just no. >> yes. because the worst thing for a writer is when the editor springs you out and doesn't answer you. it's a horrible kind of familiar hell and that undercuts every bit of confidence you can have. >> rose: tell me about bob sherrill. >> well bob sherrill, we used to call him the other bob sherrill because there was another bob sherrill who was famous for a book called saturday night special which was from your state. this book, the other bob sherrill, my bob sherrill said that this book, it was about

handguns, was so powerful, you just should hold it up to your forehead, learn how to report. because it was such relentless reporting. but anyway, the other bob sherrill distinguished from that bob sherrill had come west to edit a little under ground we called them then newspaper that we said was like the village voice for los angeles, which it wasn't. but we said that. it was called the l.a. and i worked with him there. he was the one who listened to my ideas and then tell me, maybe you should be an editor. we went round and roundabout that. >> rose: why did he say this. >> i think he liked my ideas. he liked it, we used to drive around southern california around a lot and i had the best car. i used to drive him around. >> rose: what kind of car did you have. >> i had a volkswagon convertible. i had been reading esquire since i was in high school and he had

come from esquire where he had birthed some of those genre cracking stories. he invented dubious achievements. he was a real force at esquire in the 60's. and then out in los angeles, he was still a contributing editor of esquire. >> rose: was -- a great editor. >> yes, he was. i knew him and i went to school on his work but i never got to work with him. >> rose: was -- a great editor. >> brilliant editor. >> rose: because. >> he was the one who put shopping and politics into the same issue. no one had thought to do that and he thereby invented the city magazine. and we're still, that's what we have now. he invented life-style in that sense. insisted on detail reporting. >> rose: insisted on detail. >> oh yeah, yeah. >> rose: and he loved the defining profiles. >> he loved that. he loved the high end glamour of it. he loved picking up a check. he loved going to that

restaurant. he had great great style and that drew not only writers to him but celebrities who want to be covered by him. he had great access. >> rose: can you make an argument that southerners had anything special in this world that we're talking about. >> well at the risk of sounding like a relentless kiss-ass they seem to have a lot more charm and style in my business anyway. there were many great great, the southern editors are famously success until. >> rose: from -- >> from duke and old miss. yes, they're all from down there. >> rose: hunter thompson. >> yes. >> rose: tell me about the man you knew. >> well, he was misunderstood, i think, because he had a persona that he loved so much that he had trouble taking it all, i think. in private he could be very courtly, sentimental even and a

very good friend. one of the ways that -- >> rose: sounds like donald trump too. they weren't alike at all but that's what people would say about trump, a little bit courtly in private but he had a persona he can't take off when he's in public. >> hunter was never a bully. >> rose: but hunter, back to hunter. >> yeah. one of the ways i learned about hunter was by observing and being drawn in to his friendship with george clinton. very few people i think recognized this but they were indelible friends for a long long time. and they recognized each other right off. they had broken on to the scene at the same time with their books, the hell's angel and georgia's paper lion came out within a couple months of each other, 66, 67. they were both six three and-a-half, they were both well matched athletes except hunter was stronger, george was a

better athlete. they both hated lime. they both liked to drink, they both loved cocaine. george used to call them the chemicals as in do you have the chemicals. >> rose: they were both six three and-a-half. >> yes, they were. >> rose: they died so differently, didn't they? one died in his sleep and one died of a gunshot wound. >> yeah. and a story that's difficult for me has to do with when i called hunter to tell him that george had died, i had, clinton called me that morning and told me he had woken up and there he was next to her in bed and she said to me the thing was he just looked so dam good. so i called hunter to tell him and i told him what i knew and i heard that grinder of that

cocaine tool that he had banging on the table more silence i waited and then he just yelled. screw you but he didn't say screw. and i said i know. we both just hung up. >> rose: define george for me. my friend, your friend. and hunter was a frequent guest here too. >> i think the lesson of george was that you don't leave anything to chance. certainly not your work. equally not what you're going to do when you're not working even if the work in the life are the same thing. by that i mean he orchestrated his going out, his going to parties, giving parties, meeting is this person, talking to that person, introducing this person to another person. and he did it with such a high joy that it was impossible not to be taken in.

his manners drew you in and made you think that you were on at least some of the secrets even though you weren't. this was funny sometimes because george could not remember names. so he would, when he saw someone that he knew but didn't know the name, he was like oh, there's the great man. and whoever at the party who had been greeted, why there's the great man was just so proud. i remember him meeting the pizza delivery man, there's the great man. >> rose: richard ford. >> richard forward has -- >> rose: had. >> has. he's very much alive and still working and his concentration on his work and his ability to translate things that are

overlooked to things that become telling in terms of the way you live your life is what i believe brought him the pulitzer prize. he's extraordinary that way. we're the same age and we have a lot in common and we always try to. >> rose: take a look at this. this is a clip from richard ford's interview on this program. this is what you said. this is what i think every novelist must feel. i'm going to extend and i'm going to extend you and use this strategy of extending you having a character talk to you a out things that are important. i'm also going to try to reward you. you said writing about writing in 1995. >> right. i think that's true. >> rose: extending means what? >> well, jasper john said painted things he paint because there are things that are known so well but never seen very

well. so i want to extend, i want to extend you to notice things that you think you already know as a way of saying in an almost moral way pay attention, pay close attention to that. i mean i want to extent your view of certain kinds of characters. if i had characters in a book who people or who repair machinery in farming land and you think to yourself these people aren't capable of eloquence. i want to write a story because of the action of the story because of what goes on, but they are moved to eloquence. in the process of making that persuasive, i might can extend you to believe that you have more in common with somebody than you might have thought you did. >> rose: i do think they're

capable of el quince. >> i do too. it's when somebody has to move a volkswagon, they find themselves because of the moment able to do something that they might not have been able to do before. >> rose: you quote part of that. >> i remember watching that and thinking to myself that's exactly, exactly right and i need to talk to richard about that and i called him up and talked to him and i believe we worked together more frequently after that interview so thank you. >> rose: now i want to show you hunter thompson talking about hemingway. here he is. the previous interview was from 1997, july 21st, 1997. this interview with hunter was also from 1997, june 13th. what writer has taught you the most. who have you learned the most

from? >> the most important lesson i was trying to learn early was that since i was successful in this kind of limited obligation i was trying to figure out if i could get away with it. i learned from hemingway, hemingway the best one and some of thinks prose writing, you know, here and there. but what he taught me was he got away with it because you're a writer. and that was very important at the time. was the playing around. had to be a writer.

and that helped. he made a commitment a long time ago. >> rose: anything that, what's the great thing that you missed that you didn't do that you might have done. >> i always want to edit joan gideon, i never got to do that. she's my favorite writer. >> rose: why? as a magazine writer. >> well yeah, she started in magazine. she started at vogue. >> rose: maybe transition from the east to the west like seamless. >> and then back again. and i'm from california and i grew up hanging around gas stations like she writes about. and her voice and the way that voice developed filmed me with a kind of wonder, experience that voice and then find other writers with a unique voice and marching through the other writers i was fortunate enough.

>> rose: mcdonnell has led the ideal of the editor's life and he's got it down on paper. in both cases he had done it better than anyone anywhere. live up to that sir. >> well except graydon maybe. that's very kind of him too. >> rose: this is a story about writing, story about editing, a story about friend ship, it's a story about storytelling. terry mcdodge. a story about writing and writers. >> rose: marlon james is here awarded the 2015 prize for fiction. the 700 page novel is a feat of storytelling. this story revolves around the attempted assassination of bob marley by over a dozen characters. the "new york times" called this book epic in every sense of the

word. sweeping, mitt ex, over the top, colossal and dizzyingly complex. i'm pleased to have you at this table welcome. it's a pleasure to have you here and congratulations on all this. >> thank you. >> rose: you came about seven years ago to the united states. >> yes. >> rose: looking for a teaching job. ending up in minneapolis. knowing you what do what? was this in your mind already. >> no. this was in fact when i moved to minneapolis i just finished my second novel and my second novel is set in the 18th century. so i hadn't thought about that before even though i was haunted by that story way back in 1991 when i was still in college, i read this article. timothy white wrote the definitive biography of marlon and he wrote this really curious postscript. he went back to the assassination attempt. that was the first time i read

anybody talk about these men and what happened to them. and he still didn't quite know what happened as a novelist i'm attracted by mysteries. i'm never going to solve any of them but i like playing around with them. >> rose: that's the right subject for you. >> yes. it still took me over 20 years to get back to it. but yes the spark was from them. >> rose: in between you wrote two novels. >> one was in the 1950's in jamaica called john crow's devil about two preachers one is an alcoholic possibly demon po sellsed and the second novel the book of the night men who was kind of a anyway narrative about seven women, no six women who plan a rebellion in secret, an all female rebellion in secret. i never got to this one. >> rose: you have written you had a hard up bringing and thought about killing yourself when you were only 16.

>> i think growing up in jamaica and growing up with you know jamaica's very very acute homophobia, it's not something, nothing necessarily had to happen to you to still have this sort of feeling of dread. >> rose: the characters here, what's interesting about it you didn't come out until you were 43. >> 44. >> rose: 44. but you knew when you were 16. >> i think i knew before that. >> rose: yes, of course. >> yes. i think a huge part of it was just finding avenues to disappear in. for a long time that was a church. that's a great place to disappear in in you don't want to be yourself. it's a great place to do that. so that knocked off ten years. so before i knew it, i was 40.

there's some way to sort of escape it, deal with it. >> rose: you connected to, i mean as a writer influenced by -- who else influenced you as a writer. >> certainly tony morrison. he was a huge huge deal. salman rushdie. >> rose: why. >> salman rushdie because his story is set in church. because when i was deep in church and somebody length me his novel shame and i'd have these really big bibles with a leather binding around it and i would slip this book in me inside and the preacher is saying you're going to hell and i'm laughing because i'm reading about the three sisters. i was so appalled by it because i was again a dickens guy, a victorian and the idea of

messing with narrative like that never occurred to me. reading it, it kind of gave me permission to write a certain way. the symptom with tony morrison, i grew up in a very british colonial education. books like those that existed never occurred to me. >> rose: you left the church. what happened, just disillusionment. >> disillusionment, change of geography. you know, i think was looking for big adversaries than that. because the jamaican church can be sort of what we call clap in church in america a lot of praise and worship. not a lot of intellectual like that. >> rose: is it different being gay in jamaica. >> i never was gay in it.

>> and believing that. and thinking i was sustaining myself that way says now something necessarily that i ever confronted in jamaica. it's not until and my standards for moving when i left was i just wanted to be somewhere else. >> i adore my country but i also wanted to be, that is all. i think years of coming into myself and wanting more of life. what do i wanted, who am i and where do i want to go. >> rose: you read, what do you think of his work. >> i'm in awe of coates's work.

i think he gets it. >> rose: he does get it. >> he breaks down because i've been following, even his article on reparation is the best. it's something i followed and i think people don't realize the acute nature of race in america and as a jamaican i was doubly unaware. that mess is a whole different kind of mess. >> rose: how is it. >> we are far more subtle with ours. we're more, it's more endemic in ours. we have a very british racism in jamaica. i had to sort of desegregate a school but at the same time you didn't have to if everybody is trying to bleach your skins and their family is lighter and lighter skin until we're full free. >> rose: when you write, do you get up in the morning and write at a certain time?

how do you go about writing. >> it's been a different thing for each book. >> rose: really. >> for my second novel i got up about five in the morning and worked until nine. it's like a day job. i'm possessed. i like to write mid morning until mid afternoon like around 2:00 and then i'm done. i stop regardless of where i was. in this book i was working on like a character a day which is a lot of reasons why it ended up being the kind of book. >> rose: what do you mean it was a kind of book. >> well, it's the first novel i wrote where i had to let go of even my idea of what a novel should be. that was hard because my last novel despite being written in sort of patois was the same sort of arc crises resolution. >> rose: you had multiple characters. >> multiple characters which was not a very original idea. stories that sometimes as peter wrote the novel doesn't end, it

just stops. and but i had to let go of all of that. at one point i just told myself do you know what i'll leave it until my editor takes it out. and that's how i got there. >> rose: the editor didn't take it out. >> in fact i ended up taking out more than he did. even after he approved it i took 10,000 more words out. >> rose: you did that because you felt like you wanted to make it leaner. >> not necessarily. well yes, in a sense one of the problems of a multiple narrative is have a lot of characters end up saying the same thing. and sometimes they may say it in a different way but after the fourth character talks about killing on orange street, we get the point. so that and a lot of it was just trimming the fat line by line until it ends up with something which i think worked. >> rose: is it hard to distinguish writing between history and memory and fiction?

>> i don't think i tried to distinguish them. one of the things i think about writing novels, even historical fiction. even as a writer, i still kind of reserve the write for invention. the right to invention, the right for fantasy to make things up. and this was in many ways my responding to gaps in history. there are things this novel talks about that we're just never going to know including the names of some of the men who tried to kill marley, we're just never going to know or whoever knows is not telling. >> rose: when you began this, did you say i'm about to start writing the great jamaican novel. >> no, i didn't start to write a novel. i started to write a novella. i was reading a lot of jim thompson and russ mcdonald, really classic short crime novels. i want to write a cool crime novel. >> rose: when did it change.

>> it changed when i kept running into dead ends for these characters. the first character i wrote on this novel is on page 458 this hit man john john kay from chicago. i thought this one voice was going to carry this whole narrative and i kept running into dead ends with each. a friend of mine rachel, rachel is one who said to me, i said i don't know whose story this is. and she said why do you think it's one person's story. go back and read -- >> rose: have you read as i lay dying. >> yes. >> rose: it doesn't have to be anybody's story. >> it could never be one person's story. >> rose: or it could be marley's story. >> the marley thing happened not because of gay talese because i

reread frank sinatra has a cold. and the circumstances were just by hovering around circling sinatra and the people he bumps into in that circling. >> rose: you can describe him. >> you can describe him to the point i didn't need marley's name to the book. i just called it the singer because it turns into this bob marley has a cold kind of novel. >> rose: this is the characters circling around him. >> yes. including people who tried to kill him. >> rose: why did they want to kill him. >> lots of reasons, there are lots of theories for that. one being that he was just becoming too influential a figure. it was illustrated this way. in my grandmother's house where there are pictures on the wall. there are pictures of the head of the political party. there are no pictures of us. no pictures of the family but pictures of the politicians. that's how much of the personality becoming ingrained. >> rose: this happened in different places.

there are lots of pictures in african american homes, martin luther king. homes of jack kennedy. >> but the idea that people in the ghettos in the slums of jamaica to think for themselves. and could even to the point of forming their own government was this unthinkable both sides, the right wing and the left wing both hated that. so he was just becoming too much of a unifier, i think. there's a character in the book that says bad times or good times is somebody. and he was disrupting that way too much. and that's one of the reasons i think, you know, the idea of that one side may have want to become a martyr and the other side wanted racial influence. the only person on the level of marley i can think of is maybe

koozy. i cannot think of another artist who had so many forces working against them at once, even as he's trying to create. he's doing these brilliant records. and every day's a negotiation between some of the most dangerous men in the country. who probably days before he was eating food and smoking weed with which is why the attack on marley, the attack on the house was outrageous as the attack on him because of that house being this big sanctuary in kingston. and these killers violating that. >> rose: you show violence and sex in a rather graphic and detailed way. you knew that before. simply because that was a reality you felt and wanted to say. >> i said this before that

valent -- pornography of six. i say risk pornography. >> rose: yes. get close to it. >> get close to it because it's not just a matter of being visceral, it's a matter of being real and i think didn't like it but i finished book. and i think that's, it's a he very fine line and you always have to walk it, i think. >> rose: writing female characters. hard? >> writing all characters are hard. >> rose: no less or no more.

>> i started with them early on. >> rose: you call winning the man booker prize affirming. affirming what, that you were doing the right thing of what you should do. >> well affirming that this is the, i think the riskyist and the loosest. >> rose: risky and loose. >> yes. something i've never been with fiction. again i still consider myself a victorian novelist. and i still sometimes believe in the nuts and bolts to the point of annoyance of my students of telling a story. and also just playing with narrative writing a chapter in bank verse or writing a chapter that's a nine page sentence. and the idea of me, this is the first time the november es came down to the page in fact. and to be rewarded for that is a

hell of a thing because it mans i can be myself as a novelist. >> rose: will this affect caribbean literature. >> i hope so. i mean caribbean literature is so good right now it doesn't need me. there are so many exciting voices and for once when we talk about that we just mean angelo. cuban literature has been revolutionized for years. there's sufficient coming out of puerto rico and juneau, we have a novel from the virgin islands. jamaica's a whole bunch of new writers coming off. >> rose: what's next. >> what's next, i'm leaving the 20th century behind for a little bit. >> rose: where are you going. >> i'm going to 11th century, africa in the 11th century. >> rose: what is about that particular. >> it kind of came about one because i was having this

argument about a black hub it. hobbit. we're having a discussion that we always have about diversity. i was in an argument with someone about if it was multiracial nobody would have cared. would have just moved on. my friend's response well it's based on celtic mythology. i said it isn't real. you can do what you want with it. i'm kind of tired, keep your hobbit and made me think about the rich mythical and historical tradition of africa and the great african empires of east and west africa. their monsters, their witches. africa has their own vikings and

doesn't have nothing to do with scandinavia, they were plunging and so on. i'm trying to do an invented world but pulling on that huge resource and just sort of be a total geek with it. >> rose: the book is called a brief history of seven killings. marlon james the author of the book of night women and also, what was the other thing. oh, don crow. pleasure having you here. >> thank you for having me. >> rose: marlon james. back in a moment, stay with us. >> rose: julian barns is here of the "new york times" has said of his writing if there is a single theme running throughout barns' work, it is the elusiveness of truth, the subjectivity of memory, the relativity of all knowledge. he was as you know awarded the man booker prize of the 2011 books the end of an ending. his new novel is called the

noise of time. it is a fictionalized composer of life under stalin. i'm pleased to have julian barns at this table again. welcome. >> thank you. >> rose: great to see you. first of all let's talk about serious stuff here. you grew up in lester. >> i did. >> rose: what does it mean to you? >> it's incredible. my football club soccer as you call it, after 65 years of support from me and never having won anything finally won the premiership. this is, it's not even david and goliath. it's a tiny little, it's bigger than that. it has comic side bars to it. i mean emergency had twice as many admissions in a normal week after they won the premiership. so a lot of festivity has been going on in this. it's been famous for two things this year. the first is the burns of king richard the third was discovered

under niece a municipal car park. and the second thing was he one the premiership. a very interesting publisher, there's obviously a lot of books about this great sporting event has written a story from the point of view of richard the third. richard the third in shakespearean english tells the story of ye focuses beating ye -- it's hilarious. >> rose: this is a direct quote from you. it's runs on a bit. you're talking to yourself. i haven't always been a lester city supporter. there was a time before i could read or knew how to tune the bake lite wireless to the voice of raymond on sports report. but from the moment i became sportingly sentiment, say five or six, i have been as they don't much say then a fox. so six and-a-half decades and counting i did initially support a second team from the end of glascow but that was because my

infant mind believed they were called patrick and my middle name is patrick. i eventually stopped supporting thistle. stuff is the strange irrational adhesive anything abandon. when i was about 40 though i still instinctively checked the results in my sunday newspaper. but apart from this dalience. i have been entirely monogamous. >> yes. that's fans lives isn't it. you get inducted into supporting a team at a very young age. and i certainly don't understand people who say oh, i'm supporting x this season but i'm thinking of supporting y the next season. you want to support winners. i think the most important thing about being a fan is the suffering. and the loss and the pain. and i always say about supporting the city it's a very good way of preparing you to support for england because they

don't very often win anything. >> rose: what they say about chicago cubs here other people have written about that and they came close last year and may very well do it this year. you know the story of the former editor of the economist and the editor of bloomberg here. tell me. he has like 30 years laid down a big bet, not so big of lester city. 30 years every time he bet whatever, pounds. and this year he didn't. if he had he would have returned a hundred thousand dollars. >> it was five thousand to one. and interesting because quite a few people took that bet. they put ten pounds on something. and with about six weeks to go when the team is having a bit of a wobble, the book makers came in and they said okay if they were to win it, you get 10,000 pounds, how about 4,000 pounds now. and it's very tempting. a lot of people took that.

a lot of people accepted the money. but some people stuck it out to the end and they got the big pay out, yes. >> rose: the noise of them. probably suffered more. >> probably more than any other composer in the history of western art did he suffer the weekly monthly year long life long presence of power in his life telling him what to do and whatnot to do. >> rose: and so much of it to his deep hurt you tell the story of sleeping by the elevator. >> not sleeping, standing by the elevator. yes, that's right. >> rose: in fear the secret police would extroheld and he didn't want his family to know. >> he had a wife and baby set. it wasn't that he didn't want them to know he didn't want the nkvd the predecessor of the kgb come into the apartment and who knows they might have taken his

daughter away because political sinners often had their children reeducated, taken away, given false name put in a public orphanage and then he had this temporary terror might grow up never knowing his father composed music. he might have been killed or sent to a neighbor camp. as it was members of his family, members of his wife's family, associates and friends were taken away at different points. he was lucky to survive. >> rose: what story are you telling here. >> i'm telling the story of the collision of art and power. for instance who loses, who ns in the short term, how the artist fights back and also i hope by the time you get to the end of it who wins in the long term because in the long term the artist as long as he hasn't been killed wins out. we remember the name of mozart, we don't remember the arch duke

whatever was at the time and patrons of bethoven. >> rose: so what's the level of the humiliation of -- >> oh, it comes in different ways. it comes in different forms and it's very very zapping. what we have to remember is under the soviet union, all art was controlled to the tinnyist degree by the state. so if you're a composer, you couldn't even buy manuscript paper to put your notes on. unless you were a member of the union of composers. when you had put those notes on that manuscript paper, your music then had to be vetted by a committee of musical bureaucrats. if it didn't pass, you didn't get paid. so there was a daily petty interference with what you wrote. and then of course, when the high echelon got interested, anything happened to you.

in his first successful was a world hit in 1935. it was the american premier here, it was in cleveland, south america. as a result stalin knew about music, got interested, went to see it. and from that point, his life changed and he was always somewhat intalin died. >> rose: after stalin heard the music he allowed him to travel. >> well within the soviet union. but the thing was, he was supposed to say music first came out when he was 19 and it was again, it was all around the world. so they knew they had talent there but you know, talent couldn't just be let to go the same way. it had to be directed.

and so they're saying do it the way of -- if properly directed who would write real soviet music. they certainly don't this he should write operas because that's snobby stuff. they thought they should write film music and he did write a lot of film music. >> rose: did things change when khrushchev came to power. >> yes. people stopped getting killed and people started coming back from the labor camps that's certainly true. to use the frayed -- power became vegetarian which is a wonderful word. >> rose: became vegetarian. >> power became vegetarian. and so being man-eating tigers, yes. but there was still different sorts of pressure. they still want to corral in their way of thinking. >> rose: did he denounce -- >> he did denounce him.

you were given speeches to read and either you looked before or you didn't. in his case, if he got this very old speech to read and he just thought well i'll read the first page and i'll sit down. read the first page and sat down. the american -- read the english version and sort of idly followed it and then he found himself denouncing himself denounced and he thought it was -- in tal at the time and who thought was the greatest composer in the 20th isn't tree. he revered him and here he was having to denounce him. >> rose: coming to this, did you decide in your mind i want to explore the collision of power and art or did you say i want to look at chawsvitch.

>> it's where the biographer and historian have to stop, where the known facts stop. and we without showing the join if we could take you further into the person to their heart, their soul and their memory. that's what we do. >> rose: did you feel any pressure after the man booker prize to produce something that would be considered as good or better. >> no, i didn't. i was lucky enough to win the man booker prize when i was in my 60's. if i had won it in my 30's would have put pressure on me. i have written books, i know what i am and i know what i do. >> rose: you know your audience. >> well i do and i don't. it's nice that different books find different readers. some books work in some places and other books work in other plays. i tend not to write the same

sort of book but it shares themes of as you said sort of memory and truth. it's very different from the booker prize. >> rose: here's what some of the creators said, this comes from the sunday times. bryant, youthful poignant, this composed fictionalized meditation offers a fresh gloss on a musical genius' collision and collisions with power. >> thank you for reading that. >> rose: they said it so i didn't make it up. the idea is that we can hardly imagine what it's like and the sacrifices this great musician had to make. >> yes, that's true. >> rose: and it's easy to say i might have done different in defense of my art. >> exactly. that's one of the theme's book.

it's very easiest when we look at the different regime in a different time to say oh he should have done this or he should have done that or i would have done differently, i would have been a hero. we all imagine we would behave better if our country's invaded. your country and my country haven't been invaded for a long time as soon as we came off the hill. sorry about the white tuft and all that but the rebuilding was good too. i'm determined. we would suddenly become heroes. any parts of the united kingdom being invaded in recent time is the channel islands by the germans in the second world war and people had to behave as everyone on the consultant inventory did-- continent did. they gave up their jews. and we're made from humanity and we're likely to be as brave or as cowardly as anyone else. but the additional point if

you're living under the regime of stalins is that it's all very well said oh he should have been a hero or he should have thrown the bomb or should have pulled the trigger. in you did that, you're also condemning your entire family and your friends and associates to the death camps. and so unless you want to be dead and you wanted your family to be taken away, you have to collude. >> rose: whose life and work is more meaningful in the sense of your life. >> well one of may greater heroes is flaubert and he said no monsters no heroes. this is one of his -- in modern life. this is something your great writer also agreed with. in modern life it's the days of the gods and heroes and the

monsters disappeared. unfortunately after both those two died the monsters came back. the monsters came back in the 20th century and we can't live without monsters unfortunately. so i think my heroes some of them would be literal and artistic and some of them would occasionally be political like gary baldry for example. >> rose: and chawsvitch. >> yes, at some point. >> rose: so he's a hero. you recognize his cowardice and did not condemn it. >> no i wouldn't condemn it for a moment. in order to condemn it you have to think you're a morally superior person and i don't think anyone should claim that. the point which he makes ironically in high book because he was an ironic person is courage is easy you just have to do the one thing where being a

coward is a life time commitment. so in a way it's a lifetime commitment being a coward requires a sort of courage. >> rose: the book is called noise of time. julian barns, it's always good to have you here my friend. >> my pleasure. >> rose: thank you for joining us. see you next time. captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

>> rose: funding for "charlie rose" has been provided by: >> and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and information services worldwide.

this is "nightly business " with tyler mat. mylan under fire from the white house for skyrocketing s really ice, but it may be the .iving sales housing head scratcher. why sales soaring. while uncle sam is stepping in to buy 11 million pounds of . those stories and more tonight .n the "nightly business report" good evening, everybo and welcome. i'e herera. the chorus of critics is american