Transcripts For CSPAN2 Casey Cep Furious Hours 20240714

Magic and we are excited to have casey cep in celebration of dirks the last trial of harper lee. This is her first book but casey this not her first thing she has given to us write. She has been writing for the the new yorker, the new yorkw york times for many years now, and many of you probably noticed because youre but in all of work she has this super home able to make every detail fascinating and crystal clear. In this one casey works to layout two intertwine can mysteries, one in the story of reverend Willy Maxwell and his trials and the other in the unissued work of a beloved literary market and she has contagious dedication to seeing them through and doing them as much justice as possible. Trust me, and also every person i think who works in this book store in this room, this is a book that you actually cannot put down and i mean it seriously. Im about 20 pages from the end and very sad im not reading it. Casey, we are so excited to have you tonight. Thank you so much for coming. In conversation with casey today is patrick keith, pat is a staffer for the the new yorker. [applause] awe author of three books. And patrick, thank you so much for joining us. Just an fyi, well be having a signing after this so stick around afterwards and grab a copy of the book. Thank you for coming. On to our people. [cheers and applause] [inaudible conversations] thank you for that kind introduction and thank you all for coming out this evening. Its a huge pleasure to be here to talk but thus amazing book. Something that struck me as a fellow writer and envious fellow writer is that in some ways its a book about a failure. Its a book pout an extraordinary story and an extraordinary writer who failed to bring it home, and at the same time its kind of a triumph in the sense that all these years later, another extraordinary writer does succeed in bringing it home, which is remarkable in and of itself but also kind of audacious when you think about it, and a number of places the book you get this kind of wonderful scenario, familiar perhaps to some of the reporters out there, which is that somebody kind of alights in a strange land with a notebook, and tries to pursue story, and figure out how to report it and how to tell it. And this happens with different people at different times. And also happened with you. And i wonder if you could tell us how it was that you first came to alabama and to this story, and what gave you the hubris to think you would go where do this kind of thing and from the outset. To take this book that harper lee couldnt write and write so it beautifully yourself. Gosh, thats like 100 questions and ill just spend the next 30 minutes with every one of them. The first thing to say it wasnt clear me she hadnt werent it, and its certainly the case that a lot of people very close to harper lee and if you had the chance to read the book they gaterred some of their speculation and intelligence might be too strong a word put a lot of people who knew her think she wrote it and chose not to publish it. So there was this kind of texture that mystery of, well, did she write it or not, and if show wrote it, how much did she write and what did she do with what she wrote ask those are all possibles and a factorial down the road of, what might there be to find . So, it wasnt clear from the outset i was trying to do something she hadnt. Although it was clear to me the book i was going to put together would we quite different from whatever she might havent written because i knew she would be in. Much the same way i didnt want to be in my book, theres no way the reverend by harper lee has a harper leelike figure going in it reporting the story. Almost certainly because she was so private and because she had such a strong notion 0 about the identity of the artist standing outside of their workings she was almost certainly never going to be in the become. So even though we found a full manuscript, and day after day i was both excited and terrified with the possible. Ity. I dont believe it would have done as well if had come out two or three months ago. Just going cut me loose or how of the book had she written for mine to be null and void . So i thought but it, although truly no one would be more excited to read that manuscript than i would be, and i think it would still be a place for the become i wrote. On the one hand shed had access to more sources than i did. Earned she is a huge part of the book and i think that the kind of unfinishedness of her story and chimes with the unfinishedness of the others. The original crime story at the heart of the book is quite strength and involve theyre not all homicides so there are five if not six deaths attributed to reverend maxwell but no cause of death was ever determined so theyre unfinished cases in the sense they were unsolved and no one was held responsible, and same thing when wrote write ought liberal politician in the degree south, very up finished story. Its still going on in alabama that people are fighting for equal and justice. So and i dont all of lifefuls that way. Where do you ever have a complete story . Maybe if youre doing some geologic project that ended ten million years ago and you can say it end it, otherwise aid difficult and messy to know where it starts and stops. You wrote about a political situation, some would say, unfinished. Unsolved and up resolved. What but you . Going to use the Irish Language thrown at patrick, your wee little note book. You can wait a little longer. But tell about the beginning. Had you known. I dodged the you donalded the softball. Sorry. I was aiming for the stands. So the low isstick cal how did i find logistical, how did i find the story, i was a huge harper lee fan and i looked exactly like the actress who plays scout in the film and i just immediately overidentified with that character and my dad is not a lawyer bit was daddys ogirl a tom buoy and a nerd and that book was written for me. Always wanted to see monroeville and i love to drive but never made it to this up to where harp are lee was born and raised, and not that the novel is purely auto pie graphical but autobiographical but the student she was born in is for 50 years harper lee said im never publishing another book and then often announced in her eights in that she is publishing this book and her older sister, who had been her caretaker and Business Manager has died a few months before that, and all these questions about the providence of the manuscript and her ability to consent to publication. With a big scrum of reporters i went down and was looking into that book when i fount out about these book she tried to write, and it was interesting and strange and given a thousand years i would never have guessed it was what happenner lee was up to after to kill a mockingbird and the miami were still alive and involve the original crime case and music to a reporters ears, nobody tried write the book because they thought harper lee was going to do it. She had been squatting on the store for 40 years and everybody would say the voodoo preacher but harper lee has her name all over it. And it seemed like there was a kind of sweet spot between the possibility of her having written it and the opportunity to write a book that included her work as well. In terms of that idea, the reporter arrives in town and is not a native. I didnt bring a foot locker full of food. Theres a wonderful moment where she shows up in kansas, having provisioned for what he initially a short trip with a foot locker full of food. What is it . What was in it . Caviar. Presumably everything he couldnt find in kansas. Host and the the stay was longer than anticipated and he ran out. I happily lived in waffle house and the Great Southern specialties i brought no provisions. Did you go knowing i just wonder about the process of you this sort of your own sense there might be a book here and then also your sense that it was book you could report and write. The book is so steeped in the envy will come through again here a sense of the place. And i know, having tried to do that sort of thing myself, thats earned. It takes considerable work. Over over [overlapping speakers] what was that process like . I had never been to alabama before i went to report that story. And i went and i loved monroeville, and dare i say i made friends right away, and i felt like even though he hadnt been there i understood the dynamics of a mall town. Very much like where id grown up and the kind of parochialisms and regionalisms and felt familiar to me, and i was really energize buyed by that original reporting and i admired her, and wanted to know more, and this other okay was interesting and you had at resistance to the idea of the true crime portion of the book. I was totally fascinated by the lawyer. This book is a trip and the first book is about the reverend accused of the murders and the second third is the mother defend it them and then defended the vigilante who murdered him and then the their part is harper lee. I am interested in that attorney and interested in people who stay in a place that would rather not have them, and in that way tom felt like a familiar character and wanted to know the ways his ambition morphed and the same thing for harper lee. She lived a lot of her adult live in manhattan but maintained this lifelong connection to alabama and for a woman of her means and her politics and her kind of cosmo poll continue verve ill pause slightly. One of her god sons is here so through might be people in room who i know her better than i do so i tread lightly in my characterizations of something i never somebody i never met she could have been a manhattannite but instead she went home every year to alabama city wanted to understand. That the reverend was a tantalizing character to write about and im interested in rural religion and superstitions and how people make sense of the world around them, particularly when its defies explanation or conditioning. So felt like between the three of them, more than enough for a book. I would get to do different kinds of writing, too, and there was an initial question for me and this is the kind of david grand rule, was there enough stuff, enough people and people who had lived through this and archives in he local papers and things but i waited until i could get autopsies and birth certificates and death certificates made sure the initial factfinding checked out some some Court Documents turned up and insurance documents from the civil cases and fell like i had enough facts and the same thing for harper lee. She was still alive when i started the become. I didnt get to toe interview here. Did you fly. Yes. Was one of many reporters reporo win to monroeville only to be turn aim from the armed guard who has taken up his post. The i did get to know friends and family of hers and that was meaningful and useful, but the coincidence of timing was some of the folks were alarmed by watchman and worried abouter in that sense, and then after she died in 2016, another wave of folks who decided to talk to me because they felt it ended with her dearth and wanted to talk but their friend and make sure that there was a rich and complicate version of her in the world, even if that meant revealing things that might have been embaring to her during her liveike. A great quote about how between the process of reporting and writing, is i think what called an abyss. So youre there, doing the reporting. You hinted at the view, of the book, and i just wonder at what point you roughed the notion of three books arrived the notion of three books and each one no the individual. I were there some consider some kind of complicated Division Problem or calculus no, came to me that way and seemed obvious. A kind of elegant chronology to that because the rev rep was bornin 1925, dies in 1977. As far as the poock i concerned, this isnt a piler for you because this reveal the prologue but the book then hand off to the attorney who is climb maced inster of 77 and 78 so the strike. Plant tee and the become store and things like that but immediately he hands its off to harper lee who we follow forward to 2016. So that chronology was underlying the three character sections. One thing i was fascinated by is that i mean well get into the many, many, many possible reasons why harper lee failed to finish this become this book or any other subsequent to mockingbird but one of the reasons seems to be one thing she struggled with was writing about the rev friend a way that felled reverend in a way that felt intimate or granular enough to meet her standards, and part of that seems to have been a function of the way in which the lives of africanamericans were recorded, the kind of paper trail that would have been available to her at that time for you, coming along, and trying to write about the reverend, were there similar did you find yourself confronting similar challenges or how did you deal with them . Sure. Of course i did and tried to be conspicuous in the notes and a lot of instances youre relying on oral history where you want to know where tom radny or harper lee worshiped as a kid and you can go to their church and itsic motor store and still worshiping every sunday, and the rural churches dont exist. They torn down. And theyre not brick churches and maybe its been converted into a house and you can get an old town map and figure out where exactly it was located, but even the architectural history is harder to come by in some instances, and so you rely on oral history and in the case of official documents, several of the local knubles had, quote, negro sections and some of those early wpa history goes into the lives of black sharecroppers. A great coincidence of gee geography, and this book is set in in alabama and Theodore Rosen garden, that tremendous oral history is a life of a sharecropper is in the county because thats where the communist uprising was. So between that and ag and walker evans, writing about a similar time but across the state and mostly white share cbpcroper but theres some material to draw on and the wpa files have some of what life was like then. A lot over the facts in the reverend section are hard on and youd hear from one person and have them stretch out a sense of what he pattern of life was like but for harper lee you can ask ten people who lived on he greet they all and remember her father was the editor so you go and can say what was in her Sisters Birthday Party when she turned nine, and that is in strong contrast to the reverend where the nuts and bolts of his life you get his Army Service Record are birth certificate, marriage certificates, sometimes you can find a tax bill or mortgage deed but the official paper worm heeds up in the criminal trial and the civil litigation. Think in instances where theres real gaps i tried to be conspicuous and talk about how history is formed and im club the section with harper lee i can use her as a way to talk about the decisions any true crime writer makes but victims and perpetrators and characterization, and all dependent on who cooperates and who gives over materials. So i think the pest we can do sometimes and cant do a full portrait of everyone, is to talk about why. And not fudge or invent details where they dont exist. But make it explicit. You did that effectively and not putting yourself in the text of the book. Didnt wang to talk pout the time i was in the rockford courthouse and i got locked in the room of the records. The recordkeeping in the county could really yes, sure. The jive dont net the nuts and bolts of that or how much i cost for photocopies in alabama and luther strength was attorney general and told me to get the heck out of alabama. They dont make into it the book. This issue of dream. Theres a wonderful issue of true crime and theres a wonderful section issue did not know dish didnt fully grasp the chronology but having written watchman in i think it took two months yeah. I youve want to feel bad dish know hes a reputation as a one hit wonder. Called it monday with maurice in the book. He agent was morice and she showed up every monday with 15 new pages and it was a draft. Didnt go to prison that way. She had this period of tremendous productivity. So she does that, which is a land speed record, and then writes to kill a mockingbird, and turns the book in, and theres this period of time, as the book goes through the process of getting ready for publication, during which she is looking for a job at that honest her old friend truman capito says im going kansas and needed a research acity is stand and offer her almost the same amount as she made from mockingbird. She needs the cash. The duet of these two presents which is wonderful. So they go off together before mock bird comes out mockingbird comes out and then eventually having done the initial reporting, capote is not ready to finish in cold blood yet and at which pound to kill a mockingbird come outs and is this massive success. And it goes back and forth. During the interlude when theyre in kansas you describe how intimately involved lee was in the reporting and actually the assembly of the scenes and characterization to a point where she hands this 100 some odd paged detailed outline to capote and im thinking harper lee wrote in cold blood. She did write another book called in cold blood. Well. When i started the book i get these questions all the time. Did bligeing bird. Im glad its gone the other way. Did she write in cold blood. Its hyperbole in one direction or the other. Heres my question. The june a genre of literary true crime. You suggested that in cold blood was kind of changed the paradigm there, was one that lee ended up feeling uncomfortable with and another reason why she struggled to write the book that she wants to about the reverend, is that she, as you describe it, feels as though she has a certain distaste for the convention of the genre, uncomfortable describing the murders and feels theres something kind of sensationalist and exploitative about it and yet she is i wise enough to know there are commercial imperatives that she would have to do that. So she is stuck between what she knows she needs to do what she is unable to do. And i wondered how you felt as you embarked on this and dealt with the sim dill lamp same dilemma as a time when true crime is a genre and people will pick the book up not because theyre harper lee fans but because its thats why the river damming scene opens the book. Rathers, what on earth . Why are we filling a reservoir . Theres a little bit of must [overlapping speakers] i love it. Hopefully that just of course i was mindful of that. In the instance of this book, on the one hand the reverend was accused over killing family members for me maxwells and there are living descend dents of the women and people and widows and people very much alive who remember the victims in this book as living, breathing people, and the one was 16 when she was mooredded as biological siblings and devigilante who murdered the reverend is alive and related to her and there is a lot of griff and loss and mourning around the story and around the reverend himself. Some members of his pamly family believes he was innocent and his slayer never the general obligation you feel to treat your sources and subjects respectfully and carefully which i feel whether youre write bought tech company or Garbage Disposal company, i certainly felt with this book and the more people i met who had lived through this, and the people who were worried this sensational story would be somehow used to malign or misrepresent the community which is where the book has a lot in con with in cold blood. Pow you want to write about this as a representative episode in a certain place and time, but you also want to lift up all the other lives around it and all the people who experienced it, and so over and over didnt i felt myself again i felt myself entering into a emotional pacts with people how the book would try to be honest but also be respectful, and empathetic and the started as the true crime portion which is the fir third and there are bodies and people who were murdered and died, and thats one kind of challenge, but obviously with the writer as famous as harper lee, i met a lot of people who knew her well and loved and cherished her and didnt want to embarrass her so there was at fee hour youre going to represent our beloved friend or aunt or godmother or whatever, whatever the relationship was, and everybody in this book, everybody in any book, worries how they wail be represented, and thats not only in the genre of true crime its all nonfiction anytime you write but other people. So i felt it evenly throughout the three sections. But you werent stymied by it in the end. No. I mean, i believe in contracts and deadlines and that kind of thing. Poor David Haglund is here. Do believe in headlines. An editor to whom i owe something. The kind of useful thing you can do for readers is talk about that, and i was very lucky in the case of harper lee, i have a very necessary reason for bringing that up, and hopefully if youre a true crime fan and youre not in it for harper lee, what you get to do is sit with a writer as she makes those decisions and maybe if youre someone who delights in that genre and never thought but the kind of perspective choices a writer makes or descriptive choices a writer makes or how they assum bell documents and you assemble documents and you can learn out a genre you love. Fascinating. Just a couple more quick questions and then open it up for questions from all of you. Part of what i love about the book is the theres amazing asides which dont the imagine to not feel. Some of you who have not read the book are wondering why the reverend might have culled killed all this people, the answer to to extent appears to be insurance, and theres always the stuff but the history of insurance which is completely fascinating to me, and then also the any ideal reader. [overlapping speakers] im selling the book hard here. Come for the murder, stay for the detailed history of insurance. But voodoo as well, and i mean, the whole series of and also even just the concept of murder and when it was when it became a legal concept. Not one that initially was applied to the killing of native americans but i guess i wondered how you thought about those the introduction of all that kind of stuff felt very calibrated because those could have been the type of rabbit hole down one could fall and never emerge. How you but no that. Like the liker. Enough people in the room who have known me its just the way i talk. You start telling one story and then you have to explain somebodys great uncle to understand why the cousin maries and you veer around life and its how i heard people narrate their lives lives and, and how e story unfolds. If not, why not, and so why not write the way you talk, and i dont know how to do it otherwise. That is not to say that there arent like tremendous volumes behind any one of these kind of pockets of explanation or these informed by other research, and i think there its about getting the essence right and you do all the reading and interviews and its never going show up onetoone in the become or article, but you try as best you can to figure out the salient parts or the interesting parts, the delightful parts and thats you the writer going out into the world to fine it and sometimes youre in the physical world and lock howl the trees look or the bird sound at night and sometimes youre just reading a long history of hydroelectric power and how men it takes to build a dam or how far down the church bells can go and still sound like the shoreline. Just crequeing those kinds of things, and if youre lucky are you have enough time to do it. This is my first book and i loved having time to look for things i didnt know i was looking for, and have the third or fourth conversation with someone where they told me one story you would never have known to ask or the person you a had been told was dead and you had the time think, am i sure shes dead . Maybe shes still alive, and go looking for them. I think that its fun in the back to do it and imles mindful, im joking but its not a book for everyone. I think there are folks who just want plot and they dont want history or detail, and i one of my favorite passages in the book, talk about how you dont know what youre going to need, one chapter opens with the first miles an hour maxwell shelling peas and maybe some of you have done that. I grew up doing it so its not as if i didnt know how it felt or sounded to shell peas and ping them into a bowl but theres a little bit of description that follows that about the kind of texture of that kind of late summer in alabama and it comes from these tremendous letters that a naturalist wrote in the 19th 19th century and i read this whole volume of letters he wrote black to inning explained supposedly going look for snails on the Alabama River or something but made his way up and its just an observer and watched the mud diver and the possums and the insect life in late summer you read a book like that and you have the kind of sense of, this is what its like inalabama in caught how it sounds and what people see and this is how the summer evening feels and you can slow time in a book like this so just sit with a woman who is about to die and just doing the things she has done every summer before that and just tiny bit of humanity and how could you ever know you were looking for it. Just have to read the whole book that it a year and a half worth of letters home to england by a natural rhys. You make it sound easy. Its crazy we get paid to do this. Its fun and delightful and wonderful and i wish could i real the naturalist letters. I just. Last question from me. You have this is not the begun of your book tour and you have already done a swing through the south, and you briefly mentioned to me one pretty crazy story about an almost meet cute at a reading between people who are related to books who are involved can you tell us about the reception in alabama and what thats been like for you. Sure. I mention elfed anytime you write about people they have this unfortunate habit of going read what you write about them and you cant convince them otherwise. No. I have been very lucky so far. I tide the first week of my tour in alabama and i was extremely grateful to a lot of high brerans and archivists and folks who shared their stories or letters from hallway are lee or experiences harper lee and experiences with her and a lot of those people were old couldnt travel and i did stops where are monroeville where she was raid and montgomery where the archives were helpful and birmingham and truly people have heard me make this john about it was johnny cash. Ive been every, man. Just in alabama, getting started. Those are fun events and for the most part people its extremely greatfying. Im a creature of a place that i would have very high standards if someone were going write about where i were from, and i was gratifying to have people from alabama, sever generations book, feel like the book got it and that it felt leak the place theyll knew and the people they loved, and that it did joyce a story that theyd wanted to see in print or to a writer theyd always admired but never understood, and so the event patrick was references was an event in Alexander City where a relative oto reverends was, the vigilante was there who murdered her far and all of the kids and grandkids were there. So you get a a room like that, and i you gather in a room like that. And this is strange and sore did story, and sordid store and ways in which it feels not real and a southern gothic novel and they they lived this and lived it in tremendous by different ways so that was an important event to have so mayoral in the book process because it means i can carry that sent into the rooms like this where you may never go to a. M. Or see martin or meet a maxwell or radny or lee but theyre real people and their struggles are real and the poock hopefully makes them the book hopefully failses they would but ill school marmishly tell you theyre reel poo. Is a mike going around . Okay. Just shout them [inaudible] the glowing [inaudible] i thought aid here more about the case and im wondering, the reverend married the main witness in his trial. How did the husband die . The official bam bureau of Vital Statistics version or the version around the county. A wide wide discrepancy. The death certificate situation he died after 29 days in a va hospital in knew moany. People in the county think he was poisoned by the reverend. [inaudible] re married so, that said thats n kind of discrepancy between people have told me that some somebody told me it was it was antifreeze some someone else told me a specific voodoo person and he hear this and i request the death certificate and theres a story i said im like harper lee and didnt want to be in the become. Im in this book for one page and its the epilogue and tell you what feels like an important story about recover something documents and those documents involved a lot of harper lees reporting materials and i just died because she paid the same processing fee i did to get a copy of the death certificate because presumably she had been told the same thing had and went to find out what the official cause of death was, and what ive done readings even down in alabama, usually read this riff on some of the voodoo rumors bolt the reverend, and i thought for a while that they might have just been offered to me, the kind of young out of town reporter and people were just telling me they thought i wanted to hear but another interesting thing about harper lees time in town one of the most persistent things people said about the reverend and partly because in some voodoo theres black cart lore and said he could turn into a black cat if he needed to vanish quickly, and harper lee when she was in town, staying in a cabin on lake martin, and she adopted a stray cat which she called reverend maxwell. The rumors were sick lating at the time so i was circulating at the time and i was happy to know people werent pulling my leg and said to have voted in an election two years after he died and strange lights over this tombstone and here, there and everywhere and its like the story of the neighbor. I gathered some of those tremendous stories and superstitions and things, and the reason they had currency there is there were active voodoo and hoodoo communities and whether its love possessions and get off of jail possessions and some are just kind of homeopathic remedy and view die was an alternative system of health care for wheel would couldnt afford it or who for reason of racial segregation were not able to good to hospitals or doctors. So in the Life Insurance business theres a surprising turn and turned the reverend into a super villain like goldman sack and the Life Insurance industry was split tatetive and there have been settlements for africanamerican clients who were sold substandard policies and the reverend might have been a great villain but it was a villainous industry and there are lot of turns where theres just two sides to every story, but i hope you i met an ethnoabout tanist who claims he will book over all the autopsies again and see what he come. Up with. If you read the book and have a way to get in touch theres a lot of questions around lake martin how the reverend did it and the questions come from coroners as well as elect contributions. Electricians. Im thinking but [inaudible] is that part of alabama [inaudible] lends itself to that kind of story telling . Did you find that when you into views [inaudible] im going to lift them up as much as do alabama. Interesting that almost as little as harp heres recorded voice as tennyson and the did an interview in 1964 but she says this absurd thing how the south produces story teller inside way east 82nd street doesnt. She was living on east 82nd 82nd street when he said that but man she was drying a stinks but place of origin a distinction about place of origin. The talks how people have time to tell stories there and certainly my experience that i would go and visit someone for two or throw day thursday that i would pretend as if i had come for morning consecutive knee and theyre when you going visit . Id been there three days. You rent a house for who months and its like, youre leaving already . There was this time and i make a joke in the book how if you ask a question in alabama you either get no answer or you get a whole etiology for where the question began and i think its time. Its not capacity but willingness to share and i really delighted in that. But obviously every community has once you learn them, theyll talk to you, this is a tremendous writer for the no,er the new yorker and has gotten bean farmers to talk to him and different ways to access different communities and if were lukey we get them to open up in deep and meaningful ways. I neither take it personally nor take it to be indigenous to alabama. How about that. But ill tell you, my friend beccas here and did a tremendous opt of research for me and was a tremendous help, and god bless her she texted me one day and said had i heard that syria was going to be doing a murder in a small town in alabama and i about died and i thought talk on npr and it was a [inaudible] i carried on. None of it was mentioned people were calling from new york to talk to us about their lives and the story. And so i was just glad they found something on the other side of the state. Did i misunderstand from the radio that harper lee was trying to write a novel but the [inaudible] started oliver deliberately and con coconspicuously how she was doing journalism over the old farc erred kind and only wanted factions factions and sae reason she was strugglings because the couldnt find enough facts and she didnt try to write the kind of novelized version which makes sense she had met except for a few pieces of journalism and some in the newspaper and had mostly written fiction so makes sense but she did all of this reporting and gathered all of these documents and paid the Court Reporter a thousand dollars far coup of the transcript and got death sectors and went around town with a cassette recorder, recording interviews and type up notes as she had for capote with time and place of the interview and what somebody said so she was amassing the kind of material you need for a nonfiction project. Ill ask another. I can go all night. I have to change what i said about alabama because the truth is they didnt want me to leave. Heres question can you talk about the voice in this book, the narrative voice that actually runs through all three sections . I was trying to think about this. Its strange knowing you because strange . Well, not odd. Its not exactly your conversational voice. And there are places where you some is the kind of use of the vernacular and i feel it blends with this intense kind of resonant sense of place that runs throughout the book. I wonder how you thought about that when you thought about putting words on the page, who is this voice and does it have any relationship to lees voice . Yeah. Thats an interesting question. I absolutely. In everything she had saturate myself in everything she had written, everything she published and i mentioned that interview only because other than like the dixie chicks its the most repeated mp3 on my computer because i would have it playing to hear her and listen to the Rearview Mirror of her voice and think pout word choices choices and natural metaphors and that was more and more important when i got a her section. He think you need to be in the drivers seat put you need to kind of learn the pace of the road, and this was a road through alabama and i wanted to tabling the way that people there talk and the kinds of metaphors they use and talk about time and so my wee little notebook, what people said and i did read a ton of those wpa files and these heritage books of the local history and kind of make notes of different turns of phrase and that sort of business, and try to bring all of that in, and i think the other thing that happened is i was like 11 or 12 and i started going by my middle initial and made a list of resolution and one was serious above all things and thats been my writing credo. I think most odd is miami know me would si says hopefully funny and friendly and the book is serious and only occasionally gives over to humor ask thats just a product of now i sit town write and this is the task of writing and needs to be accessible. I gave up my initial to the book because of one favorite i encounters diane mcwho arer and she is a new yorker, used to live in new york but she wrote a tremendous history of the civil rights moment, the Birmingham Campaign and knew harper lee and i got in touch with her and knew but this alex city business, and she said, theres no other casey cep in the world, get rid of the n because no one will confuse you. And i got rid of it so the point of listen to alabamans i did it over and over again. So hopefully it sounds its talks the way they talk and walks the way they walk. I dont know. There are peoplinging a sends and beautiful ways of telling stories stories so its hard not to mimic. It works effectively. Anything you had to cut from the book. Wonderful question. I dont think my editor is here. Wonderful question to ask a writer. Im a lazy writer and rarely write more than need but the title comes from this talk that harper lee gave extremely odd things she hated to speak in public but agreed to give this talk in the 80s as favor to her sister and as evangelizing for her favorite alabama historian whose work had didnt out of print she is an had historian because his history of alabama, the bicentennial of alabama statehood, 1819 and his history of alabama stops when it became a state, oddsly,harper lee said he was 0 enenammor efforts the creek indians and he said i didnt know and probably no one as we all know, the creek nation came to an end in a futurous hours at the battle of Horseshoe Bend and i had read that talk and i weapon to the Horseshoe Bend battlefield, very near where the said when the was working than at the book and she stayed the Horse Shoe Bend motel in found, town and i was think can but the scenes and i knew how much she loved history and i read a lot about the creek names and i felt like for a story pout violence there needed to be a kind of archaeology of violence in the area, and of course obviously when youre writing about africanamerican lives in the deep south that includes the violence of jim crow and lavely but one layer before that its violence again Indigenous People and the relocation of the creeks and i managed to keep a tiny bit of that in the book and the title kind of chimes with that in a way that hopefully accentuates it but there were of hundred glorious words it the creek and then moved to the reverend and then the lawyer and then right out of the book. So some day, thats book on the creeks. But theres a tiny mention of them in there but a few curious words. A few curious words. What a great question. The only other thing that didnt make it in in category of arcana but i found this tremendous fact how the bison used to cross alabama to get to the salt licks of the execution love the kind of alabama people dont you dont realize how beautiful it is. One reason i knew i wanted to write about lake martin its tremendously beautiful and i only knew the kind of industrial cities of alabama and if you have read about the selma and montgomery and birmingham but beautiful nature in the state and i thought but the bison over and over again and i wanted wano have some sort of grandtour on state that was put upon and looked down upon and we were down there during the abortion ban and a lot of evil and ill in alabama still today and i thought but the bison over and over again and couldnt figure how to get them walking to the sea in the book so the bison and the creek indians. If the book war thousand pages they would be there, but theyre not. Is there ever a pound in which you were thinking of the an article didded grow into a book or always a book to you. Started as an article. And then the way you can sometimes relate to just write something for yourself, the last line of the article is about had to do with this problem of documents and the family of the lawyers, the last sentence of the article is the family is saying when harper lee didnt write the book, someone else well. Im like, why not me . That was conclusive and then felt like an imperative. Started as an article. As you were hearing stories and gathering facts were you compelled to write certain sections as you heard the stories or gather everything first and then write it. In my head, one reason i love to drive so i mostly drove back anding for from maryland to alabama and maryland to new york and i didnt drive from maryland to california but i drove around california looking for friends of harper lees there, and i can write a thousand or 1500 word another prose in my head and just kind of carry it around and tinker with it and figure out how to make it sound better and where it goes and that number never grew. Thought i might be able to write the whole book that way but i was writing little sections and things so when for instance read about the flooding of lake martin, this kind of opening scene of the reservation, the water slowly rising up and the moonshiners taking stills up and the watermelons flooding. That was in my head for a while and i thought, okay, thats where that be and bits and pieces like that. So sometimes theres a if i had been reading touch i would have read the opening passage of the harp are lee portion which is one our my favorite characters so sad she died at out bull she died before the book came out so never got to read herself in it. This woman Pittman Allen and she wrote herself into the book. No editing to be done. Just like this tour deforce arrived by fiat and doon made be in do mannedded to be in the opening section and sometimes youre club and you do meet someone who can make sense of their life or really bring to life a moment in time and they just kind our situate themselves. I think i tone know. You got to do all the research before you can write or write along the way . Or depends . This isnt about me, casey. But im looking for tips. Want to do it better next time. You need all the help you can get. Its true. Its true. I can write a thousand words a as a time in my head. Truman i one of my first jobs in journalism was a column and i signed up to write a column and used to try to write them while i was mowing the grass so i know how much i can anyplace there before i have to get off the lawnmower write i down. I have never heard of anybody doing this before. Thats funny. Never in the car. Theres that. [inaudible] actually composing in your head as you go. Not having kind of notificational ideas of heres where i notional idea. Theres a sentence that was the lead in my proposal because i didnt have to. Nobody dies in a funeral. I was kayaking around and gets off on a sand bar and wrote it down. Five words. Ill perform spoken word. [inaudible] [overlapping speakers] get a car for foes long, Great American road trips. And turn on the radio and see what happens. Other questions . What are you writing next . Interesting question. I see mr. Orwell is here and i dont know. What am i allowed to say, anything at all . More to come. More to come, good agent. Id be remiss if i didnt think edward and jeff and right and madeline and ruth and madeline and the number of people in is room who did something for this bookful you. You packed it and made a success and im so graftful to have you here and mypy i and my wife and writerly friends. Sometimes i pretend i dont like new york but to get to see you and celebrate with you but whats next . I promise people would say how are you going to do this, harper lie couldnt do it and instantly upon publishing this become it turned in, are you going to be harper lee again . So more to come. I cant say what but more to come. Did it come right away . It to dm under divine fiat and there was no struggle it just came to me. [laughter] if youve read the book you know her writing was only good if you suffer through. That was not mike my experienc. I dont think i has to be missouri. When did you know you are done with the conversation of the research portion. Never, i could not right here i was in the building if you had a chance to read the book. Alex azar. They said i cannot stop recording. I love facts about her curly and i will still be writing this book 100 years from now. It is hard to put it down. And that is why everything is finished. Im sure your lady facts about your stories from your first two books and keep accumulating information and help somebody right better information. In oral histories and gather information so the next one can be better than i was and i cannot stand to spend that would pick up the phone and respond to the emails and keep looking former intel. We can talk to you. [laughter] [inaudible question. He had a hand and putting the book to bed. Andrew miller when did you tell me no more. Or was it you. No more facts. She put reservations when she worked to what was to become british airways. How come i have not seen you . This is my editor and if you love the Insurance Section you can give him a round of. [applause] they kept tinkering with things im going to buy a copy and on march. Add more. [applause] a real nerd. I like it. [laughter] the generosity, how do you do things. That is very kind. I got the chance, if you read the video of the history they are very interesting but i need to know more about the seven sisters. [laughter] that is very kind of you. I enjoy writing this book and they could not have done it without an incredible number of scholars and archives and it feels like those are the people we want to think and lift up their work. I dont know how else you can do it. And think andre thanks andrew fa pages. Im going to ask you in front of everyone. You should not be with your wife should you. Andrews wife is expect them. I have to send you home. Any other questions . Will use unquestioning. Absolutely. Do readers come up and say can you send this . I cant remember how it started i just kept going. You have your own group easier. There was incredible reporter in this book who is a great example of you have to keep talking to somebody. Very sweetly he came to for events and he had not been to the grave and at one point all the siblings were there it was like a reunion. It was a lot of fun. I dont remember how it started but i would get these books that a bunch of other signatures already. I hope you join me in thinking casey. [applause] thank you casey and you are both welcome we will have the signing and casey i will show you how to get there. If you dont have a copy of the book you can line up behind and you could purchase one. [applause] [inaudible conversations] here is a look at some books being published this week. In the liberation of terrorist his story and Jean Edward Smith describes how general Dwight Eisenhower and Charles De Gaulle Work Together to free paris from german occupation. Richard preston details the 2013 able outbreak in the effort to detain it. After the fall casey recounts the white house years of president richard nixon. In the National Review Kevin Williamson criticizes what he calls a mob mentality in todays politics and the smallest minority. Also being published this week go to mccall and Hunter Mcculloch is transforming the internet. And cardiologist explores the history of science in cardiac disease and state of the heart. Look for these titles in bookstores this coming week and watch for the authors on book tv on cspan2. Recently on the Author Interview program after words. Niclas rosengrant interviewed publican senator of utah on his thoughts of government overreach. Here is a portion of the discussion. Picked the uncriticathings tt do to you. Positive rights, and rights to healthcare those are not what we would typically think of in terms of rights. And take away from someone else in order to give you two. That might be something an individual might regard as policy. Its important to make the distinction between what somebody might think is a good policy or not and a right. We do Serious Violence to the term right and to our rights when we dilute the use of the work and use and circumstances that does not involve something that the government may not do to you or allow and facilitate happening to you. His new book is called the lost decoration. You can watch the full interview by watching our website booktv. Org. You are watching booktv later tonight in primetime andrew bluhm will report Technology Used for daily weather report. Harvard university will discuss strategies to reduce urban violence and on the Author Interview program after words, the federalist and Judicial Crisis Network will examine the confirmation of Supreme Court justice of brett kavanaugh. Also this evening the New York Times will discuss his reporting on the process of the late justice schooley approved court seat. Cbs news legal analyst will offer her guide to reading and understanding the u. S. Constitution. Check your cable guide or visit our website, booktv. Org for more