. >> host: joyce carol oates, do you have any idea how many books you've sold? >> guest: no, i don't have idea. >> host: do you have any idea how many awards you've won? >> guest: no. i don't sit around counting i them. i don't. >> host: how do you write? what's your writing process? >> guest: i try to write very early in the morning, and ini basically love to write. to me, it's very exciting. rig i feel i'm organizing thoughts that may be incoherent andt chaotic and funneling them, and i like to create dramatic scenes. that novel has a lot of exposition and history, but basically each chapter is a dramatic scene, and often it's a conversation between people and something really happens, and at the end of the chapter, there's an ending. and then there's something else, and there's a beginning. and when the novel ends, it really ends. there's a resolution, and the mystery is solved in the last pages. >> host: has your writing changed in the last 40 years? >> guest: my writing's changed a lot. when i first began writing, i had long paragraphs of narrative expositi

joyce carol oates is the author. ms. es, we don't often have novelists on booktv on c-span, but this is historical fiction in a sense, isn't it? >> guest: oh, yes. >> host: how so? >> guest: well, i did a tremendous amount of research, and that was the most pleasant part of the writing intore princeton and vicinity in the years 1905 and '6 when woodrowix wilson was president of princeton university. >> host: what was princeton like at that time? >> guest: at that time, it's a kind offal gore callf a representation of affluent, white christian america generally, and princeton is sort of an exemplary -- and woodrow wilson has a cameo in your booki doesn't he? >> guest: well, a principal character. he's in much of the novel. in a sense it's about woodrow wilson. he's confronted by a demon. he's tempted -- i shouldn't say what happens, but he behaves quite nobly in the novel. but he does represent many of the shortcomings of people of m his time such as he was af th racist, and he was a sexist and other -- probably his most p

joyce carol oets was -- >> rose: but she's infamous for how prolific she is. >> famous. (laughs) oates. >> rose: (laughs) i stand corrected. you're right. >> renown. renown. that covers just about everything. >> rose: how about well known? >> well known exs extremely good. you can be well known for just about everything. so, yes, it's not that fast, really, it just builds up and they don't seem to go out of print so it looks like a lot on the shelf. >> rose: now there's this idea. i had a conversation this week because of an interview i was doing with the "time" magazine writer who has written about how people, he believes, and he would cite. the picasso is one and einstein maybe is another are creative and that creative abilities grow because the more they learn about brain science they believe that there's a regeneration that takes place and when you marry that experience it adds to your creativity as you get older. are you buying this? >> i'm certainly liking it. buying it and liking it aren't always quite the same but i'll go along that. >> rose: but you're at the height of your po