as barbara said, i got inspired by the first real writer i ever knew, walker percy. and i do hope his books are still here because i will tell you that i marvel at his philosophical grace and his understanding what. every time i pull down the copies of the moviegoer or the last gentleman from my cells. you know, he was the uncle of my best friend, a guy named tom cowan. so when were young we used to go across to new orleans and go fishing and turtle hunting and waterskiing at uncle walker's house. nobody quite knew what uncle walker did. i wanted to ask his daughter, and, what does your dad do? he is at home all day. she said well, he was a doctor but he never practiced. that's why he was called dr. percy in town. but he stayed at home and wrote. only a few years later, after the moviegoer had finally become famous, that i realized that being a writer was something you could actually do for a living, just like being a doctor or an engineer or a fisherman or anything else. so i said that's really cool and as barbara said i was growing up in new orleans. i started hunt

walker percy would save the gentleman with a magnetometer to take away all of your quirks and disability and being borderline asperger's or whatever. i'm not sure we would want those devices because then we wouldn't have great leaders and great heroes. thank you. [applause] >> okey another wonderful evening. if people will help us for the pitchers, please call and line of to my left here walter isaacson will sign copies of his books. thanks for coming. >> for more information about walter isaacson, ceo of the aspen institute, visit aspeninstitute.org. >>> next, new york staff writer and editor hendrik hertzberg talks about barack obama's 2008 presidential campaign. the longest and most expensive in u.s. history. this event was hosted by politics and prose bookstore in washington, d.c.. >> i want to thank you for coming. i am karlan, one of the owners of politics and prose, and i want to especially welcome hendrik hertzberg to light. we've been pleased to follow doorsteps from speechwriter to president for president carter to the new republic to the new yorker where your talk of town piec

soaking up the atmosphere of tennessee williams and william faulkner but he was also there until walker percy's death. but then before he went off to be a rhodes scholar the summer before, he was still on his great writer mission and offered a job as a summer intern by "the washington post" and he turned it down. he turned it down to become a stevedore on a derrick barge on the mississippi and the reason this was part of his great writer quest he felt that doing so he could encounter so many crews and colorful characters that he could write a novel that would be a serious contender to huckleberry finn. [laughter] mark twain was the one trying to knock down. [laughter] welcome still it didn't happen. in his desk drawer he says there lies an manuscript still unfinished about the happenings on a derrick barge on the mississippi. there is a captain cone is his name and i think as we have walter here this evening we ought to commit if he would just get out that manuscript and polish it off we will come to hear you've read from your book. i feel his new book american sketches is about a personal ques