. >> but then do you think we could go to saul bellow, john updike and others, now those two dead and say if we could reach them today did you think that there was a... something was just beyond your grasp? that you knew was there? because you could look at this and say it's really, really good. but there's something. there's something that i only can see, probably. >> i'm sure they would both say yes. if you could do that sort of mary baker eddy think, sort of down or up. >> rose: wherever they are. >> wherever. i'm sure they would say... saul bellow would say, yes, there's something just beyond the adventures of augie march or herzog and i'm sure john updike would say somewhere beyond beck or... >> rose: are they the only people that would get it because it takes... in other words, you only will know what it is that's just beyond your grasp? >> i think you're saying something about the novel. novel's are messy and inseparable from the personalities of the people who write them and i doubt if such a thing as a perfect novel could exist. a perfect lyric poem, a sonnet, yes. >> rose: w

the saul bellow, the herzog, the zuckerman and phillip roth, the updike "rabbit" character.en we were on the set i... i did have that idea of this would be an interesting character as those authors... bellow did it with herzog but rabbit and zuckerman, what would happen if you saw this guy ten years later, where would he be? and that's interesting to me. i... i'm curious. i don't even know. but i'm curious. >> rose: as to where he might be going. what is the most important thing that's informed screen writing for you. writing scripts. >> well i tend not to... i don't outline or i don't... i tend not to approach scripts as stories stories. the stories generally come from the characters. usually i have an idea of a person or a relationship or... or in some case a family with "the squid and the whale" and it was divorce. and i sort of start there and i try to let it build out from there. it takes a longer time to write them for reason. but i find i work best that way. i've tried to do it the other way where i have... i beat out the plot and i try to hit each beat and go that wa

but -- but someone like saul bellow, for example. you could say that there is a political side to his character, although not directly so, but, you know, not working in government. he is still alive and had a very large, larger than this biography written about him, so and -- so in 150 years, whatever, you know. part of -- part of the sort of heft of a book like this too is it has to do with creating a kind of record, much -- forgetting the index, but the notes are there for other people who want to write their own books, to check me out, or something like that. c-span: you've got 100 pages of notes at least. >> guest: yes. yeah, yeah, yeah. and i always consider it two books. there's the book -- there's the notes for the people who are interested in that, and then there is the text that i don't want to interrupt the story, in a sense, with the material for the notes. c-span: but how important was nathaniel hawthorne in the 1850s in the country? how many people would know who he was? >> guest: i think a number of people -- people wer