Preservation and the literary editor of civilization a former book editor and odcolumnist and former editor at the Washington Post. His essays and reviews of fiction have appeared in numerous publications including americann scholar , american short fiction the Atlantic Monthly the new republic and the smithsonian and Washington Post magazine and on the atbat one oped open in pages the New York Times and usa today and the Washington Post he lives in virginia please give a warm welcome to robert wilson. [applause] thank you. I appreciate your introduction work i hope your app works better than the iowa caucuses. [laughter] thank you to all of you for coming this morning on this cold morning its good to see so many of youou here and i want to thank cspan for all it does to support but culture in america. I would be tempted to say normally its very easy to be optimistic about the state of books. I love being here in savannah. We live outside of washington dc with a place on panhandle of florida wheeze to dread the drive until we realized we can stop at savannah on the way. This is the third biography i have written. Its not really a trilogy. At all. All three books are related to h century figures. And the first was a book of an explorer and an easterner who went out west who explored california in the early days with the major peaks in the sierras and later did a survey of the great basin. One of the people who accompanied him was a fine photographer named sullivan and a civil war photographer who is also portrait photographer and i started to read about brady thinking there wasnt a good book and perhaps for good reason and i thought i would write one. Its kind of a hard subject because he did not leave a lot of written material. He may have been illiterate. But he had a studio on Lower Broadway in manhattan. Catty corner from barnums american museum. It was the biggest tourist draw in the city of new york at the time. Barnum took over a dusty museum and then completely transformed it. And then up and down broadway. And then the band overlooking the balcony and the musicians were handpicked then they would drive people into the museum because they were so bad. [laughter] it was quite a lively place. The photographer was successful but i cannot help thinking of him looking longingly across thes street into the museum where so much on. Oing and then i began longing across the street also because barnum was the subject of everything that brady was not tend that he wrote a wonderful autobiography and was exuberant. Brady thought to have a certain charm he got his charm was to bring people in and to make them comfortable. And without buoyant largerthanlifer character. And part of that trilogy is that for the very reason i dont think theres a better subject than barnum. Spending years to think about for six or seven years. So this may be the last time that i do that because i will move on. And what led me to barnum is going around 225 different venues and always had a picture or a slideshow and then to be sure to say barnums full name. Phineas is a slightly amusing name. But there was also something away that was middleaged and rather handsome man in his life and thought he was a handsome older man may be not so much. And of his autobiography which is he lived in bridgeport connecticut and became a republican man. And one of his friends said what do you know about douglas which barnum replied he is a red nose swaggering chap looking like a regular barroom loafer to which delighted friends responded in that mornings paper that was the very image in the personal appearance. [laughter] the other reason was to show the photograph of barnum to the various audiences that people feel to this day they know barnum on some level. Obviously the name barnum and bailey ringling brothers circus throughout her lifetime. So that name has carried. And because of one thing and as a museum owner. And the egress did you all learn that story quirks everybody thought it was a fantastic beast. [laughter] and then to find ourselves out on the street and have to pay another quarter to get back into the museum. That story is probably true. [laughter] the other thing we think we know about barnum is that he invented the phrase there is a sucker Born Every Minute. That story is almost certainly itfalse. With those hundreds of thousands of words and there is no sign anywhere because to me the most persuasive argument against having said that is a relationship he began to develop with his museum got one museum goers the people that would come for the melodrama. So later in his circus career in the last quarter of his life is always careful about his relationship with the audience. He did not exploit them that there is a sucker Born Every Minute would suggest. After he bought the museum to spend enormous amounts of money to bring things and from all over thero world, wild animal animals, people of interest. And continued to charge a quarter if you follow the egress sign. And then to spend half a cent in those days for children. That he is called humbug. And so todays world bah humbug tends to mean somebody that exploits or tricks other people but in barnums usage he defines the word of what he did as to create a stir or to get publicity and get people in the building. Once you got them in the building or the tent they had to get much more than they bargained for. If you brought the men under a pretext to see the remains of a mermaid which is one of the famous exhibits. And then when they were in the museum maybe this isnt the remains of a mermaid but there are other things here that we can see so people would go a happy. That is one of the crucial things and how think about barnum. Barnum was not perfect. The reading him and could turn of phrase so well i always enjoy being in his company i was often won over by him but one of the things that made him a great character to write about this he wasnt perfect one of the things that made the job interesting was to think about the things he did in various context. He may have done this but then everybody did it that day. This is a historical characteristic may think of the treatment of animals and was very dedicated to bring exotic animals to exhibit and was a grisly process to ship them and that understanding how to care for them when they got to the museum was limited. They were learning all the time and then to bring handlers for the animals for those that were familiar with how they lived. But it was a process that involved the death of a lot of animals and that benefited from what happened would often send the carcasses to the smithsonian and they have a collection as a result. The result is unsavory at best. And thats why the circus went out of business. Exhibiting elephants people stopped going to the circus. To have certain values and how you way that. And that to reach a state of perfection. Far from the data protection. And so i tried as hard as he could to give him a break on things that i felt were related to the way people thought. And to think if he was ever cruel to people. And as a rule he treated people very well. And for those that worked for him the socalled freaks were very devoted to him and grateful to him. He was a very nice to his wife. I dont think that is anything we can for one forgive in a historical perspective. But he came from a culture in new england that was all about practical jokes and playing tough jokes on people making people look silly. And he would play jokes like that on his wife. Once he was in england for several years he came home unexpectedly. In fact one of his daughters had died in the interim he was gone and did not come back he came back without announcing that he was coming and sent somebody to tell his wife she has to come to the museum to find out information and it wass clear she would think he had died. And there he was to greet her and this great practical joke on her. I think the cruelty of that is selfevident. So it was a matter to think through these things. Maybe because im a journalist i am focusing on the negative. [laughter] he was a person to bring joy to millions of people. And was such great company. One of the things that i would like to talk about his attitudes about race he lived from 1810 through 1891. One of the things i admired i felt he changed and became a better person with Better Success and became notorious and that people were interested in and made a lot ofev money and lost a lot at one point. And he became quite famous. And they dont feel it is a reward for their own perfection may people like that change quirks he had a bit of problem began to notice that people around him that he rrespected were similarly inflected and eventually he gave up drinking and was in his late thirties and became a great advocate for temperance. One thing not known very widely is one of the temperance speakers of the day with hundreds of free temperance speeches. In fact later inin his life when the circus was on the road because he was in a town he had never been in before his his partner said stop doing that they were going to his speech rather than the circus it was hurting. So that was one way in which he changed as a universal list to be very opposed of the great revival. With any movement to confuse the roles of church and state. And for the very purpose of fighting the idea of a religious party developing as part of connecticut at the c time. But as a result of his temper and speaking to know the famous preachers of the day many were abolitionists so they had an effect on his growth. One of the first acts that got barnum into the public eye and in some way sealed the reputation he has to this day other ways we know the name barnum that unscrupulous seeming person i wont name any such person who achieved high office in this country. People would immediately slap the barnum label and it would not be complementary. You could trace this back to the first act that he became involvedt in. He did a lot of things in his teens and twenties and thirties he had dry goods stores. When he was in his early thirties, he felt his lifes work should have to do with being a showman to exhibit acts and at the time ran a boarding house and a store in new york city. If you read the paper about an act that was on display in philadelphia and the Person Associated with the act came in the store and talk to him aboutt it. It was a blind slave woman who purported to be 161 years old and who further claimed to be the nursemaid of george washington. She would go around untild stories about Little George and also seem very seeing ancient hymns no one has heard before. By the way i love this perspective i feel maybe i went into the wrong business. [laughter] the bar not hurry down to philadelphia to see this woman named joyce. He was favorably impressed with the possibility she could be quite old. She never admitted throughout his life as he often did about other things that he suspected she was 161 years old the Life Expectancy for a white woman at that time was about 44 slave woman it was less. But she was blind and crippled but she was a very good talker speaking in a strong voice. Offer to new york after creating a buzz in the newspapers and began to exhibit her and it went over very well. She took her through new england and at one time, when he got to boston, he became acquainted with a manec whos famous for having displaying automatons. Creations that were mechanical because somebody would have a box under the stage talk and respond to questions. It occurred to him because the crowds had begun to fall off for her to plant the newspapers saying she was actually and automatons, she had been made out of india rubber and things like that. Ts this sort of became a typical ploy for barnum when he had an act, he would either create a kind of counterargument about the person or whatever was on display and then sort of challenge audiences to come and see for themselves. If it is something in the museum, people may have wanted to go in and see this act, whatever it was and he would be encouraged to come90 back again. I do think if you look at the length of his career, one of the things he knew he was doing was is not only bringing people in that were prettye isolated, when he was born, the telegraph, the railroads were not running and throughout his lifetime, people who lived in small villages like the one he was from, connecticut began to have moreel access to e world at large. Hathink one of the things barnum did to his museum and exhibits was bring that world to people who were eager to know more about it. One of the ways, i think what he was doing was he was challenging people to use their critical sense, to decide for yourself. Come and look and make a decision. Thats the pretty part of this. In the case of this one, it seems pretty awful. What was exhibited for a few more months, he came sick and died. Barnum had an arrangement with the surgeon in new york to do an autopsy of her. He had been eager to show it had been a hoax. Barnum rented a big venue charged submission for this autopsy. As it turns out, the preacher found, not the preacher, the surgeon found all of her organs in good shapeha except her lung, she had died of tuberculosis. He felt she could not have been more than 80 years old. This did not affect barnum at all, he continued, he is not at all chagrined and continued to get publicity. This is barnum at his worst. There are other instances where he had racial views that were not, that were terrible. As i say, in connection with these temperance movements, his wife was a unitarian, she was very much against slavery and became more and more of an abolitionist and became a republican lincoln supporter through the civil war, very pro union, did thoughts of things with his museum like exhibiting, like there was an exhibit of the hero of charleston, whose name im forgetting, anyway. He did a lot of things to support the cause. Then after the war, he ran for the legislature in connecticut and he said he wanted to do that for the sole purpose of voting for the 13th amendment which abolished slavery and it was one of his first acts as a legislature, he also gave a sort of dramatic and widely publicized speech in favor of giving the vote to africanamericans in connectic connecticut, which he argued in terms would not find particularly noble today but her was very much in favor of that, it didnt happen for many more years in connecticut but eventually the 14th amendment superseded that. I make a case in the book that he became more about race. People in the reviews have pointed out that in 1860, at a time where he was becoming more exhibited a he little person of 4 feet tall, black man who weighed about 50 pounds as the missing link between Charles Dickens book had just comek out on the origin of species, this was in 1860, started exhibiting this man, johnson and he put him in a pursuit, it was awful but one of the things that was interesting was when he was exhibited there would be an white man telling the story, he had been found in africa and in the background, this manin put be mocking the white o guy and kind of saying redont really believe this. This is really whats going on. Barnum clearly permitted it or probably encouraged it, barnum ended up building a house for this man in bridgeport, they were friends for the remainder of barnums life, he went on to be exhibited, to be seen by 100 billion people into the 19 around 1920. And anyway, thats another one that is sort of hard to sort of think about. Ill leave you with one quick image, clayton barnums life, he got involved in about late teen 70s 1880s, he and james bailey who was the genius behind the circus, took the circus to england and they exhibited, it was showed in awe big building n kensington, i think that had room for the three rings, the big track that went around it and at the beginning of each days performance, there were two performances a day, barnum would get into fancy carriage with equipment and the team of horses and he would go slowly around the ring and stop every veso often and stand up and say you want to see barnum . Im barnum, im mr. Barnum. He was supposed to have said and he tipped his hat and everyone in the crowd would waive their handkerchiefs and tip their hat back. It looked very much like a he wdnt turn off his phone, it was a triumphal moment. He was much loved. At the end of his, in the 1860s or 70s, left the presidency and went on a twoyear tour of the world promoting the united states. When he came back, barnum saw him and said it mustro have been wonderful, you are the most beloved american, go through the world and he said no barnum, youve got it all from me. Everywhere i went, people asked me, do you know barnum . [laughter] if there are i questions, ill stop. [applause] what was the most surprising thing you learned about barnum . To learn that he really was a better person than hisbe reputation and i guess that is the thing. Yes. You touched on how many, simplistic sure of barnum toc label the serpent political part, turn that around and hear from you how the current status of h american politics and popur culture might have informed your view of barnum. Thats a great question. One of the reviews, there is a piece from the new yorker about my book that made the case that i had apparently been unaware of what was going on politically in this country while i was writing the book because i tried very hard not to do that. One of the people who wrote a good book about barnum, i read when i started in on this and he gave me his blessing and said every generation, barnum deserves a new book in each generation. Little did he know i wasnt that much younger than he was. Ch anyway, im aware that my beliefs, political beliefs informed the book, and there are certainly a lot of times in the book where i said off modern sensibility has to struggle to understand barnum in this tried to sync my way into the 19th century in certain ways but to apply my own judgment about right or wrong. I do think one of the things that came out of the reviews is this question of whether i was two, i know ive been kind of negative today but in the course of the book whether i gave barnum too much credit, the New York Times book review referred to me as barnums wingmen. [laughter] but so. I understand barnum soon after his wifes death married a 23yearold. Did you have something to do with that . [laughter] yeah, iea mean you know he hd been married 40 some years to his wife. His wife, they were very much in eove early on. Barnum spent an incredible amount of time on the road. I think later maybe to get away from her, ido dont know, earlyn they were separated a lot. She discovered she hated to travel. One of the ways in which the whole family was cruel too her, they made funro of her when she traveled and imagined a disaster was about to happen. So i think they had grown apart. She did have this marriage, which happened on valentines day, i cant even what the year would have been. Then he brought her back in the following september, they had a wedding and it was announced but it was still pretty soon. His wife died in november. Thank you for your question. One people question people tend to ask me is, what would barnum think of twitter . Because of that, ive had a little time to think about it. I just blurted out an answer. I think he would have loved it. He was a genius at using newspapers by writing them himself, which would just be printed word by word, he used an enthusiastic advertiser and in that way got the attention of editors and he also, one of the ways w in which she would replenish the museum, they had a couple of major fires in the pcm and the next day he would get up and start the graphing around the world, he is in touch with people all over the world and then later with the circus, the genius of moving the circus, essentially a small city setting it up elsewhere in a matter of a couple of days was all baileys genius so i think he embraced the new technologies of his day, such as they work. I cant imagine it wouldnt be all over twitter and making as much publicity as he goes. I think im allowed to ask a question, too. T what prompted you to start writing books and can s you tell us more about kelly and Matthew Brady . I was interested in that. I never got a chance to ask you that. Ive been in at upper and newspapers and magazines and ive done some writer writing but i wanted to, i decided to neither write a book or stop thinking about it. Clarence king was the subject i had come to know through a wonderful book by patricia which is about Clarence King and henry adams, john hey and their interesting wives. S. The five of them had a kind of social group and this guy, they were all very intellectual people, people from the east and in the book, king would sort of come in all sunburned, this handsome guy, everybody seemed to be in love with him, male and female and i thought this is an interesting subject and there should be a book about him so i kept telling my writer friends, you need to write a book about Clarence King. Hes a c great character. A friend of mine whos worked york times set a wise thing that i never forgot which is, he just cant give away a good idea. Us part of what makes it a good idea is your enthusiasm for it. So eventually i just said well, im going to write it myself. So i did that. At the beginning of that book, let me to Matthew Brady and the king book and thehe barnum booki was lucky there had been very good academic biographies about the figures and they helpp me out. The biographer of barnum named arthur is still alive and extremely generous to me and i wrote about the text yesterday and said after today, barnum will be his again. [laughter] grady was a different character, theres not been a good book about him. Theres not a lot of paper on him so a lot of it had to do with looking at thewi photograps and with him, theres the question of what is a brady photograph . He ran a studio and sent other people out to take theak photographs, they were called photo by Matthew Brady. Ph so it was a very different kind of challenge to write about brady. Yes. I was wondering if you saw the shaman movie and what you thought of it. Say that again. If you saw the greatest shaman movies. Im sorry, im sorry. I did see the movie. I had actually agreed to write risomething for the daily beast about the little ways in which the way the movie didnt quite right. I came out of the movie so enraged, i couldnt write a lighthearted piece, i didnt fulfill thought. It struck me that there were so many ways, theres no question of presentday sensibility versus sensibility of the time. The sensibility of a movie is so hollywood, 2018 or whatever time it came up. 2017. The thing that offended me the most was, big shocker, hollywood doesnt get the history right. Thats never happened before, of course. [laughter] but it struck me as being perverse because barnum is so much more interesting than the character who came out inte the movie. Then the whole thing, jackman had to dance where of the people exhibited was a famous opera singer and they traveled around the country together. At one time, on new years eve, try to pull barnum out. So dont comedu on barnum, you n dance. After he tried dancing for a little bit, i do believe you are the worst dancer ive ever seen. So he never danced again yet hugh jackman is always there. If anything happened in the movie good, they are having a drink to celebrate. Since barnum was a straight temperance person, that would not have happened. Anyway, my wife liked the movie. [laughter] thank you very much. [applause] s. Three days of book tv on this president s day weekend. Tonight on our Author Interview program afterwards, specifically Search Institute president sally makes the argument against medicare for all. On monday, tune in for our discussion on u. S. And china relations. Led by former secretary of sta state. Also on president s day, while Magazine Editor in chief, discusses his latest book reforming journalism. She shares her experiences working in silicon valley. Will seek recent coverage of the writers festival. Check your Program Guide or visit book tv. Work. Book tv recently visited the home of psychotherapist, jeannie International Review of senior editor. To talk about how to maintain our relationship despite their opposing political views. Here they offer their thoughts on the current political climate. Its gotten much worse. Every day gets worse