>> rose: welcome to the broadcast. tonight, the finance minister of france, christine lagarde. >> well, the markets will keep at it and they will keep attacking the... the greek finances and the spreads which is the way by which you measure at which rate greece can borrow will rise and people who hold debt will dump what they have. so this is just not the scenario that we can envisage. we need to show solidarity to greece which which is something that which is going on at the moment and we need to support the country because there's no way greece is going to be let down. >> rose: we conclude with the british novelist ian mcewan. >> so it's really a story, i guess, of something in our

nature. of being very clever monkeys who can do extraordinary things with math and architecture and art. >> rose: yet? >> yet we have a nature, too, that is tribal and self-interested. we saw it at chrop. science brought nations together. so one of those extraordinary matters where rationality assembled the world. what happens when you get? self-interest, cabals, scheming. >> rose: pride. >> yes, pride. >> rose: la l.a. guard and mcewen, coming up. captioning sponsored by

rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> rose: christine lagarde is here, she is the finance minister of france, the first and only woman to oversee the economy of a g-8 country. last year, the "financial times" named her finance minister of the year. they noted lagarde has become a star among world financial policymakers. last week she met with officials from the g-20 and the i.m.f. to address the international response to the greek debt crisis. france has been urging european leaders to help greece manage its debt. she's also a vocal proponent of some of the more aggressive regulatory reforms being considered by the international community. i'm pleased to have her back at this stable. >> thank you, charlie. >> rose: you've had a busy weekend. >> very busy weekend, yes. >> rose: where do we stand first

on what the question of the i.m.f. and the euro zone countries are prepared to do for greece? >> number one we're going to do it jointly with the i.m.f.. number two, it's going to be a give-and-take process where, on the one hand, we ask the greek authorities to face reality, to disclose numbers, to be honest about their statistics and to sort out their public finances. ful deliberately, decisively and facing public opinion. and, frankly, the greek government has delivered on that part so far. on the other hand, the euro group has already committed for the first year of an annual 30 billion euros that will be available paz majority stake in a program where the i smef going to come in 130-to-support greece

and to essentially tell the markets that there's no point attacking it because the euro group members and the i.m.f. are behind greece. >> rose: the tune of how much money. >> the euro group will be in for the first year for $30 billion euros, which is roughly $40 billion and then the i.m.f. will kick in and finance its part as well. here i am talking about the first year of the program which is going to be at least a three-year program. >> rose: and what demands are you placing on greece? >> we're asking greece to disclose numbers. as prime minister pop pan drew said in january, the biggest deficit of greece is the deficit of confidence and lack of trust in the numbers and in the statistics that the greece authorities have released over the past and the greek government is determined to come clean on that front. so clear figures, solid

statistics, that's the first part. the second part is restore public finances because at the moment greece is running at a deficit of 13% of g.d.p. and as a debt to g.d.p. rashy which is in excess of 100%. >> rose: about 115 for 2009. >> and that has to come down on both fronts, how do they do that? number one by effectively collecting tax more and better than they have so far. and i'm not disclosing any secret. it was well known. number two, on cutting public expenses. and that goes to the general budget also to compensation. so it's a set of very harsh measures which are not pleasant, which are not pleasing the greek population but it has to be done because greece has to be on a sustainable path going forward and they seem at last to be

determined to do that. >> rose: and where is germany? >> germany is in the group of the 15 count these are prepared to do it. so their contribution would be in excess of $8 billion. our contribution from france would be slightly over $6 billion. and clearly germany is concerned as we all are but it prexzs it in its own way and given its calendar and domestic issues in a harsh way. germany's concerned that there is actual delivery by the greek government, by the greek authorities and by the greek population. >> rose: that they're prepared to adhere to the austere measures that are necessary at this time? >> yes, yes. absolutely. yes. and that's a legitimate concern. because we learn from previous experience that the greek

government these show leadership-- which they have done so far. but we as lenders and members of the support pack, we have to make sure there is actual delivery under the plan. so that's where the i.m.f. also comes in because the i.m.f. has the expertise of monitoring the implementation of the plan. that's needed. >> rose: if you don't do this what happens? >> well, the markets will keep at it and they will keep attacking the greek finances and the spreads which is the way by which you measure at which race greece can borrow, l rise and people hold who hold debt will dump what they have. so this is just not a scenario that we can enindividualage. we need to show solidarity to greece which is something which is going on at the moment. and we need to support the country because there's no way

greece the going to be let down. >> rose: what about all those people that loaned money to bankers, that loaned money to greece? >> they have kept doing so and with the support of that is put together by the euro group and the i.m.f. they should be encouraged to continue doing so because they know there are strong players behind it. >> rose: is there any talk of stretching that debt out? >> no. >> rose: that has no possibility? >> no, the talk we have at the moment-- and than is going on as we speak-- is a discussion between the european commission, the european central bank and the i.m.f. experts and with the greek government to discuss all the austerity measures, the milestones, the checkpoints and how we measure results. but that's exactly the track on which the country should go to be able to stand on its feet which is what we all want. >> rose: what about if it's not enough. >> it will be enough. it has to be enough.

>> rose: but if it isn't? in other words i've seen this... you're talking about $45 billion.... >> charlie, that's a scenario i don't even want to consider. we will do what it takes. >> rose: whatever's necessary to save... >> greece is part of the euro group. >> rose:... greece from bruply is take place. >> there's no way that a member of the euro group is going to be let down. >> rose: as this created tension between germany and france? is there any conflict? >> no. there's no conflict between germany and france in that respect. some people have said france is more benevolent, is more generous, is more willing to support whereas germany is tougher on the rules and more demanding and is challenging the whole thing. >> rose: it's argued the german citizens are much more upset about loaning money to greece. >> well, all citizens are keen to see that there is a balance deal.

nobody wants to support and lend to somebody who is not going to deliver on the other side. so it's a matter demonstrating that it is a give and take and there's consideration to be had on part of the greek population and authorities to make sure it's delivered against. we cannot operate on the basis of failed promises and we cannot operate on the basis of wrong numb sbors there is an essential point which is being underlined probably more significantly and more vocally by the german authorities or the german press which is right numbers, solid statistics, actual delivery and that's what we'll need. >> rose: what's wrong with the idea of stretching the debt out? >> it's just not in the plan. it's off the table. >> rose: was it on the table? was it under dissdmugs >> no, no. >> rose: never? >> it's in the mind of a lot of

commentators and analysts and a lot of people who are sort of playing and creating rumors and underground potentials because they're people making money at the moment on that. >> rose: there's also the story which i talked to the greek prime minister about that some american investment banks had helped greece hide the level of the debt. is that true? >> i've heard those rumors. i've heard allegations. i know that the s.e.c. has done some investigations in that respect and i heard the it was clean under the then-existing regulations which, you know, i understand the judgment that was made in that respect. however however, i think that was clear failure on the part of the regulations and on the part of appropriate supervisions concerning c.d.s. on sovereign

debts. that credit default swaps on sovereign debt, like that of greece or that of any country, for that matter, be traded under the counter without any transparency, without any understanding of who have is trading what and on which basis. it's just fully wrong. >> rose: it's on the table in washington as we speak as well. >> and it should be. >> rose: and how transparent they will be and who should be allowed to engage in derivatives. >> yes, yes, absolutely. >> rose: and there's serious conversations in the senate right now. >> we're going to have the same conversations in europe. because the european commission is going to propose in june a draft directive on the use of derivatives which will point exactly in the same direction. transparency, accountability, ability for the authority to say whoops, stop. >> rose:s where the fault sflin where is the divide between, say europe and the united states? >> i hope there is no divide.

because i think that to do a good job we need to have coordinated approach, consistent solutions. which doesn't mean to say that the solutions have to be exactly the same. but it has to be sufficiently consistent so that there is no loopholes, there's no gap, there's no room for arbitrage of those that want to escape regulation. so we're working on all fronts at the moment. derivatives, supervision, capital requirement, compensation standards. all fronts are opened for proper rules to be applied. but it's complicated. it's complicated because you have a top down bottom up approach with side through aspects to it. bottom... top down because you have the financial stability board that is setting rules that is hearing all parties and that is going to come up with recommendations. then you have the bottom-up approach, because all governments are keen to

demonstrate that they are producing new regulations, that this is not going to happen again. that taxpayers' money will not be engaged. and then you have what i call the side-through consequences and impact where we need to make sure that whatever we do is going to set the rules properly, discipline people, bring the ethics out of this mess, but at the same time we don't want to kill the economy. we don't want to put so much restrain and so much constraints that eventually people say, you know, i'll shrink my balance sheet and never mind the credit to the economy. >> rose: with respect to capital... it's said by some that the united states and united kingdom are in one place and france and japan and others are somewhere else. >> there are discussions going on at the moment, you're right. first of all, because we need to define clearly what we understand as capital. i won't bore you with the technical details. but whether you consider that

pure equity only is capital, whether you take into account other instrument, how you account for the minority interests held by certain banks in some insurance companies, for example. and then the bank insurance model, that's the first thing that we need to agree upon. and the second is what ratio of capital is appropriate depth depthing on the level of risk taken by some banks. some banks have a risk profile that requires high level of capital. other banks which are essentially sort of retail banks wholesale banks and as a small portion of their business investment bank do not have such a risky profile and do not necessarily require the same level of capital. that's the discussion going on at the moment in front of the financial stability board. >> rose: are the so-called volcker rules at play in terms of what ought to be the legitimate activity of deposit bearing banks?

whether they should be engaged in owning hedge funds and that kind of thing? >> i think that what matters is do we cover the risks appropriately? and for those banks engaged in proprietary trading, well, proprietary trading activities should have a very high level of coverage. there should be significant capital against that activity. for those that are in the hedge fund business, same thing. and the hedge fund activities should be covered by the regulation. we can't leave them outside the scope. but does it make sense to actually forbid, prevent, desz kate an institution on the basis of the type of active any that i'm not sure. because i think it will go somewhere else and we don't want any kind of shadow banking to be restored. >> rose: shadow banking being hedge funds and people like that that... >> or anything that will be

created tomorrow. the hedge funds of the day after. so my concern is the right level of information-- people call it transparency, i call it clarity, but it doesn't matter-- transparency by all means. accountability and proper risk coverage. and that risk coverage needs to be adjusted to the level of risk that an institution is taking. plus, you know, if i look at what happened in the last couple of years, a bank like lehman, for instance, that really sort of precipitated the whole collapse was an investment bank. was not a... whereas some of my banks at home were a mixture of... were hybrid institutions with wholesale activity and a bit of investment and they managed to survive quite well. >> rose: so why did france come out better with respect to its financial institutions than united states did?

>> well, france, i think, what helped a lot was number one we had strict rules, and those rules were enforced. i'll give you an example. the subprime mortgage activity simply could not have taken place because banks were not allowed to give credit to people that clearly could not refund or refinance. we had thresholds, we had caps on how much people could refund out of their available income. that certainly prevented any type of subprime mortgage market to develop. number two, we had a system of supervision that left no loopholes, no room that were sort of in the dark. it was highly coordinated between the central bank, the treasury department, the market authorities, and the insurance authority. and they were really operating as a closed network that was very helpful when the crisis started.

and number three, it's the business model of banks that were partly wholesale, less significantly investment banks. and they were able to sort of, you know, balance and hedge one activity against the other. >> rose: the biggest distinction here is not so much between investment banks and commercial banks, it is between banks engaged in trading more so. investment banking activities often are considered to be things like mergers and acquisitions and giving advice to corporations, that kind of thing. whereas trading is what got people. but then the people who engaged in trading say that wasn't the problem at all, the problem really is capital requirements and people were operating beyond their own capital requirements and when they were getting money at 31 and things like that, they were part of the problem so there had to be a risk problem and a leverage problem rather than what kind of activities they were engaged in. >> yes, and you're right about distinguishing between investment banking in general and proprietary trading which needs to be looked at very, very

carefully and, you know, in my view restricted to only a portion of the total activity of the bank. because that's where the massive amount of risks were. >> rose: but that's where most of the income has been coming from. >> yes. i know, which is why people are so anxious and nervous about us saying transparency on the derivatives and appropriate clearing over-the-counter rather than under-the-counter. but what i mean is clearly over-the-count sore that everybody can look at it and everybody can see who is registered, who is doing what and how much margin is to be called. so that aspect of the banking business needs to be disciplined and needs to be capped and needs to be reigned and that set of rules that will come need to be adjusted, looked at constantly because the natural tendency of players to be to sort of move around and find appropriate avenues to conduct profitable activities. >> let me talk about the economic recovery. there seems to be good news almost everywhere.

>> that's what i call the moving from imbalances-- which we suffered from which are still there and need to be addressed-- to rebalancing. and the rebalancing that we see was very explicit at the g-20 meeting over the weekend and at the i.m.f. and world bank spring meetings. when you look at growth around the world, you think to yourself great, we're going to probably roll out a little over 4%. but when you... >> rose: "we" being... >> "we" collectively the globe, the planet, all of us together. >> rose: right. >> the global economy will grow at a rate of approximately 4.2%. when you start focusing as to where the forces of growth are, you just said it. it's predominantly asia, latin america, emerging markets. >> rose: right. >> you look at japan, very soft. you look at europe. very soft. you look at the united states. >> rose: a little better. >> a little better. but that's where the rebalancing is taking place.

where clearly those emerging markets are absorbing a lot, are prix deucing and absorbing a lot of the value creation that is taking place around the world. and that's the reason why at the world bank level over the last 12 months we've negotiated this rebalancing of voices, meaning voting rights and quotas so that emerging markets-- particularly china-- could have a voice that was sort of tantamount its share of the producing value and economic growth coming up. >> rose: your president called for a change in the reserve currency. >> yes. >> rose: and there's much talk about this. people like joe stiglititz, the nobel laureate, has all said over the longer term we have to look at the question of the reserve currency. >> yes. there is work to be done. because we are operating and proceeding on the basis of the bretton woods general principles and institutions. if you look at the institutions that have changed already quite

a lot, the i.m.f. has been revamped and reactivated and is clearly a powerful institution which will prove its adequacy in the long run but which is certainly... which has been reactivated. the world bank is also now entering into not just fighting poverty but also focusing on growth generation and looking at those public good issues such as climate change. those are the institutions. the principles against which we've been operating have evolved a little bit over time. the gold-to-dollar party has been dropped. the dollar is probably no longer today this sort of single strong currency that was used as the key reserve. if you look at the reserves held by central banks around the world, there is already quite a significant number of euro denominated reserves and it will

have to change. because the... you know, the ewan, the yen, the euro, the dollar clearly the currencies of the day and how that works out together with monetary policies need a lot of collective thinking and consistent solutions. >> rose: do you think the chinese are confident enough to think about changing their policy with depreciation of the uni. yuan. phrase it any way you want to. it seems to me that they open more than they have been. >> the chinese authorities will more likely than not move and they will move because it's in their interest to do so. it will happen to be in the best interest of all for a better balanced world with hopefully less inflation in china. >> rose: what's the possibility of trade wars? >> that's... i would say that this is an achievement of the

g-20 in the last two years, charlie. because if you look at what happened during the great depression, the natural reaction at a time when communications were more difficult, when things were much slower is that central banks kept the cash and governments raised barriers. that was essentially the outcome. what happened in this crisis? central banks released a lot of cash, reactivated the interbanking markets, which were dry, and governments very, very early on at the washington g-20 meeting said no protectionism. that's the natural tendency. you think that things are going wrong, you want to protect your turf. and clearly the lesson from the great depression was that we shouldn't do that. so we've avoided it so far and pass t general director of the w.t.o. over the weekend reported on that and indicated that there had not been a protectionist

rise in the last year. we need to keep at it. we need to make sure that we don't move in that direction and protectionism can have many traits. >> rose: thank you for coming. it's a pleasure to have you on the broadcast again. >> thank you. >> rose: christine lagarde is the finance minister of france. back in a moment. stay with us. >> rose: ian mcewan is here. he is unusual in a novelist in that he has achieved both popular success and critical acclaim. his books have sold more than 15 million copies. his literary prizes included the booker and the national book critics circle award. his new novel is called "solar." i am pleased to have ian mcewan back at this table. welcome. >> thank you. >> rose: my god. listen to this. also by ian mcewen. "in between the sheets, the cement garden, the comfort of strangers, the child in time, the innocent, black dog, the daydreamer, enduring love, amsterdam, atonement, saturday

on chesil beach. then the dedication is to polly? >> yes, my first love. >> rose: and then this, from rabbit is rich, john updike. "it gives him great pleasure, makes rabbit feel rich to contemplate the world's wasting, to know the earth is mortal, too." >> rose: >> great line. >> rose: it is a great line. >> yes, if you put a fairly unsympathetic carkner the heart of a novel then the shadow cast is either full sfaul staff or rabbit. and updike did an extraordinary thing, a man of no great education, no great wit. not a particularly nice guy. and yet he is the vehicle for a colossal journey through 40 years of american change and personal drama and so on.

it's a beautiful rhetorical trick that updike pulls off in his thousand pages and we all live in its shadow i think. >> rose: and who is michael beard? >> well, he is, i guess, a very distant cousin of falstaff. i mean, if you have a fat comic victim than clearly falstaff is there. a nobel prize winner years back, as nobel prize winners often are. their best work is many years behind them. a liar, a cheat, a rogue, a scoundrel. more than anything else a scoundrel. creates chaos wherever he goes and thinks after a bit of cheating and thiefing that he can save the world with artificial photosynthesis. >> rose: so what were you intendeding to do? where did the idea for this come

about? >> there are two things that prompted this. one thing i took in 2005 with a number of artists and scientists we were on board a ship that was frozeen into a field and the artist did very arty things and i went hiking but in the evening we had passionate idealistic conversations about climate change and how we should live and so on. and what we all noted-- again i noticed a little more than others-- is that just on the other side of the war was our kit room, our boot room where we kept our helmets and all our gear and as the week went on this rather cramped dark space that he's taking off and on, this place fell into an amazing chaos. and i thought ah, if you're going to write about climate change, you're going to have to write about human nature and how we have those bold ambitions for ourselves and yet daily life and

our own souls overwhelms us. at the end of the trip a huge sack was carried out on to the ice and it was all the lost gear and we all stood around and everyone quite innocently thinking "there's my helmet, there's my gloves." no one was ashamed or embarrassed, we just took ourselves for granted in this. so that was one beginning. the other was to go to germany to a climate change conversation and the trick here was that all the speeches were nobel prize winners. and i found myself in a various ofcations with 30 nobel prize winnerings, mathematicians and physicists mostly and i'd never been among such grand people. i mean, it was all men. all men of a certain age, men who'd done their best work in their 20s and 30s but they were magnificent. they were like superalpha males. like bulls that you might get in a bullring.

and i thought, oh, there's some humor, too, in that falling off of this grandeur that rests on something so long ago. so those were the beginnings of thinking how do i approach the subject that's so intractable for the novel. full of politics and morality and hard science and statistics and really then that's when i thought it has to be character led. i have to find a man who can carry me through this. >> rose: so how did you find michael beard? >> well, on the way home from that nobel event i awarded him a nobel prize, that's the first thing i did. and then it was on that journey may airplane got stuck in a stack of southern england and while we were turning the stack i thought what a way to begin a novel. to have a character looking at all his life, north, west, east, all the points of the compass

and at that point as we went round and round i began to flesh out that he'd had many marriages, that he lived in a chaotic stinking apartment that was that he was a man with a mission and so on. it ended up actually in the middle of the novel, no longer the beginning but that's where i start. >> rose: and a man whose boat can be rocked by the fact that when someone that he had badly treated turns the tables. >> yes. >> rose: he doesn't know what to do. >> yes, i mean, his fifth wife is having an affair with the builder and for the first time in his life he's the conduct cold and it sort of wrecks him because in the process, in a very human way of suddenly wanting what we cannot have he longs for his wife. but she has moved on from him. >> rose: more than once. >> oh, yes. so it's really a story, i guess, of something in our nature of

being very clever monkeys who can do extraordinary things with math and architecture and art. >> rose: yet? >> yet we have a nature, too, that is tribal and self-interested. we saw it at copenhagen. good science brought 192 nations together so possibly one of the most extraordinary matters where rationality had assembled the world. what happens when you get there. self-interest, cabals, scheming. >> rose: pride. >> yes. pride. so there for me was the heart of the problem with climate change is that we are really struggling with our own natures to do favors with people whom we'll never meet, in other words our great, great grandchildren. and it's not the nature of human trade to do favors with people that you don't yet... >> rose: not in the nature of human trade to delay gratification.

>> exactly so. we live on small time scales. so there it was. it began and really carried on with this man. and i then thought, well, if i'm going to try and persuade the reader to travel a hundred thousand words or so with the man who's not particularly a good man i better now and then make him a comic victim to spice things up. >> rose: he comes home and there's one of the me in his ex-wife's life and... >> yes. i mean... >> rose: on a polar bear rug. >> one should say that michael beard thinks he's been chased by a polar bear in the arctic but it was a dead polar bear and he reflects later that those are the ones you've got to watch out for. the ones on the floor that look dead. >> rose: (laughs) >> that can leap up and get you at any time. but, yes, and thank you for guarding my plot. certain information comes into his hands that is not his but he

makes his. >> rose: his character is such that he has no problem in making it his. his character and his ego and his sense of self. >> yes. >> rose: he knows he's hollow inside >> he's quite happy to arrange things so that his wife's lover and the builder goes to jail for 16 years. but he does do something which actually is rooted in scientific fact. artificial photosynthesis is a concern around the world. i fwont-to-a lab in golden, colorado, the national renewable energy lab and there professor john turner showed me the cutting edge of this process which still exists on the lab bench. it's a long, long way from being scaled up. but if we could turn water into hydrogen or oxygen cheaply, virtually for nothing, then we would have virtually free

energy. >> rose: now who what is it that you have to do as a novelist to make sure? because you have said the best way to tell the story of climate change if you want to make a case, if you have an argument to make is not in a novel's form but is also in non-fiction. you made that point. >> i don't think that i could make it my aim to beat the reader around the head with a moral case about climate change because i think the place far is the monograph of the non-fiction book. what i can show, i hope... >> rose: al gore. >> yes. you can... there are clearly ways of doing this in reportage and argument. what the novel these do, i think, is investigate human nature or at least lay out the terms, as it were, of the problem for human nature. and i think really that's why we... that's what's so interesting about literature. at its best or even at its

medium it reflects rather than directs >> it seems to me if i hear you... because that's certainly what i hear, what i agree with. it is the notion that the success of achieving the hoped for results of big ideas can be compromised, encouraged, caught up in all the things that everybody deals with. all the range of human emotions that can get at the pursuit of noble things and less-than-noble things. >> science is wonderfully messy. i mean, we've witnessed of the u.e.a. e-mails about which the denialist camp made a lot of mileage. >> rose: would you have put that the in the book if it happened

before you wrote? >> it was happening and i decided in tend not to. i did invite michael feared copenhagen at the end of the novel. that's where he's going to go. he wasn't wanted on criminal charges for other things. but, yes science is human and messy and there are jealousies and bickerings and it's full of egos and as i saw at that climate change conference with the nobel prize winners, it's full of a powerful sense of individual destiny. think that even the scientists of the hundredableest sweetest nature like charles darwin, when he thought that wallace had preempted him, he was stricken. his originality, he wrote that day when he got the letter, his originality had been blown apart. to be first at such a powerful thing inside. so it's very human. einstein in a great race to get down the formulation of the

general theory. no one seems to rise above this. jim watson says so many other teams could have described d.n.a. it wouldn't have made any difference from our point of view, the rest of us... >> rose: who did it. >> but they wanted to be first. they really wanted to be first. >> rose: because all of life's rewards come there. >> then the nobel prize comes to the first. so you're bound to get hiccups and upsets. >> rose: you're no different. you like awards. you like people... you'd love to have a nobel prize in literature. >> i certainly wouldn't be turning it down. >> rose: so would every other writer i know, by the way. >> i loved it when henry beck in the updike novel kept the nobel prize. updike, of course, did not. so he sends his kharker to stockholm and what does he do but take up on stage his baby granddaughter and give her the last word.

so updike, they see you as a successor to uptake. is there some direct chain here that leads to updike and then somewhere else? oh, god, it's so hard to tell. i mean, what did he give but some sort of unbelievable capacity for noticing? i mean, he really noticed the world and it seemed to me when i got the news that what we'd lost was a consciousness that you'll never find another version of it. he knew so much but he could do a face, a gesture, he could describe the things of the world and i... my own taste in prose fiction for those writers-- conrad's one, kipling's another-- who noticed the things the thingyness of the world, the taste, the feel, the touch. not only of another person but of the table, the sidewalk. so it's very hard to know who

will step into such vast shoes. but we'll go on wanting, i'm sure, to hear a highly intelligent mind present us with the fine print of human consciousness and the sort of tiny cracks and crevices of human relationships. >> rose: what do you need to do to be better? >> maybe more patient to be better? i... there's some idea i have that that's justt beyond my fingertips. there's a novel that i haven't yet written. i don't even know what it is but no novel writer yet feels quite right. there is just something... and i just hope i've got the stamina to one day write it. to have the perfect thing, as henry james would call it, in

which everything comes together. the right passion, character, the pathos and humor. to have it all. >> rose: see, here's my thought about that, is that you have to really, really, really be good to say what you just said. to know that there is a place where it all does come together. i often have said to opera singers-- beverly sills and others-- was there once a performance that was like nothing you had ever done before or ever done after? that just reached a place? beverly sills said yes. and i... >> maybe music's different. >> why would it be different, snow because the body is partly engaged in it? >> because it's so abstract, charlie. and so it's not replete with human meaning.

it's like... you know that poem about spring and he says the trees are coming, like something almost being said. and i think music at its best is just something being said that's just out of your reach. so because it's not cramped by meaning perhaps it is possible to be a soprano in cosi fantutti sing thatar owe and know you've given it everything and lilt never be better. or to think there's not a single note you could change of this. you could never say that about a novel. >> but then do you think we could go to saul bellow, john updike and others, now those two dead and say if we could reach them today did you think that there was a... something was just beyond your grasp?

that you knew was there? because you could look at this and say it's really, really good. but there's something. there's something that i only can see, probably. >> i'm sure they would both say yes. if you could do that sort of mary baker eddy think, sort of down or up. >> rose: wherever they are. >> wherever. i'm sure they would say... saul bellow would say, yes, there's something just beyond the adventures of augie march or herzog and i'm sure john updike would say somewhere beyond beck or... >> rose: are they the only people that would get it because it takes... in other words, you only will know what it is that's just beyond your grasp? >> i think you're saying something about the novel. novel's are messy and inseparable from the personalities of the people who write them and i doubt if such a thing as a perfect novel could exist. a perfect lyric poem, a sonnet, yes. >> rose: well, then what is it you want if it's not a perfect

novel? what is it you're obsessed or wishing for? >> have you read the perfect novel? that would be one question? you've had 250 years of it so someone should have got near it. >> rose: have you read a perfect novel? >> no. >> rose: what would be the closest thing you think you've sflaed. >> "rabbit is rich" i'd say. maybe "anna karenena." certainly in that book you get the one thing that no one else has done is you get a big stretch of happiness. when kitty is married, the opening months of their marriage is such a delirious description. and people say happiness writes right. but that's such a beautiful celebration of love. and then what happens? some friend comes and he gets jealous. he thinks she's flirting with him. of course she's not. but a crack appears.

it's so beautifully done. and maybe "madam boefry." but they are long, very, very long, and they're messy and human and drenched in the personality of the maker. so perhaps we can never have perfection. we can just have a straining for it. >> rose: how do you grow that? >> well, i think you've got to... well, i'm almost 62 and i keep thinking what novels require is stamina. will i be fit enough to write another novel? at the end of writing "solar"... and i felt the same, actually, i felt exhausteded. can i do this again? and, in fact, you do start, i'll go on, i'll go on. is. >> rose: exactly. >> and i think well, the only try do is is to do press ups and

make sure you play tennis. >> rose: did hemingway commit suicide because he just couldn't write anymore? >> i don't know. there certainly was a falling off. i think he was on quite a regime of sleeping pills and drink. what was it called? that stuff that people used to take? chloril? fantastic quantitys of both. so surely there must have been an element of clinical depression. and he must have looked backwards at perfection. actually, one... there is a use for hemingway "the cat in the the rain" the short stories, one of the most perfect things that i've ever yesterday. >> rose: one of the most perfect things you've ever read? >> well, in prose fiction. what are the other candidates? they're the end of joyce's "the dead." when gabriel and his wife come back to a hotel after a long party. there are ten pages, he thinks

she wants to make love, she's, in fact, full of the story of michael fury and the boy who once loved her who sang under her window and died of tuberculosis or a cold or whatever it was. she tell and he's jealous and she falls asleep and the snow begins to fall, falling softly, softly falling. i don't think joyce ever wrote anything more magnificent in the end of "dead t dead." >> rose: you know what's next or you don't? >> no. >> rose: you have to go somewhere and be moved? >> no... >> rose: or you have to read something in the newspaper or you have to? >> i've got to become a slightly different person, which means that i have to read a lot and travel a bit and hang out with my friends and family and shift my consciousness. >> rose: does it find you or do you find it? >> it will... if you look too hard, it won't come. >> rose: exactly.

>> so i just wait. the important thing to do is to turn up at the desk b. there everyday. >> rose: bh there. >> even if nothing's happening you've got to turn up. >> rose: you do that? >> you've got to be there. >> rose: you come down, you have your tea or coffee. >> coffee. and show up. turn off the phone e-mail program, turn off the internet. and mess about. try things. taste tings. sometimes i get... i can coax myself into a novel just with an opening sentence. sometimes with a photograph. sometimes i invent a character irresponsibly knowing that i don't have to write this novel. i'm just writing photographs. and then i get intrigued and i start to build and then i reject it and then i do something else. and months can go by like that and nothing comes of it. >> rose: do you put it away and maybe bring it back? >> yup. i started "astone."

like, that just messing about. wrote a paragraph about a young woman coming into a room with some flowers she's just picked, wild flowers looking for a vase, there's a man outside gardening. she wants to see him but she also doesn't want to see him, she doesn't know what she wants. the room is very elegant. it's a country house. i had no idea who they were, when this was, where i was going and i just put it aside and then two months later came back and thought, i'll keep going. >> rose: you're more curious about them. >> i was curious about them and i wrote her a chapter. there was a fountain, the vase broke. i thought, well, what is this about? and i left it far month or two and came back again and i start all over again, i'll give her a younger sister. and it was there that really the novel started with this younger sister. >> rose: that's a happy moment, isn't it? >> yes. suddenly by the time i'd written the end of that chapter i knew that the person writing this novel was, in fact, this young

girl 65 years later. because i was already in the mind of an old woman and it was no longer me. i was someone else. and my prose would be different. i would look differently. i'd describe different things. so that's a piece of luck. but you only get luck if you turn up. >> rose: and there's another variation of that is that i think woody allen... somebody said half the game is being in the stadium so to speak. you have to be there and part of it is you have to turn up. you have to be there where action happens. >> you've got to make your luck a bit. >> rose: you also have a... people like martin have said to you that you are tremendously funny. and critics writing about this saying there's humor here, too. >> i hope people find this novel funny. it's got various set pieces. i mean, you mentioned trip in

the arctic tlchblgt's a moment on a train. there are various set pieces. i don't like comic novels. i mean, i don't like a novel that tries to be funny at every sentence. i've said it's a bit like being forced on the-to-the ground, a kid in rough play and someone tickling you forcibly. it doesn't work. the great comic novels, "scoop" for example, you look at them again, they're not funny all the time. we remember all the funny bits and we rather forget the rest but, in fact, they're rather spaced. there's some serious intent. i think novels have a symphonic quality. they're big enough to have slow movements and prestos and clamor and piece and... peace and spaciousness and humor, too. >> but they have to, don't that? you can't run at the same speed all the time. >> that's why the comic novel cyst such a dire form. >> rose: because they're setting up a speed. >> you can't make people laugh

at every turn. and humor is such a delicate, changeable thing. one man's incredibly funny scene is someone else is frowning over it shaking their head and shrugging you off. >> is it harder or does it come to you, writing humor? i'm quite happy in it. there's a certain kind of glee. i had a taste of it writing "amsterdam." a short novel. no, i could settle into it again i think. >> rose: where you writing a screenplay now? >> yeah. i'm writing a screenplay of "on chesil beach. >> rose: is this a history have that that is good or bad? >> a good thing or a bad thing? well, i've always said never write screenplays. >> rose: so why'd you violate your own? >> because i knew that i would have finished this novel and that it would be a perfect time for me and also "chesil" beach

is short. it wouldn't be too boring because there's very little dialogue. and i could reinvent these characters. i could give them voices that they never had. and actually everybody thinks it's a novel about two people on their wedding night in a hotel room but, in fact, there's a whole back story for both of them. it's quite intricate and found do. and i like the idea of shooting in the all the right vocations. you know, it will be "on chesil beach" and it will be in the chilton hills and it will be in norfolk. so it will be key points. >> rose: geography will be a khark der. >> absolutely. >> rose: the book is called "solar." ian mcewan, i read the list of books he's written. he is among our best. it is also a chance even though it is not to be a polemic, it is also an opportunity to understand the dynamic between characters who are invested in

the idea of some of our most pressing issues. thank you. great pleasure, as always. thank you for joining us. see you next time.