one from brenda wineapple about the job of recovering in a biography. and i thought now of course everybody is doing that in a certain way that men would not quite say that. it's about recovering something and similarly phyllis rose's books saying women go to these women's lives or two men's lives to or to married lives to find out how to live. we are researching how to live but again i don't think most male writers would say that. why are you studying its? i want to know how to live. it's a little to what? i don't know. >> i would say that is why we can't go into the female lives. of course the point of being a writer is to travel imaginative leg across genders and history but you have to acknowledge that there is going to be a sexual charge. if you you are i write about colin it there is no way we can do it the way judith thurmond did. what i'm really doing is saying what about him is like me? how can he train a search light into the dark that i might not otherwise want to look at its? if i'm writing first i would have to call it fiction and secondly

this is some of what brenda wineapple has in mind. how you do it is another and more complicated matter and i will not try to get into that this morning, but bringing your subject back to life is a great and worthy goal. if i might quickly wrap up, to as rap hound's advice to make it new, we might also want to at and make it live again. thanks. [applause] >> we seem to be running a little early so we have time for questions. >> not a question, huge appreciation for you and what you just said. thank you very much. >> that is sweet. [applause] >> i am scooping myself the question i want to ask you in a session next weekend but why not seize the moment? first time i ever saw you and matt you was in 2003 in boston, mass. on the 200th birth day of ralph waldo emerson of whom you have written a marvelous book but it was a gathering of scholars, historians, critics, riders, told transcendental gained appreciating emerson from a , told transcendental gained appreciating emerson from a whole variety of angles and use the up in the middle of th