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benji with a bad haircut? >> guest: benji is a kid growing up in new york in the 80s. as i did, unfortunately my life was a very interesting so i have to exaggerate. when i started the book i wanted to base characters on my friends and unfortunately whenever they appeared on the page they became less and less like my friends as the book took over. it started autobiographical and i'm in there but the demands of the story supersede any other urge. and try to make a compelling story which means exaggerating what actually happened. >> what is the process to get to elevator inspectors are zombies or railroad that actually exists? >> i wanted to mix it up and not do the same thing. if you know how to write a certain kind of book then why do it again. writing a book that is very plot heavy is a way to varied up and not to the same thing. one that has a first-person narrator is a way to keep it varied for me. so i'm on a perverse street. i went from sag harbor historian 80s to zone one, and a pop lip takes on be true so i am keeping it very different. i get my ideas from articles i spent a lot of time on my couch. sometimes the ideas stay with you when you get an open spot in your schedule you could consider sometimes i fall away. they come from a lot of different places. >> there's a common theme about a guy who didn't get the rules of life and had a certain unease around other people. >> that's a little biographical. but i don't want to get that too early. there's something about an outsider. whether -- an outsider makes a good observer. a good storyteller. you're in the action but also standing apart. so someone who observes but also removed is good for telling the story. nice to have a point of view character for the reader most of us are not elevator inspectors of my out side characters become a way for the reader to enter the story. >> host: zone london camacho 2011. but you wrote that is young guy like an eighth or ninth grade. >> guest: no. as a big horror fran writing horror fiction and science fiction i wrote to terribles dories in college but and start writing fiction to my mid- 20s. but it does go back to my childhood. parents who love horror movies we watch for movies together i remember seeing night of the living dead at an early age. it stayed with me. to refresh your memory it's about the eve of the zombie a pop .-ellipsis the main protagonist is a black man being pursued by will why people who want to daveua him and need him. growing up as a horror and science fiction fan five books and i was ready to try my hand. >> you said you watched for movies but i get the impression there is an obsession. >> sure. a real interest. my brother and i came of age with the vcr boom and we go to crazy eddie's and brent five for movies and every friday go through them and return them and start over again. it was science-fiction horror and had a lot of comics growing up i'd read comics and my brothers room. so fantasy, horror has always seemed to be a potent storytelling to her. zone one a few other ideas about what zombies mean for me my own interpretation and put my own stamp on the genre was fun and important. >> host: what are zombies mean to? >> i think different generations interpret different horror genres differently. vampires need something in england, they need something different to the twilight generation zombies mean something different to teenagers now. to me it's always been an expression of social anxiety and fear of other people. you go to bed and you wake up in the world this change. there are zombies out to get you and they stop pretending. now they're out to get you. of course it be through psychology that i interpret zombies that way. when i was finally ready to tackle it i had various ideas ready to put on the page. >> is social anxiety a common trait among novelists? >> i don't know think it helps when you worry about your work are you doing a good job maybe good skill for being a novelist helps you not coast. >> host: worrying about what others may think of your work? >> guest: i think a healthy amount of worry helps you make sure you're putting everything into that paragraph for that page, making sure is coming out right even if you have done eight or nine times. >> host: in the new yorker and 2012 you said to be good novelists to fully and have one's delusion to give into every cookie aspect of one's freakish myths is a handy survival strategy. >> guest: what i like about my different books as they are on and allow me to express different ideas about the world and myself. different theories. i think writing has become a way for me to interpret the world for myself and to figure out how i feel about things and how i feel about societal systems and politics. so that license is very important for me. not being tied to expectations following my own inclinations. just because it sounds like a bad or dumb idea can you make it working can result to the reader at the same time you're selling it to yourself? the delusion that you have something to say that your work is worthy of being read by others is useful. >> where did the thought of an intuition come from. were you on an elevator? did you see and expect her? >> i read the book that everyone brought the book that everyone hated. is about mary during coleman the tv star, here is a tv critic at the time writing about black imagery and pop culture. thought i'd write about it gary coleman -like child star. seem like a good idea to me. the novel is on the sitcom called on moving in because user is getting adopted by rich white people. so i moving it seem like a soft realism. everyone hated the book. think i became a writer them. like i was going to become a lawyer or something and would can write another book that i was gonna learn how to write by the end of it. i figure people like potts, i could try that so i studied suspense and is watching 2020 as i often do in those days in my 20s. in the 1990s and there was a piece of the hidden dangers of escalators. apparently a few don't repair them they can detach from the sides and you can lose a toe. so there is an escalator inspector i thought that was a random job. and growing up in your carry see there's a law necessarily enforced but they sign a certificate, i've been here things are fine. they come once a year, your work or school and suddenly you see that they been there so i thought when to be cool if an elevator inspector had to be, inspector and solve a criminal case. a postmodern detective story. went to the library to see what type of skills elevator inspector would bring to the case of it was non. so is like i made a different culture for elevator inspectors. a figure there conservatives and progressives in will look at the people who do it the perfect way. there is an elevator inspector school and philosophies so really i was teach myself how to write. and have a female protagonist before. did not have a book that had a plot or any linear momentum. then i took this weird whimsical idea of an elevator inspector solving the case. >> host: prior to starting centerview you looked at your books on the table and said, sorry for the clunkers you had to read. what do you consider to be a clunker? >> guest: i think they're all good but hopefully if you do something for long time to get better at it. certain books i'll think about and wonder, why doing so many adjectives, with their simpler way of saying that. maybe the book could lose up a chair there. but her flammability writer doing things in a more efficient way. hopefully you get better and better and then a plateau and start sucking. play absalom to get a better phase getting better at my job and learning from each book. >> host: does on moving in still exist? >> guest: the manuscript is there. for a while thought maybe i will stripmining but it's really terrible and the energy it would take to bring up to my now very high standards would be well spent doing something else. so my children have like a gambling debt they can sell money 30 years from now to make some quick cash. >> host: so -- was a female protagonist. was the reason to write through a woman's point of view? >> guest: women exist and if you tell different stories you should pick different points of view. i had the string a male protagonist before this book. so it seemed wise to mix it up. if you know how to do something, why do it. with watson i could into my hipster new york voice my first novel. i was i chose a third person narrator so i cannot rely on my first-person narrator tricks. the female protagonists i had not done before. by doing it i could hopefully become a better writer. then with core i had a few female their raters in a row. there's a famous narrative been by harry jacobs as she writes about how when the slave girl becomes a slave woman she's into a much terrible form of slavery. now you have to frontier masters desires. you're supposed to pump out more babies. so that predicament of the female slave sound seems worthy of learning more. so just to keep the challenges going. >> host: what was your favorite lunch right? >> guest: this book was hard to write because i was broke, this book was harder because i was broke and depressed. then when you're finished you can look back and think this is terrible but there it was a special time in my life. so with the noble -- the noble hustle was the most fun to write. so humor book taking off from the trip i took to the world series of poker. i tried to cram as many jokes as i could in there. as a journalistic framework that is trying to cram as many weird jokes and bits of myself into it. was fun. it started from a journalistic assignment. they call me up to see if i wanted to write about the world series of poker. i said no i don't want to go to vegas atop. so what if we could see them page you the entrance fee anything or to the world series. i said okay i'd go that. but i didn't know how to play it so i started cramming. drop my daughter off at school and the other parents would say what he up to? like i'm going to atlantic city to train poker term the that i go there and gamble that i got to the world series. for the first time i had to get out of my comfort zone which is basically a 5-foot area around my couch. i need to learn how to play poker so i went in verse my family and the city of new york. when i was writing and utilize what a joke you make yourself laugh. then sometimes you feel stupid laughing at your own jokes for a while. with writing in the serial way like dickens did you get immediate response of people liked it. it was a special writing experience in terms of the material and how it came to be. i look upon that six-month rate fondly. >> host: you said i got to wear sunglasses inside it was good because i'm half dead anyway. >> for years i was told i have a good poker face. i realize that because i was half dead inside. my natural lack of aspect was for once an asset in a social situation. tammy unpacked. half dead? >> you do read about having the mask on and the fact that you are some my depressed when you're writing in your different person when you're done with the book, is that important or pain or depression important? >> i think it partially is. lynn partially it's good to have a healthy joking relationship in life. whether it's art or anything else. so not taking myself too seriously is important. i think in terms of sharing how i feel about other people, demystifying it is important. most writers i know are crawling along the pavement trying to write some pages and hand them in so we can keep doing what we like to do. a lot of times rating is unpleasant. like when he figure out any sentence or character but for me not taking too seriously and i think the character of the oppressive shed and is fun to play. sparsely true. it's also the default setting in my public relations. >> what was the easiest book to write? >> they were all hard. i'm a go at the shorter one. the book i'm working on now is pretty short, short is an easy but it does not prolong the agony of a 400 page or. >> when you when the pulitzer praise by oprah praise by president obama does that put a lot of pressure on the next book? >> there's pressure imposed on myself because i don't want to coast. unfortunately when i get good news and i'm in the middle of something i can feel the good. the menace like all is terrible. it's always hard when the pressure is self-imposed but it's always been there but should i read a book, there's always somewhere pressure on you. whether things are going well or they're not. . . >> good afternoon and welcome to book tv on c-span2. this is our monthly index program and this entire year we are doing a special action in addition with best-selling action authors. and this month, our author is best-selling author, pulitzer prize winner colson whitehead. here's a list of his books, we've referred to several of them through the first half hour iwant to give you a list , "the intuitionist" is his first book in 1998, johnhenry days, 2001, the colossus of new york, 2003 . apex heights in 2006, "sag harbor" 2009. zone one about the zombies, 2011. the noble hustle which we talked about a little bit, a nonfiction book in 2014 and of cou >> and of course is most recent the underground railroad. we want your participation this afternoon. here is how you can participate. >>host: what is the first line you wrote in "the underground railroad" are the first row will get the first word? >> it was the opening line. i always do an outline before i start working to do the beginning and the end the last couple of books i have known the last line of the book before i start writing. i did not have that with this book without personal and i think came really quickly when i was organizing the book and o inived the horrible editing process to get into the book. >>host: what is the vetting process? >> if i think it is genius and then they think it is stupid but in this case the first linean it was durable and sturdy and spoke in that one sentence and it stayed with me. >>host: from "the underground railroad" the negro became a human being only then is he the white man's equal t-1 so in the early part of the 19th century and going to medical school and the book takes a route through american history with the main storyline that was my cut off for technology was certain slang and then there were some side stories in the book with the supporting cast. so in that section dr. stevens who meets correlator was a young medical student in the 19 century learning about biology. on cadavers and then you dig them up so there is a healthy trade of grave robbing. people would compete to find fresh cadaversd or games -- gangs so he considers himself liberal and to talk about prejudice in boston and uses that despite racial prejudice or the dispersions cast upon black folks in america and ironically used for dissection and they become equal suddenly elevated only in death to the level of equality. one of those many uplifting moments inin the book. >> did you know you would write about that when you started the book? >> i mentioned that south carolina but the white supremacist state but then i knew i wanted to have the opening of the overture of us slaves wife -- life so her grandmother empowered her from africa, the passage, different plantations and i figured the typical slaves story that it seemed they could open up the world so even though they were auditioning for the short biographical chapters and after certain sections i would think after north carolina need a husband-and-wife team who is more interesting? what can the upbringing bring to the book? what can ethel bring to the book? even though i have a strong structuree obviously with that process those are very useful in terms of giving voice to how itth was evolving. >>host: can you read this as historical fiction? t-1. >> i thank you know this didn't actually happen i moving from late 19th century i had the idea to make "the underground railroad" into something real. that was something i had as an idea on my couch f years ago so there was this element. so now i can do a lot of things in the book and the books power comes from that structure.ru but no. it is not because they take many liberties. i would not stick to the fax but the larger american truth. it is not bound by chronology. it did happen but but trying to move those different historical episodes around. >> did that randall plantation actually exist? did you visit these places in your research? >> where cora was raised is my own creation. i did the research and made my own plantation one of three slaves on the smallre family farm or domestic slave in a townhouse in baltimore that that serves the artistic needs. but in terms of visiting plantations, thirds of the way through i figured with decent field research so we went to new orleans and visit plantation t17. i was only black person. [laughter] we were going north and the two are guide -- tour guide said this is the river road down to the port city and it is very complicated. running a plantation sitting on your porch to keep track of the accounts and the workers sipping mint juleps and not to be historically rigorous travelogue. we went to to plantations one was l a museum it is great. you should go in for a fiction writer the atmosphere on my skin and and getting names. they would describe how slaves were sold, then we get on the bus go to the nextbo plantation you have probably seen on tv. veryon stereotypical. if you want a themed wedding you can have a slavery themed wedding. they have hotel rooms to break free from the hotel chain you can stayit here. but writing a book about slavery coming across the ironies about race and the way we deal with that is nothing compared to the actual stories themselves so it was a weird adventure for research. >>host: is a tour guide did she ignore youou are spending too much time talking to you? >> neither i was under the microscopic one --dash microscopepe or ignored she gave the same speech two times a day. and then how we think about slavery or day today conditions from slaves complete vast array of dehumanizing apparatus we don't examine the assumptions so with the louisiana plantation life to think of it in that way. to give a complete understanding. >> this fiction is new to us here as well and with a month-longt read and then to read "the underground railroad". and then to submit questions we had one from our colleague who just finished your book. she wants to know about the five ads for the escaped slaves are the other ones actual ads from newspapers? >> guest: they are. they digitized those ads from the archives they invited me to go down there hopefully i express gratitude to their archives. so when the slave runs away what do you do? you place a classified ad in thee newspaper. as a fiction writer but then to compete with the runaway slave act they capture so much so the format is usually $50 for my slave bessie who has run away for no reason at all she had a downcast expression and a burn on her arm last seen in the vicinity of the farm. how did she get that burden? so many levels of denial and copyright law being what they are so that was an observation but to be a farmer or slave master to be writing as a classified ad to be of holding the slave system or the enterprise or the link in the chain to keep it going or you are a blacksmith also to make those iron rims taking cotton to the market and those popping up in the new slave economy towns. so while researching i was thinking how fast this was as an enterprise to broaden the ideaof of how vast and insidiou. >>host: everybody is working for the united states. >> yes. the slaves of course and the antagonist in the book is as much a slave to the system as in bondage. everyone is popping up and is caught in that insidious grip. >>host: is there a prophetic aspect? >> and with the protagonist core. meant to make them live. a terrible person in the terrible p philosophy but when cora you see her as a human being. and then to recognize some self perception how he sees the world that is what makes artwork recognition. >>host: you have taught several universities. what are two things you want the students to learn? >> guest: we have three months a so they can write three stories. if you only write stories from new jersey because that is real from. but three months sympathetic to try these different stories. so why'd you avoid it? and then to have thatyb trepidation. and then to try something different. and sometimes with engineers or bankers. and then she read once they get out of school. and why you are attracted to their work make some compelling and then to find a out what kind of writer you actually are with those inspiring voices. >>host: was it hard to write has a white southerner? >> but as a a human being i know people and to draw upon your own knowledge and to speculate. with a small collection of insight you have about humanity that is like sag harbor you always find yourself a place where you are different and hopefully what you know if they are not like you to make them recognizable on the page. >> another colleague has been reading your books and had questions from several books who was james fulton? >> the first -- the person i think about if people have questions so when the book came out i was invited to a college and somebodye asked me james fulton. that is based on some code? i said no. that is the name i saw first when i looked out the window. [laughter] so the inventor of the intuition is cool and to step into an elevator and hopefully the elevator inspector and without aggressive force with those elevator inspectors and he is a man who comes up with their philosophy. growing up in the 80s with the wars between the multiculturalist with that conservative and progressive war or those multiculturalist and then with that sacred text whether my book sounds good or bad. if it sounds cool at that point sounds totally stupid. s [laughter] i am just creating my own way. [laughter] >>host: i literally have no idea what you just said. [laughter] >> guest: is sag harbor a real place? it is. the hamptons community for the last couple of decades and the town is nestled in the southampton it is an old railing town -- whaling town mentioned in moby dick it is that part of long island sound starting in the 30s and 40s african-american doctors and teachers and lawyers would go out there to get some summer places as a place to go to bring your kids and then they tell their cousin in new jersey and they a start coming outpending my summers there through college. so that is based on my adventures in the town. >>host: was there anything worse than bigger kid play keepth away? >> guest: that main character is 15 and with that identity formation to figure out where he is part of the community or deviates from the community and he is figuring out and with that identity battle with that psychological warfare so as a teenager. >>host: what is it mean to be bougie? do you give up your pretensions and if you have made it also to embrace the fact you are a little bit posh. >>host: back to sag harbor getting rid of the house was unforgivable. do you still have your psych house? >> guest: my mom is still living out there sovi she owns it. it is not mine but people have been going out there for generations t grandparents and their peers they have little plots of land with their houses in the grandkids spend theirth summers and i wouldn't call it gentrified but a lot of families go out there and then people take over and then they go to the black part of town so what has changed from when i i was again and so to talk about that place before it becomes the hamptons proper and it is posh. >>host: was your dad alive? . >> guest: i'm not sure how much he would have liked it. my mom liked it. it came doubt everybody out there seemed to have embraced it.in there is a character in the book and a set i hear you mean your book. [laughter] and then what about the audiobook? so that kept m coming up all my friends were in the book. >>host: if your mom read it what was the reaction to the line and it is fiction but we were made for tv family when they said action we hit our marks and set our lives --em-dash our lives like professionals. >> and then to deal with pop culture. so when it came out and said we are finally on television. from a brownstone in brooklyn i heights. but that is the first time we saw ourselves pop culture is very important to the main character so that becomes a way of talking about the lie behind that fiction. but now to underscore the separation of how things are in the world. and with road warrior or hip-hop and that had nothing to do withh my family to be watching folks. >> sure from the 60s and 70s with jet magazine with a listing of any black person was so rare that the black press. >>host: we have talked foror an hour colton whitehead so now we will get america involved from c charles in albuquerque. thank you for your patience you are on with our 3010. >> caller: i think it is wonderful i have enjoyed listening to the show but him opening up letting us have a birdseye view into his creative process i had pleasure to be friends with the national book award of poetry she always talks to me about harvest time you have to get up and you are stuck in how is this character developing a have a life of its own and also colton was talking about that linear structure and also the beauty in difficulties of the historical novel to take some creative license so that does help with story development but to be true so my question there is so much that was t amazing and interesting so to have this idea or the plots or the structure there are times you would get bogged down with where he wanted to take something. so to talk about persevering. so to have this daunting task ahead of you. >>host: let's see what he has toto say. >> guest: thanks for listening. it's work some days you are into with the process and everything comes together some days you struggle to do one paragraph and that is a victory. a novel isno a marathon so that one paragraph is a lot but if i do eight pages a week i feel like that is a good cumulation that is 400 per year or to see a movie. read a book. or tuesday through friday. but if i could get eight pages but of course that is work and then you are making progress. >> do you have a sense of attachment? >> not mad but there is a show sceneme but with sag harbor i was a little more removed and sag harbor is very personal. but then writing about slavery with the new book with institutional racism or more horrific aspects of america i do get angry when a research it is an act of creation it isn't an essay that you put things together. >>host: you have a bit player in "the underground railroad" homer. >> guest: a little black boy , assistant to the slave catcher and with that book many years ago i waited until i was ready to write it and i think ten years ago i would have over explained but he could do whatever he wants. he is a slave and has been set free and can hang out and work with him. >> so the weird corners of that relationship at the end of the civil war the master knew nothing else except of the plantation and we can't really conceive of that psychology but those same actors could be raised by the house slave who would swear i love bessie. she raised me but her family and her children would have that denial of the slave master. so hopefully in a different episode they have that very odd dynamic. >>host: pennsylvania good afternoon. >> caller: thank you so much. have you considered writing for stage or for media or cinema? >> guest: yes, i went to undergrad for american fiction for 1945 i took classic american studies department and with that dialogue with those structures. and then to write a screenplay.a but then to get dressed in shower this text. i will write a novel. so then i go back to fiction. but i grew upew on tv that is important to me i have a lot of ideas coming from science-fiction i was a tv critic for a while but i don't have the chops to leave those two genres. >> what about "the underground railroad"? >> guest: with black people to be adapted but this book has been embraced we sent it to hollywood various people looked at it we got a call from a young filmmaker who had some great ideas he did midnight it had not come out yet. we saw the early version of it. so i wondered if i felt good working with him. so sometimes you find inspiration. he said slave movie? i was thinking there would be blood and the master but then he oscar in the contract so he was pitching and then amazon studios will do a miniseries. >>host: are you in new jersey? >> caller: 6 miles north of princeton. see were kind enough to autograph my copy last year at the schomburg center. kevin young was your classmate was he ahead of you? >> guest: yes. a nonfiction writer also. >>host: i'm sorry we are going to let you go. it is hard to hear you. >> guest: we started to write together as young riders in college he always knew what he was doing and you have this first book of poetry published and his other book just came out a few months ago of the american way so we always traded work always very supportive. >> carol stream illinois. >> caller: how do they come up with "the underground railroad"? how did they know they were homes? >> guest: social networks. in the 1840s the locomotive is transforming america so the slaves would run away the master would wake up the next day and say to himself there is no trace it as if he disappeared on the underground railroad and that was the term to help the slave escape to the north. it could be a seller hiding somebody maybe overnight or somebody in your wagon a few miles and then hand off to somebody else. people risking themselves and their lives with those eastern seaboard routes that could end up in the dni, massachusetts, new york obviously not a literal trade but when the book came out some people who were gone for decades thought it was a real train of course that is very impractical but in new york it is 7 miles we can barely keep thatnd going. >>host: was their significance that some were decorated beautifully some were very utilitarian? >> the new york station some are rough like carved out of rock some are accommodating so the different characters of train stations. >> eastern pennsylvania referringnn to your couch more than once is that where you write and what is your typical day of writing? >> guest: i get up and take my sonwrg, to school and i come back : in the first nap of the the couch i start working and write a page may be another nap. write a page and havea a snack and again one or two pages a day is a very good day. i'm the kind of person if i have a doctors appointment the whole day is shot. but three or five days a week eight pages a week is typical between 830 and 3:00 p.m. my other hobby is cooking so then i figure out what to make for the family when you cook for a couple hours it is completion writing a novel takes a couple years so i like that sense of accomplishment that satisfaction to share with people and not wait 24 months. >>host: go back to the crying part.[l [laughter] joking about the creating process some people go to a cafÉ to work. i would rather be able to make a ham sandwich and take a nap you can't take a nap in the cafÉ. there are so many people out there. [laughter] >>host: with your notoriety now can you still be anonymous? >> guest: from some smaller communities doing more tv in television i have been recognized like somebody looks at me we had a just recognize meme but or they would say i'm teaching your book or i read your book like a taxicab is hitting me or something or somebody who has taken the time to read the book. >>host: 2002 you were invited to the laura bush symposium and the washington post book editor at the time asked you the question how you felt about an african-american section in the s bookstore and you didn't really give an answer. >> guest: yes like borders had a long-standing policy of having the african-american section and how could it be not literature but ideally when i was inn high school i would go to the black section and browse to find a person that you neveru hear about frederick douglass? who is this guy? or a place to find works about culture it was a good idea in the 70s but why do you have toni morrison there? i think now it is that when i think my books are both sections it is a weird segregation that it had a purpose but not so much anymore. >>host: next call is from north carolina you are on booktv. >> caller: thank you. i would just like to tell this gentleman i was raised in a suburb of philadelphia. we were never never talked justthe blacks and i apologize this is what you haveve experienced. thank you for your work it is wonderful i appreciate all you gone through. >> guest: thank you. i am glad that you grew up in a progressive and lovely place a lot of the country isn't as lovely and without human character. >>host: you grew up middle-class new york city did you go through a lot? >> guest: prejudice based on the color of your skin versus your zip code so yes, a young black man stopped by police, handcuffed, interrogated to be on the wrong block at the wrong time in manhattan and then to be pulled over what are the black guys doing in y ac neighborhood and this nice car? you never know what that episode becomes illegal or what happens in ferguson to have conversations and then we stop and we talk for two years then we stop so whether there is a national conversation about it or with my assistance ever since i broke 5-foot. >>host: were you given the talk? >> guest: sure. the first person was richard pryor. he had a bit in the early 70s about being stopped by the police. the white couple shoot you in a second. when you show license and registrationth his bit as i am reaching into my glove compartment. so the first one to give me the talk was richard pryor then later at the house i was made aware i amm a target and i could be shot at any moment basically. >>host: from hert, facebook pag. >> did you always write short but such brilliantly descriptive sentences? i quoted you yesterday on my facebook page as an example of your skill tennessee proceeded in a series of likes the blaze of the next two towns on the sintered road. did you hone it down to the core? >> guest: thanks. that is very nice of you to say. i'm getting better there is a narrator in the revisionist that is more encyclopedic and the narrator of this book so if you pick the right narrator for the job sometimes it is great. i am in a concise mood right now but the book that i am working on now and i feel that is from trying different kinds of voices to set the style if you exhaust one and move on to the next and hopefully you get better at it. >>host: you mentioned the new book will you tell us anything about it? >> guest: it is too early it takes place in florida in the 60s. maybe do a funnier book than a darker book "the underground railroad" has the smallest joke page count of anything bv to jokes but this is also the darker vein and maybe i should mix it up and then due to dark books in a row maybe the next one is lighter. >>host: the next call from iowa. >> caller: can i call you colton? >> guest: that is great. >> caller: that i know this is pre-recorded but it said it was live. i am 73i have had books in my head for years. since i have been in my 20s and people have told me you know how it is you get betty -- busy even though i'm told i should be writing but i wrote little stories and i always told my mom i would write about her. her father had a big impact on her. you called me mother but my dad had a nickname for her. and older ladies took me to church and they said that's horrible why do you call her mother? every time ir did she would say you are pulling away from me. you are closer too me with the nickname. then i thought maybe i was adopted. [laughter] >>host: so he has some books in his head and he is 73 years old. >> guest: if you write a short story you like it right another. i teach undergraduates and grad school and the workshops of all ages all ages are writing their first novel this autobiographical story they have been carrying around and they finally have time to go to it this is my eighth book and i still struggle with when i have time having a family, having a job, where do you find those hours? that is a struggle whether your eighth book or your first. nobody can write that for you. only you know who that is and who she was the sooner you start the sooner it willth be done. >>host: the biggest mistake first time riders make? >> a lot of hothead friends give me the long -- they revise the same pages over and over. get to the end and then fix it. just keep going go forward in the end it will tell you what is wrong with the beginning. >> caller: that afternoon. i have two questions. first, when you are writing, who is your target audience? in the second question is is there any subject that is off-limitsu you would not write about? >> guest: so far my audience ideallyen a 16-year-old black kid who would think i can write i am a weirdo he is a weirdo like reading invisible man at an early age. but then the book came out there was no 16-year-old kid in the audience white or black and then i stopped expecting my audience. i am always gaining and losing people. and less hardes to describe and then i followed up with a book about zombies. [laughter] siamese to getting new readers and disappointingti them with the next books i don't think about my audience anymore. i don't know much about football so it is unlikely ever to have a football novel but as a matter of distaste i never thought i would write a book but it fell in my lap you go through life different things become more or less interesting i couldd not have predicted a lot of my book books. >>host: a call from georgia. good afternoon. >> caller: i was going to ask i haven't read your books but what about the african slave trade? i have been reading about how the arab traders have come down and there were 30 or 40000 villagers of course there are buyers in the new world.we i would like your comment on that. >> i have a section on the african slave trade but before i get to america and american slavery. is money there involved they tend to explore their worst impulses. that may be slavery or the iphones. or to be on the stripping votes. then money makes people do terrible things. >>host: longbranch new jersey please go ahead. >> caller: my book club read your book and our interpretations were all over the place can you explain about the main character? >> guest: sure. the book is very open much morere ambiguous than my other books. and with the elevator inspector could mean technology in the city i didn't think about it but you can't have the modern city with the safety elevator it could only go up five stories atesso that enables modernity ad a modern city. that is one meeting of the elevator. i was writing the book in the phrase occurred to me then elevation sometimes that is transcendence or achieving a higher consciousness.s so that metaphor is very open and once i'm done with the book it is yours. to interpret or indoor and whatever reading you have. >>host: if you are done with the book it is yours. our conversation with colton whitehead continues. now we will continue our conversation in just a minute now we will show you colton whitehead acceptance speech at the national book awards in latean november 2016 right after the election will also show you some of his favorite books and influences some of the books he is reading a now. >> the last four months is the book is come out has been so incredible like the make-a-wish foundation am i dying? everybody is being nice to me. it is also confusing. the models for acceptance speeches is the oscars first one was 77 like star wars. and i never thought i would become a writer to also be at one of these things. over 18 years and then who does that of 18 years. [laughter] and then robert caro. [laughter] well done. my daughter is at home watching i think you are 12 years old. i really started living the day you were born thank you for your ongoing gift b-17. [applause] into my wife i'm excited to find out but it is so much fun to have all these ideas to see how they develop my book is dedicated to my wife he 17. [applause] it is okay to write good books when you are happy it is better to write better books when you are happy. so thank you. [applause] so thehe behavior from oprah winfrey magazine and her fame got the word out so people read the flap copy held no then oprah says rita and people do then they go crazy. [laughter] this time last year i was finishing a book and it was 19 pages to go don't mess it up. now the book is out and i never thought i would be standing here. and then as this whole whole wasteland we wouldn't have but who knows what happened the year from now? when they said what about the election? i say not really. and to make me feelat better. and be kind to everybody. and fight the power. [applause] ♪ ♪ [music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >>host: in your speech you referred to the terror of trump land that was just a couple weeks after the election. >> i grew up in new york so it is a weird tabloid buffoon creature. i watched the apprentice. it was so repellent in terms of campaign season zeno phobic speeches that it was startling limited to have a white the premises to the white house again. >>host: you consider him? >> if you say those racist things and govern in a way that benefits white instead of people of color consistently over time that seems to be a white supremacist or if they were marching in charlottesville raising them not to flag or the supremacist flag. >>host: one of the books that inspired you ask. >> guest: it captures the story of people who moved to the north in the early part of the 20thtu century my family grew up in new jersey and new york my dad's family came from out of town when his father got into a fight so the great granddad was on the porch with a shotgun you hear this from different families my mother's family is from virginia so to newark and thought it was new york and got off the train and headed into new jersey they thought they were at penn station. [laughter] so so many people were escaping jim crow that is how i became a new yorker. >>host: i read your mother's family were free blacks? >> one side descended from a biracial woman who came over half white irish and half black jimenez indentured servants to work on james madison's farm and hard eight kids and they were free. my father's line comes from barbados as a sugar plantation that the american south in georgia and florida. i taught that eight years ago it is a marvelous book but i mentioned it was a revelation -- a revelation for la as a teenager. it was an excerpt and upriver to the american short stories and there is so much absurdities that i felt a real kinshipns. >>host: what did you get from allen ginsberg? that american voice of tragic and sarcastic and loving and cruel and on twitter he read tweets lines from howell or watching the news on twitter and then the three lines from howell pop up. a series of impressionistic essays at hopefully to reach that voice from ginsberg or waltan whitman. >>host: from "the underground railroad" the divine thread connecting all human endeavors if you can keep it is yours. >> guest: you can't really take capitalism for slavery. they had a value placed on their lives in the more they worked the more they made money for the people who owned them. so to say that was part of capitalism so imperialism or capitalism and manifest destiny, so all of these major forces. >>host: the next call for bookt booktv. >> caller. >>host: i'm sorry just a reminder, turn down your volume when you are on the air otherwise there is a delay and it is confusing. spartanburg south carolina. >>st guest. >> caller: hello mr. whitehead. i think it has been answered but who was one of your favorite authors and what type of inspiration did youou get? and when did you know writing would be a lifetime duty? versus a real job? >> guest. >>host: we will get an answer in just a minute but who inspired you and which of his books have you read? b14. >> caller: one of the most inspirational riders i am reading his book now. "the underground railroad" i am presently reading it now. i am enjoying every bit of it. this has been a treat for me to see you on tv today. thank you. >>host: what do you do in south carolina? >> caller: i work for the hospital here. i am a nurse. >> guest: thanks for reading i hope the end of the book is not disappointing. [laughter] human on -- glad you are enjoying the first half. if you get something from carver realistic short stories and early influences and marvel comics and before that i rented to write horror. and basically what i wanted to do and then samuel beckett just then as a science fiction writer so i see fantasy as a tool. in the novelist toolkit. >>host: what does magical realism mean? >> guest: that to be presented in the same register as a bigger practitioner and then listening to his grandmother telling stories when she was growing up with that fantastic detailed in the sheriff sprouted wings and flew away. so you never knew what was real orai not. or to be in a recognizable world but when i was working on this book of the underground railroad with more science fiction was very different in terms of time with a much more broader vision that i went back to solitude instead of having the fantasy cranked up what if it was dialed down? how would that serve the story? so when correa encounters these moments with a matter-of-factma tone. >>host: what did you study at harvard? >> guest: english major. so with african-american studies classes. going back in 2001 and said isn't that recent? they said now it is 21st century. and now they are old. i thought it was funny. >>host: any connection to harvard? >> guest: i usually go to harvard names like what kind of name is that? sorry to the family but it seems like whatever it takes is incredibly lofty. i will do it for the harvard dorm name. >>host: as you teach regularly what is your take on the first amendment discussions held on collegeng campuses? >> guest: people get upset llat college students but they are supposed to be annoying. let them be annoying for four years than us. so to a lot of people they first learn about other cultures and races getting out of their bubbles of the small town that they grew up in and that close community so you are learning things for the first time that makes you engaged but again better them for four years then out here with us. [laughter] have mentioned depression and to be sad but your sense of humor comes through in this interview. >> guest: it is a part of life. i mentioned richard pryor and i george carlin they make fun of the world present the world in its absurdity but with my book call office happened pretty quick what we see those extremes so i write books that are funny to accommodate that personality and i think that is everybody. >> is that in your outline putting the book together that i would do this first person to be outrageous or sad? is it that specific? >> guest: yes. i know it would be satirical that means you are joking with the treatment of slavery would be so brutal it would not be my same distance so i would have fewer jokes i'm not fully aware about the first couple pages this narrator how i will tell the story. >>host: gloria from california. >> caller: i have two questions. is colton a family name? and second the way that is slave people communicated in oneun of course was through song while was there any other way? >> guest: so the first part? colton is a family name. my fatherr was named archibald so they named me arch and colton is my middle name and his father or grandfather worked in a hotel in virginia and a small town and to iron himself out onek the weekends then he kept and then bought his daughter out of slavery so that individual who got out of slavery to pay off his owners fee had communication with those folks if you were caught your put to death it was very clandestine time. in my book she comes from georgia but not to operate that far south for the carolinas or virginia and to escape to o the south to the caribbean and to mexico if you were enslaved that far south but so many ways people communicated but again if you were caught and jailed or beaten to death. >>host: good afternoon. >> caller: thank you both for this i love tv can you just come from an agent or the msa program? how do you settle on an agent? >> guest: good luck with your writing. half of my friends did and the other have to not. my apprenticeship was working at a newspaper that is how i learned to sit down for five hours if i didn't i would not get paid with those collaborative editors. my first agents i got working at newspapers with nonfiction riders. and some of those i knew. when i had to find my agent that i am with now 20 years come i got a recommendation by somebody who passed on my first book is that i'm writing a crazy book about elevators and she recommended nicole so from her list she had a sensibility that seemed to overlap with mine. if you find an author that you like depending on who the agent is and send it to them. i had a two-page paragraph ended two-page description was not offputting. that is how i found my agent. but you find out who was representing books like yours. >>host: this is a phenomenon talking about it for two years and working on o it are you getting tired? or o bored? >> guest: it is been an incredible four years i never could have dreamed of of people have picked that up and endorse that. and it is once-in-a-lifetime thing. so i am enjoying it and appreciating it. . . . . . . lifestream. >> guest: my wife went to work and she said can you watch alisa she came home and plugged in the ipad to the tv suite a bigger thing and they said my name and started dancing and had a dance party and broke out the rose and i met up with friends in my editor and my agent and we celebrated. >> host: what was your friend's reaction to winning a macarthur genius? >> guest: well, you know, it was i had written two books and all of a sudden the check arrived in the mail. i think people do ask is there a burden or expectation but to leave you alone and you have to handling it at the end of five years. the way i took it was that i had written two books, oddball promises, haven't gotten that from now will, keep doing that will give you money to support you you can keep doing that. i took it as just encouragement and i wasn't anxious about it but this pressure to live up to it was the saying that i'm doing exactly what i should be doing keep doing it. >> host: lets you from john in flushing, ohio. john, you're on with author and novelist colson whitehead. >> caller: thank you very much. also, the praise that you receive from the rolling stone in "the washington post" and the miami herald you deserve it. you are stepping in high cotton. i would like you to give a short overview of sag harbor because you and i come from north new jersey and on the curator of the underground railroad here in my town. go right ahead and tell us what you can. >> host: john, was there a station in flushing, ohio? >> caller: there certainly was. this is the northwest ohio territory, illinois, indiana, michigan and it was right over the ohio river so what colson said was up-to-date. >> guest: thank you, john. sag harbor talks a bit about it before but it's important book for me because for a moment i started with these intellectual questions i was trying to explore and that was the premise of the novel so john henry and john henry days and what if i updated this industrial age of john henry went to the information age and what stories i generate from that. and it seemed that i've been avoiding writing drying the material that seemed for books and, four novels and, that it was time to so that book was important to me as a writer just to access different parts of my personality in my world that out there. and it started with the character as opposed to intellectual question, a character in a study. benjior's town in long island and since then i think i've had a bigger emphasis were put more work in my characters starting with sag harbor and for a and then the underground railroad combination of two periods of my work and there's a strong character grounding it and i've been learning from sag harbor and the other books too but i think the last eight years and they start in this absurd abstract premise what if i made the underground railroad something real so there was this totally strange abstract premise and the character work and they come together in this book. it was important as a writer and as a person and i see its influence in his work. >> host: angelo, newark, delaware or new arc, delaware. >> caller: hello. how are you doing this evening? i'm here in the state of delaware and i'm amazed at how this gentleman writing this book. i just now received got his book the underground railroad and i just got finished reading my soul is [inaudible] by harold grimes and i'm going to tell

benji with a bad haircut? >> guest: benji is a kid growing up in new york in the 80s. as i did. my life wasn't very interesting so i have to exaggerate , the summer of 85 was not that cool or compelling so you have to take a little bit of lessons. when i started the book i wanted to base characters on my friends and unfortunately none of them appeared on the page, they became less and like my friend david or scott so it started off as autobiographical and i'm definitely in there but the demands of the story always supersede autobiographical or memoirs, trying to make a compelling story which means exaggerating what actually happened. >> host: colson whitehead, what is the process to get to elevator inspectors or zombies or a underground railroad that actually exists? >> guest: i like to mix it up and not do the same thing from book to book because i think if you know how to write a certain kind of book, why do it again? perhaps that's foolish i think writing a book that may be very plot heavy and following up with a book that's not as plot heavy is a way to very it up and not do the same thing. a book that had a first-person narrator, a book that's funny, not so funny, that's a way to keep it varied for me. so the last couple books on on a diverse kick. i went from "sag harbor", a story about the 80s to zone one, a apocalyptic zombie tail, to noble hospital which is a poker book to this book, "the underground railroad", a historical novel so i am keeping a very different time. i get my ideas from articles . just weird musings i have on my couch. and so sometimes the ideas stay with you and you get an open spot in your schedule. you consider it but you're ready, do you want to do it, sometimes they fall away . they come from a lot of different places. >> host: there seems to be a common theme in a lot of your books about a guy who really didn't get the rules of life has a certain unease around other people's sure, i was going to say it's autobiographical but i don't want to take my hand to early, we are here for three hours, i want to save the good stuff for the last hour. i think there's something about an outsider and i think whether you are misanthropic like i can be sometimes or where all sort of outsized way, and an outsider makes a good observer, the protagonist, a good storyteller. you're in the action also apart so someone who observes and whose part of the scene but also removed i think is a good vehicle for telling a story and definitely in the apocalypse, in the world of elevator inspectors, it's nice to have a point of view. most of the time elevator inspectors sadly, and so my outsider characters in addition for the reader to enter the story. >> host: zone one didn't come out until 2011 but i think i read an article that you had written as a young guy in eighth or ninth grade. >>. >> guest: no. i was a big horror fan. i majored a lot in horror fiction and science fiction. and love the zombie genre from going back, no, i wrote terrible stories in college and i really didn't start writing fiction until my mid-20s but the obsession with zombies does go back to my childhood. i had parentswho love movies, we watched horror movies together and i remember seeing night of the living dead at an early age stayed with me , to refresh your memory, it's a story about the eve of the zombie apocalypse.people are trying to hide, they don't know what's happening and the main protagonist is a black man being pursued by white people want to devour him and eat him which of course is part of the story of america. so that growing up as a horror and science fiction fan, five books and i thought i was ready to spread my influences and trymy hand at a horror story you say you watched horror movies but the impression is that there is session with horror movies . >> sure, i don't know if i want to get all georgie. but yes, >> a real interest. you know, my brother and i, we were born in the vcr boom we go to crazy eddie, an electronics store in new york and read horror movies, science fiction movies every friday, go to them, return them and start all over again the next week. and you know, it was sort of science fiction, horror and comic books that meeting want to write. i wrote a lot of marvel comics, i was growing up. and stephen king novels, i came into my brothers room and i would read them so fantasy, horror, has always seemed to be a potent storytelling tool. and in zone one, i wrote different ideas about what zombies mean for me. sign my own interpretation and put my own stamp on the genre was fun and important. >> what do zombies mean? >> i think different generations interpret horror genres with their own needs. like dracula, vampires mean something in the 19th century , in england, they mean something to the twilight generation. zombies mean something different to i think teenagers now. to me they've always been an expression of social anxiety, fear of other people. the zombie story, you go to bed and you wake up in the world has changed. your loved ones, neighbors, teachers, coworkers are zombies out to get you and they stop pretending. they've always been monsters but we put the mask down and now they are out to get you. that's totally my pathology that i interpret zombies that way . you know, the zombie myth always stayed with me and i also found a way to grapple with these various ideas in theback of my head . >> is social anxiety a common trait in zombie movies? >> i don't know. you know, i'm not sure. i think it helps, i think worrying about your work or doing a good job maybe a good skill for being a novelist. it helps to not post. >> worrying about others what they may think of you? >> are you doing a good job, social anxiety versus worry. i think a healthy amount of worry, that helps you make sure that it's putting everything into this paragraph for that page. making sure it's coming out right even if you don't, you have books under your belt. >> host: in the new yorker in 2012 you were quoted as saying to be a good novelist for you, it's to fully inhabit one'sdelusions and get in to every cookie aspect of one's britishness. it's a handy survival strategy . >> i think what i like about my different books is that they are sort of allow me to express my ideas about the world, about myself. these different theories and i think writing is becoming a way of me to interpret the world formyself . you figure out how i feel about things, how i feel about vital systems, politics, people and so that license is very important for me. not being tied to expectations, following my own inclinations and just because writing about an elevator inspector sounds like a bad idea, can you make it work? and can you sell it to the reader at the same time you're selling it to yourself? sothe delusion that you have something to say , the delusion that your work is worthy of being read by others i think is useful for being an artist. >> host: where did the germ of the idea for "the intuitionist" come from? were you on an elevator, do you see an inspector? >> guest: in the book that everyone hated, i figured -- >> host: what was that book by the way? >> guest: remember gary coleman, the teenage little black boy? a tv critic at the time and he was writing about black imagery in pop culture so i figured i'll write a novel about a gary coleman child star, grows up and has misadventures. and it seemed like a great idea to me. in the novel he's on a sitcom called i'm moving in. he was getting adopted by rich white people. [laughter] so i'm moving in, for a bit of realism and throughout the book, everyone hated it. so i think i became a writer then. i was going to get a real job, become a lawyer or something like that but i was writing this book and maybe people will like it, maybe they won't but i'll learn to write by the end of it. but i figured people like plots, maybe i will have a plot driven book . so i wrote a lot of detective novels and a lot of suspense and i thought i was watching 2020 as ioften do in those days, in my 20s . in the 1990s and there was a piece on the hidden dangers of escalators. apparently if you don't repair escalators they can detach from the sides and lose a tow, it's a terrible thing obviously. and they had an escalator expend inspector that the interview. and i said that's a random job and then growing up in new yorkalways see , there is a law, not necessarily enforced anymore but the elevator inspector's sign a certificate, everything here, everything's fine and they come once a year to your work or your school and suddenly you see that the elevator inspector has been there. wouldn't it be cool if an elevator inspector had to become an inspector , tosolve a criminal case ? ha, funny, postmodern detective story so i went to the library to see what skills and elevator inspector would bring to a criminal case and of course the answer was none because there elevator inspectors so it became more like a murder mystery but solving the mystery of a fallen elevator and i made up a culture for elevator inspectors, i figured they are conservative and possessive, that became the empiricists who does it the right way, the intuition us who are sort of aggressive and that duality plays out in the book in different ways. the elevator inspectors school, elevator inspector philosophies and really i was trying to teach myself how to write. i haven't had a female protagonist before so i had a female protagonist. i didn't have a book that had a plot for linear momentum so it was trying to do that and then i took it in this weird whimsical idea of an elevator inspectorsolving a criminal case and following through to its execution . so, the captain. >> prior to starting this interview, you look at your books here on the table and said tory for the clunkers that you had to read. what do you consider to be a clunker? >> i think they're all pretty good but hopefully if you do something for a long time you get better at it. and you know, certain books i'll think about and i wonder why did i use so many asked kids? wasn't there a simpler way of saying that? maybe that book i could lose a page or two here or there but hopefully, you become a better writer and do things in a more efficient way. hopefully you get better and better and then obviously you plateau and start sucking but hopefully i'm still in the getting better face and getting better at my job, taking it out to the next level. >> does i'm moving in still exist? >> guest: the manuscript is there. for a while i thought maybe i'll strip mine it for similes or something but it's really terrible and the energy would take up, my now very high standards. so it's in my drawer and if my children have a gambling debt, they can sell it for some money 30 years from now. make some quick cash. pawnbroker. >> so twyla may watson is one of your female protagonists. corot is another, what's the reason to write for a woman's point of view? >> i think women exist and i think some of them tell different stories, you should get different points of view so it's part of that. i have this thing about male protagonists for this book so which seemed sort of wise to mix it up. i think if you know how to do something, why do it? so emma may watson, i couldn't take my hipster new york voice, that was in my firstnovel . i was forced to, i chose a third personnarrator . a female protagonist, which i hadn't done before and by doing it i could hopefully become a better writer. which i had done before. and then before i had a few female narrators in rome,, there's a famous narrative written by harry jacobs called instance in the life of a slave girl, he writes about how when the slave girl becomes a slave woman, they grow into much more terrible form of slavery. you now praise your masters desires which you didn't before. of course it's about more babies, that means more slaves, more property if you're a master. that predicament with female slaves , you were the other point. sometimes i'm trying to mix it up, sometimes i'm trying to learn something and you know, keep the challenges going. >> what was your favorite ones right? >> guest: i think you know, this book was hard to write because i was broke. this book is hard to write because i was broke and i was depressed . there are different challenges and then when you finish you can look back and say oh, it was pretty terrible but it was a special time in my life so i think with the noble hustle, perhaps that was the audience but bob noble hustle was one of the most fun to write. it's a humor book taking off from a trip i took to the world series of poker. i just tried to cram as many jokes as i could in their area there's a journalistic framework, so there's linear movement.i really was trying to cram as many weird jokes and bit of myself into it. and it was really fun. i think it started from a journalistic assignment, there was a magnet call grant land which was pop-culture in sports for a couple years and they had some great writing and they called me up to see if i wanted to write about the world series. the world series of poker and i was like i don't want to go to vegas, is really hot but then i said what if we are paying you for the article, we paid your entrance fee and you got to go to the world series? i'll do that. but i do actually know how to play tournament poker so i started cramming. i would drop my daughter off at school . and the other parents would say what are you up to? i'm going to atlantic city to train or a poker tournament so i got on the bus to atlantic city and gamble and come back. and then i got to the world series and you know, i stayed at home mostly, for the first time i had to get out of my comfort zone and basically provide this area around the account.so get out of the comfort zone, learn how to play poker so i wouldn't embarrass myself, my family and new york at the world series of poker. and then when i was writing it, i was writing an article and when you write a novel, write a joke, you make yourself laugh, you see it before someone else read it and you feel stupid backing your own jokes. but with writing in a serial way or like dickens did back in the bay and those that isd, you get that immediate response and people like it and i did and it gave me energy to keepgoing so it was a very sort of special writing experience. in terms of the material , in terms of how it came to be so i look upon that six months very fondly. >> host: i'mgoing to paraphrase the first line of that book. i got to wear sunglasses inside. it was good for me because i'm half blood english . >> guest: for years i've been told i have a good poker face and i realized that because i was half dead inside. which people mistake for the by half mask of a good poker player. my national lack ofaspect was for once an asset . in certain situations. you want me to unpack half dead? >> host: i'll post you in our therapy sessions a little bit. you do write about having a mask and you do write about the fact that you are semi-impressed, hermetic when you are writing and that you are adifferent person . is that important, is that depression important to your writing? >> i think it partly is impartially i think it's good to have a healthy joking relationship with the things you do in life whether it's art or anything else. so not taking myself too seriously, i think is important. i think in terms of sharing how i feel about my work with other people, this design is important. as far as i know, they're just sort of crawling along the pavement trying to write the pages in hand and in so no one gets an arcade and we can keep doing what we like to do. so a lot of times writing is unpleasant. it must be great when you figure out a new sentence ora character or figure out a problem you've been working on but for me , i'm not taking it too seriously and i think the character of the depressive shot in i think is fun to play and it's partially true and also is also sort of a default setting in my public relations. >> host: what was the easiest book to write? >> guest: they're all pretty hard, i have to say. i'm going to go with the shorter ones. the apex ispretty short, the book i'm working on now is pretty short . [laughter] so short isn't easy but it tends to not prolong the agony of a 400 pager. >> host: when you won the pulitzer at the national book award, praised by president obama, did that put a lot of pressure on the next book? >> guest: there's always pressure i think, imposed by myself because i wanted to be good, i want to be something different and i want to coast so fortunately when i get good news, and i'm in the middle of something, i can, it will be good and that i start work the next day and it's like this kind of sucks and it's terrible, it's a terrible job so it's always hard, if it wasn't hard it would be worth doing in the pressure is self-imposed but it's always been there whether it's learning how to write a book, or, it better not be broke, there's always some kind of weird pressure on you. whether it's things are going well or are going well. >> good afternoon and welcome to book tv on c-span2. this is our monthly index program and this entire year we are doing a special action in addition with best-selling action authors. and this month, our author is best-selling author, pulitzer prize winner colson whitehead. here's a list of his books, we've referred to several of them through the first half hour iwant to give you a list , "the intuitionist" is his first book in 1998, johnhenry days, 2001, the colossus of new york, 2003 . apex heights in 2006, "sag harbor" 2009. zone one about the zombies, 2011. the noble hustle which we talked about a little bit, a nonfiction book in 2014 and of course , his most recent, the underground railroad, which won the pulitzer prize, national book award, etc. we wanted to have your participation this afternoon in our conversation, here's how you can participate. 222-748-8200, if you live in the eastern central time zones, 202, 748-8201. to those of you in the mountain and pacific time zones. we have social media sites that you can also contact colson whitehead if you have a question or a comment we've got facebook, twitter, instagram , at book tv is the handle you need to remember and here is our email address as well. book tv at c-span.org. we will take those calls in just a few minutes. >> what is the first line that you wrote in underground railroad? what are the first words you put to paper? >> it ended up being i think the opening line of the first time these were approached core about winning north, she said no. >> i will always do an outline before i start working. i had to know the beginning and the end and so the last couple books i've known the last line of the book before i started writing and i'm writing sports. i had that with this book that first line i think came very quickly when i was ruminating and organizing the book and survived a horrible dating process to get into the book. >> what's the vetting process? >> you write something and it's a genius and two days later, that was really rough i don't know why i did it that way. and in this case, the first line was durable and sturdy. nothing spoke about the koran, not one sentence with me. >> from the underground railroad, about grave robbers. in depth negro became a human being. only then was he the white man's. >> that is from a section that takes place in the early part of the 19th century, as a doctor who's going to medical school and the book, it takes sort of an eccentric route to american history. the main storyline takes place in the 1850s, that was my mental year on the books. that was my cut off or technology. and then there are sort of side stories in the book. that's for supporting cast in that section, doctor stevens meets later in his life is a young medical student in the 19th century, passionate about biology. he gives the cadavers up so there's a healthy trade in brave robbing. people would go and compete to find a fresh cadavers. there were gangs but they ransom each other at the same graveyard so he keeps himself very liberal in his musings and he's talking about prejudice in the 19th century and uses that despite racial prejudice, despite the aspersions upon black folks in america. ironically, when they use for his actions, these folks become equal. these deadbolts become elevated only in death. to a level of equality, so one of the many humbling moments in the book.>> did you know you are goingto write about that when you started ? >> i mentioned the outline, yes. i had all these states and i didn't know giorgio would be the start, living in florida or south carolina with a white supremacist state, a black utopia state which became indiana. and then i knew i wanted to have the opening be an overture of a slave, cora's grandmother, we followed up for six pages and follow it from the middle passage to the plantations and i figured i would look at typical slaves story and move on to story life, it seemed so short six-page chapters could be a way to open up a world to see where it can go. so i was writing a book and even though i did have a strong structure, the characters wereauditioning for those short biographical chapters, the doctor stevens , and in medical school. mabel, cora's mother gets hers and after a certain section i would think we should get them, after north carolina we need a husband and wife team who take cora in who's more interesting, martin or ethel. and 's upbringing brings to the book, i give him that sort of age, what can ethel bring to the book, i give her that stage so even though i do have a strong structure, it had to be open for that obviously by the process of where the book takes you and those short sections are very useful. in terms of getting voice to how the book was evolving. >> can you read the underground railroad as historical fiction? >> i think if you are well-versed in historical fiction and you know that each section didn't actually happen in 1850, i'm moving something from the late 19th century , i had the idea to make the underground railroad into something real, that was the idea i had on my couch. and so from the very inception, this fantastic element, not just for a historical novel. which means i can do a lot of different things in the book . how these different alternative america's, and i think all of the books power and successful conception comes from having a fantastic structure. but no, it was not a historical novel. i take many liberties and if my motto when i was writing a book was that i wouldn't stick to the facts but i would stickto the truth , the larger american truth. that's not bound by chronology, that actually happened but a different kind of connection, the reckoning that gives the reader my moving effort historical episodes around it. >> colson whitehead, did the rental plantation exists, you talk about. did you visit these places? >> the rental plantation where cora is raised and where she's enslaved is my own creation. in doing the research, i had the latitude to make my own plantation and i take it from pop culture, i think a lot of us have the idea of a vacation is really big, 100 slaves . but you could be one of three slaves and a small family farm. you could be on the big size plantation, you could be a domestic slave a townhouse in baltimore. so randall is my own creation. and it borrows from plantations and how they work but it serves my artistic needs. in terms of the visiting plantations, two thirds of the way through i figured let's be a real writer and do some research so i put in new orleans with my wife. and went to see two plantation tours. i got on the tour bus, i was the only black person on the tour bus. and we're going north and the tour guide is getting her spiel. and this is our river road that would take all the goods from north louisiana down to new orleans. and it was very complicated. owning a plantation was just sitting on your porch drinking mixed juleps. it was keeping track of the accounts, keeping track of the workers and once you bring in mixed juleps and the workers, obviously i'm not in a rigorously historically vigorous problem long. i went to two places. the whitney plantation which was a museum of the slave experience. it's great. so as a fiction writer, just feeling the atmosphere on my skin, the sounds of the insects. seeing the implements. and then getting names. they would describe how they had various exhibits to how much slaves were sold, when people came and for me, i'm writing down names and some of those names i got from whitney plantation are in the book. how much people were sold for, all that grim stuff and to get back on the bus, go to the next plantation, the old galley plantation which you probably seen in movies. beyoncc filmed the video there and sort of that stereotypical plantation. and you know, if you want to do an antebellum themed wedding, you can rent costumes and have a slavery themed wedding. they have hotel rooms and i'm not sure if it's still on the website, it says if you want to break free from hotel chains, you can stay here and so you know, writing a book about slavery and getting people's actual stories comes across early 21st century ironies about race and sort of the way we deal with race though nothing compares to the actual stories of slavery themselves. so it was a weird adventure and yes, i did go to plantations to research. >> the tour guide, the only african-american novel, the tour guide ignore you or spend too much time talking to you? >> guest: neither. i felt neither under the microscope or ignored. i think it's the same speech, two times a day, 30 times a year. they probably don't even think about it and they probably think this is a lot about how we think about slavery, we don't necessarily think about the state of the conditions for slaves . the complete vast array of dehumanizing apparatus, of slavery. we don't examine or our assumptions about what the cost of in terms of people's families, psychology so the same way you sort of serve i think a speech about louisiana plantation life. a lot of us sort of necessarily think about slavery in that sort of throwaway, that would give us an understanding of it. >> this fiction is new to us at c-span as well and became almost a month long read for a lot of colleagues to read the underground railroad. we'll read you one from a colleague in davenport who just finished your book and he wants to know about the five ads for slaves in the book. one is cora, are the other ones actual ads from newspapers? >> they are. the university of north carolina, they digitize runaway slave act. have a great digital archive and invited me to speak so i in a couple days i'm going down there and hopefully i can express my gratitude to their digital archive. so when a slave runs away, what do you do? you place an ad in the newspaper. and as a fiction writer, i like to figure out how people talk but it's competing with the tourists baseline runaway slave ads. they capture so much and so in so little space. the format is usually like $50, my slave bessie who ran away for no reason at all, why? she has a downcast expression . a burn on an arm from an accident, she had an accident last seen in that the city of edmonson farm, a black community so how do you get that burn? how come there's so many levels of denial in the? i decided to stick them in there. copyright laws being what they are, i just put them in there andalso , when i was doing the research, i was struck at, sort of a banal observation but you'd have to be a farmer or a slave master to open up the system. you can be a journalist working a newspaper, writing classified ads and you are upholding the slave system, the enterprise. you are part of a link in the chain that keeps the system going. you're a blacksmith and you make shackles but also you make the iron ribbons for the wheels or for the cars that are taking cotton to the markets. you're making nails for the houses or propping up these new slave economy towns so when i was researching, i ended up thinking about how fast the enterprise was and so a blacksmith in the classified ads down there, it brought the idea for broaden our id and the scope of the world of how fast the slave system was. >> host: you have a line here everyone is working foreli whitney . >> guest: the inventor of the cottongin. the slaves of course , ridgway was the antagonist in the book, the slave catcher, these as much a slave of the system as anyone in bondage. everyone is propping it up, everyone is caught in its insidious grip. >> host: did i miss readthis or is there a sympathetic aspect ? >> guest: i think hopefully recognize his humanity. i think i wanted a well-rounded, compelling antagonist for my formidable protagonists and i think you should see your self in the heroes, in the villains , that's what makes them 3-dimensional and recognizable. it makes them live . but he's a terrible person, had a terrible philosophy. but in the same way that when cora is revealing her flaws, you see her as a human being. when you see ridgway's moment of weakness, you recognize some self-deception in how he sees the world and if you can recognize that quality in your self, that's what makes fiction work. that what makes artwork, that recognition. >> host: when you teach a class, you've got several universities, what are two things you want your students to know >> guest: we have three months and so people can write three stories . do something different. if you teach a lot of undergrads, if you only write stories about girls in new jersey because you're an 18-year-old girl from new jersey, why not go crazy and write the story about a 22-year-old boy from pennsylvania? if you only write fantasy, try a realistic story and vice versa. you get three months to be some sympathetic or semi-sympathetic to a workshop or audience, try these different stories. if you always avoid the first-person voice, try it. why do you avoid it? maybe it works for you and you have some sort of trepidation about expressing yourself so that's one thing. you have three months to fail and then pick yourself up and try something different and use it. and then i think if you find an author that you really love, sometimes i'm teaching people who are going to be architects or engineers or bankers and those are the ones that study hard classes, and bring them to people like lori moore or junot diaz or cz packer or people whodon't necessarily read once they get out of school . if there's something you like, read everything by then and figure out why you are attracted to the work, what makes it compelling and then read a lot to find out what kind of writer you want to be and write a lot and find out what kind of writer you actually are, theyare two different things . just the inspiring voices that we encounter as we are finding our own voice. >> host: was it hard for you to write your antagonist as a white southerner? >> a little more, no more than having a elevator inspector, i don't know anything about elevator inspectors. i write him as a human being and i know people and you're always relying upon your own knowledge of yourself when you see other people. you speculate about how what makes other people operate. sort of a small collection of insights you have about humanity so if you have a big cast like "the underground railroad" does, if you have a small cast like "sag harbor", you are always finding yourself in different characters and finding a place where you are different and hopefully to what you know about yourself and other people, making characters were not like you come to life on thepage . >> host: another colleague at c-span's been reading all your books and tweeting it out, i think you retweeted him a couple times had questions from several books that i'm going to start with "the intuitionist". he wanted to know who was james?>> james fulton, the first time i think about it is when you write a book and it's not yours anymore and people have questions and i get them questions and so i remember when the book came out, i got invited to a college and someone asked me james fulton, obviously that's based on foucault and i said no, i just looked out the window in brooklyn. and it was the first name i saw. so james fulton is the inventor of the intuition's school of elevator inspection and the intuition is sort of steps into an elevator and divines what's wrong with it. it's like using the force and hopefully the elevator inspectors in your community go the right way but in my book, the intuition us is sort of a insurgent aggressive force. in the department of delegate elevator inspectors and james fulton is the man. with their philosophy. i grew up in the 80s and went to college in the 80s so that meant wars between the colonists and the multiculturalists. so it seems when i made my elevator inspector school, it would have that conservative and progressive war play out. so these were conservatives in the intuition us are those multiculturalists fighting the establishment. and james fulton comes up with the sacred text of intuition is him. at this point either my book sounds good or bad. so let's go back to your first question. either this book sounds cool at this point or sounds totally stupid. so. [laughter] i'm re-creating my own way, my feelings when i was writing the book and perhaps my book is not so great. >> host: i literally have no idea what you just said but i'm sure the audience follow you closely. is "sag harbor" a real place? >> guest: that's a real place on the tip of long island. the hamptons is the community for the last couple decades and the town of "sag harbor" is nestled in the more famous hamptons, southhampton and it's an old whaling town mentioned inmoby dick . a lot of people went from that part of long island sound into connecticut and starting in their 30s and 40s there were african-american doctors, lawyers, teachers we started going out there, getting summer places. they made some money and started a community. it was a safe place to go, bring your kids, heard by word-of-mouth. people inharlem are going in the 30s and 40s, there tell their cousin in new jersey and start coming . so my mom started going out there in the 40s, i spent my summers out there. grew up in the city but we would go out there every summer for college so "sag harbor" the book is based on my adventures in sag harbor the town. >> host: and here you write was there anything worse than a bigot playing keep away with your stuff? a dreary rehearsal for adulthood. >> guest: the main character benji is 15 and you know, he's doing a lot of the identity formation. he's figuring out where he is in his community, where he fits in his identity. he's a black kid who likes bauhaus and susie and the banshees, is it okay to like run dmc or candy like both? he's figuring out what it's like to be a person and part of that, a lot of that is sort of this weird identity battle, continuing as you get older. kind of psychological warfare that you are engaged in with your community and the world because when you're a teenager, you wake up and you're an individual bougie is an upscale, middle-class pretension. and it means you've made it, sometimes it's anxiety about making it. it's also embracing the fact that you're a little bit posh. >> host: back to "sag harbor". getting rid of your sad house, that was unforgivable. like sellingyour kids off to the circus .you still have your sag house? >> guest: my mom is living out there since the 90s. she owns it is the bottom line what's lovely about the p