Transcripts For CSPAN2 In Depth Colson Whitehead 20240712

Welcome to book tv in depth this is especially or fiction on indepth and last month was David Ignatius who writes about the cia. This month we have Colson Whitehead is our guest his most recent book is the underground railroad. What is the appropriate response mr. Whitehead when your books are praised by the president obama and ohio oprah and the National Book award . It takes the pain away. [laughter] this book has taken off in a way that is unexpected and wonderfu wonderful. So i think my lucky stars i sleep a little better, a better mood generally, and try to enjoy it despite my best efforts. Why does it put you in a better mood . I have been writing 20 something years doing fiction 20 years. And no one particularly cares. So i have the pride of thinking i did a good job with the book and the bonus of other people to see that as well. Host your first book was about elevator repair people. How do you sell a book like that quick. Exactly. So when i send it to my agent with the concept and with elevator inspectors are you dont. You either are along for the ride from the description or not. When i was writing it was my second attempt at a novel. My first one was terrible. Everyone hated it. The agent dumped me. It wasnt going anywhere so for year and a half talking about elevator inspectors they made fun of me. Eventually after a year and a half i finally got it down to what sounded like an interesting book i had a new agent in doubleday thought that as well. Is there a connection between the intuition and stand the underground railroad . They are a couple of topics i circle around, cities, i love writing about new york i get ideas and vitality and energy from the city. Pop culture, rac culture, race, technology, and some of the things that are in some books not so much others. And that serve racialized take we dont have that much to say about technology but there are four or five areas i tend to circle around. How she people read your book . Autobiographical . Social commentary . Sag harbor to bring up in the eighties and does bring up my childhood underground railroad is my least autobiographical book and this is about character which is why people probably like it. And some books are funny some are more tragic. And the experience. Host are you benji with a bad haircut . He is a 15 yearold kid growing up in new york in the eighties. As i did. Unfortunately my life was not very interesting. So i had to exaggerate. My summer was not that cool or compelling. So i started the book i wanted to base the characters on my friends and unfortunately it became less and less like my friend david or scott it started off as autobiographical. Im in their but the demands of the story supersede any autobiographical or memoir experience. If i get a compelling story that means exaggerating what happened to me. Host what is the process to get to elevator inspectors or zombies or the underground railroad that actually exist . It might be the same thing from book to book if you know how to write a certain kind of book why do it again . But by the end of the book and then follow up with one thats not is a way not to do the same thing with encyclopedic narrator and its a way to very it for me so i went from sag harbor a realistic story about the eighties to zone number one the apocalyptic zombie tail to this book underground railroad a historical novel. I am keeping it very different and i get my ideas from article articles, weird things i find in my couch. Sometimes ideas stay with you if you get an open spot in your schedule you can consider it if you are ready. Sometimes they follow way. But they come from different places. Host there seems to be a common theme about a guy who really didnt get the rules of life. And i want to say it is autobiographical and tip my hand too early but save the good stuff for the last hour. There is something about an outsider or we are outsiders in on on in different ways and thats a protagonist and good storyteller see you are in the action and standing apart. Someone who observes and is a bit removed is a vehicle for telling a story. Definitely in the apocalypse and in the world of elevator inspectors, to have a point of view character for the reader. Most of the elevator inspectors family so in addition to the reader and the story. Host it didnt come out until 2011 but i read an article you wrote that as a young guy in eighth or ninth grade . No. I was a big horror fan writing horror fiction and Science Fiction. And going back decades but i had a few terrible stories in college and then started writing fiction in my twenties but the obsession was zombies does go back to my childhood. We watch horror movies together. At a very early age. And then a black man being pursued which of course is part of the story of america. And as a Science Fiction fan. I get the impression there was the obsession. I want to have that judge he obsession. But to come of age during the vcr boom we go to crazy eddies and then with a horror movie and then return them the next week and start over. That make me want to write marvel comics. And by stephen king novels he would come into my brothers room and i would read them. Fantasy, for always seemed to be a tool and two different ideas for me. Like dracula and that means something in england and Something Different to the twilight generation but for me there was an expression of social anxiety and fear of other people. Loved ones and neighbors and teachers and coworkers so many zombies are out to get you. They poison monsters and let the mouse down so my apologies if i interpret zombies that way and i felt ready to tackle it with these ideas in the back of my head. Host is social anxiety a common trait among novelists . Im not sure. [laughter] i think it helps, worrying about your work if you do a good job could be a good skill for being a novelist. Host worried about what others thinks about your work . If its if youre doing a good job. Anxiety versus worry but a healthy amount of worry helps you make sure that you put everything into this paragraph for that page and its coming out right. If you have eight books under your belt. Host you are quoted in 2012 that for you as a novelist to fully inhabit on inhabit to give into every kooky aspect a handy survival strategy. What i write about my different books to express different ideas but different theories and that becomes a way for me to interpret the world for myself how i feel about things and politics and people. So that creative licenses important to me following my own inclinations because elevator inspectors sounds like a bad idea can you make it work can you sell it to the reader. So that delusion you have something to say and the delusion your work is worthy of being read by others is useful for being an artist. Host where did the idea the intuition is come from . For you on an elevator . Did you see an inspector . The aforementioned book everyone hated, that book do you remember gary coleman the little black boy tv star . So writing about black imagery and pop culture it was a novel about a gary coleman ask who has these adventures. It seemed like a good idea to me. In the novel he is in a sitcom called im moving in disease is adopted by rich white people. [laughter] and then i sent out the book and everyone hated it. Then i wasnt going to get a real job and become a lawyer. Maybe people like it may be they want but i will learn how to write by the end of it. So i figured like plot maybe i will have a plot. What the heck. Try that i tried the detective novel and studied suspense. Was watching 2020 in those days and there was an article on the hidden things of escalators. Apparently if you dont prepare them they can detach from the sides so the elevator inspector was interviewed and i thought that was a random job and then you always see in new york there is a law but not necessarily enforced but they would sign a certificate i have been hearing everything is fine. They come once a year to your work or school then you see the elevator inspector had been there. Wouldnt that be cool and he solved a criminal case. Ha ha detective story. So i went to see what kind of skills the elevator inspector would bring to a criminal case and of course the answer is not because they are the elevator inspector. So it was not a murder mystery but solving the mystery of a falling elevator and i made a different culture for elevator inspectors and figured they are conservatives and progressives and those who do it the right way versus the intuition is that are progressive and that duality plays out in the book in different ways. Elevator Inspector School and philosophies so really trying to teach myself how to write. I never had a female protagonist before. And a book with a plot. And then i had this weird idea to solve a criminal case and following it through to the execution. That is how that happened. Host prior to the interview you said sorry for the clunkers you had to read. What do you consider a clunker . I think they are all pretty good but hopefully if you do something for a long time you get better at it. And certain books i wonder why do i use so many adjectives . [laughter] but hopefully im a better writer and doing things in a more efficient way. Hopefully you get better. But hopefully im still in the Getting Better phase and learning from each book. Host does im moving in still exist . The manuscript is there. For a while i thought i will strip mine it but it is really terrible and the energy it would take to bring it up to my now very high standards to write something else. So with my children have a gambling debt they could sell it for some money 30 years from now. [laughter] make some quick cash from upon broker. Host one of your female protagonist ms. Watson and cora is another. What is the reason to write from a womens point of view. Women exist if you tell different stories you should take different points of view. It is part of that. I have a string of male protagonists before the book. So it seems wise to mix it up. So with watson i could not do my hipster new york voice for my first novel. I was forced, as a third person narrator i could not rely upon my first person narrator. I came up with the protagonist i had not done before and by doing that hopefully i become a better writer. With cora, i had a few female narrators and mixed it up. And she writes about how when a slave girl is in a much more terrible form of slavery you are supposed to pump out babies. More slaves. So that predicament is worth exploring. Sometimes we mix it up. Sometimes we want to learn something and keep the challenges going. Host what was your favorite one to write . This book was hard to write because i was broke. This was hard to write because i was broke and depressed. [laughter] then when youre finished you look back and think it was terrible but it was a special time in my life. So the noble hustle was the furnace to write one the most fun to write looking at the world series of poker i tried to claim as many jokes as i could in there with that journalistic framework. But i really was trying to cram as many weird jokes and its of myself into it. It was fun. It started from a climate there is a magazine called grant land that was popculture in sports for a couple of years and they called me up to see if i wanted to write about the world series of poker. I said no. I want to go to vegas it taught. They said what about we pay her entrance fee to go to the world series. I said okay i will do that. That there is no other place so i dropped the kids off at school and the other parent said what are you up to . A set of going to Atlantic City to train for poker tournaments and then a gamble and come back at night. [laughter] and then we got to the world series. I mustve stayed home and i got out of my comfort zone and the 5foot area around of my couch. I learned how to play poker so i would embarrass myself and my family and new york at the world series. I was writing the article so write a joke and then make yourself laugh. And then youre stupid for laughing at your own jokes for a while but writing in a way like dickens did back in the day and then people like that i felt good to give me energy to keep going. So it was a special writing experience in terms of the material and how it came to be. I look upon that in six months very fondly. Host so to paraphrase, i got to wear sunglasses inside it was good for me because im half dead anyway. Sure. For years i have been told i have a good poker face. I realize thats because i was half dead inside. [laughter] so to have a mask so my natural lack of aspect was for once an asset in a social situation. [laughter] you trying to unpack me being half dead . [laughter] host will say that for the therapy session. [laughter] but you do write about having a mask on and the fact that you are semi depressed when you are writing in a different person when you are done with the book is that depression important to you . Partially. And i think to have a healthy and joking relationship whether it is art or anything else. I dont take myself too seriously. I think its important instead of how my work with other people that how i define that is important most i know just go along and write some pages then hand them in. And we can keep doing what we like to do. So a lot of times writing is omnipresent so its great if you figure out a new sentence or character or a problem we have been working on but for me not to take it too seriously. And the character of the depressive shut in is fun to play and it is partially true. And also sort of a default setting in my public relations. Host what was the easiest book to write . They were all pretty hard i have to say. I will go with the shorter ones. Apex is pretty short. The bird on the book im working on now is pretty short. [laughter] short is not easy but it tends not to prolong the agony of a 400 page book. Host when you win the National Book award am bullets are praised by a president obama and oprah is there pressure on the next book . There is always pressure i think on myself because i wanted to be good and different. I dont want to coast. Fortunately when i get good news in the middle of something come i can feel really good than the next day i think this sucks and its terrible. Its always hard. And the pressure is selfimposed but it has always been there should i write a book . And rather not be broke so i should get a real job instead of doing this so it is always some kind of real pressure. Things are going well are not going well. Host good afternoon and welcome to book tv on cspan2 our monthly indepth program. This year we are doing a special fiction in addition with bestselling fiction authors. This month our author is bestselling author Colson Whitehead. Here is a list of his books we have referred to several throughout the first halfhour but here is a list. The intuition is the first book 1998. John henry days 2001. Apex 2006. Sag harbor 2009. The noble hustle 2014. Nonfiction and of course his most recent the underground railroad which won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book award et cetera et cetera. We want to guide your participation into our conversation. What is the first line you wrote for the first words you put to paper for the underground railroad . It ended up being the opening line. The first time caesar approached cora she said no. I write the outline before i start writing so i have to know the beginning and the end. The last couple of books i know the last line of the book before i started writing and i write towards that. But the first line i think it came very quickly when i was ruminating and organizing the book and survive the horrible vetting process to get into the book. Host what is the vetting process . [laughter] you say its genius and then a few days later you say that is stupid. So in this case the first line was durable and sturdy and spoke to cora in the one sentence and it stayed with me. Host from the underground railroad about the grave robber robbers, the negro became a human being in death only then was he the white mans people. Thats from a section that takes place in the early part of the 19th century with a doctor going to medical school. And the book does take an eccentric route through american history. The main storyline takes place in 1850. That was my cut off for her technology. And then there are certain side stories in the book for the supporting cast. So in that section doctor stephen to meets correlator in his life is a young medical student in the 19th century learning about biology. And cadavers with a healthy trade with grave robbing some people go and to compete the gangs beat each other up. And then to see himself very liberal and amusing and talking about prejudice and uses that despite racial prejudice and the aspersions cast upon black folks in america. That ironically these folks become equal, these dead folks are certainly elevated only in death to a level of the quality. So one of the moments in the book. Host did you know you would write about that when you started the book . I mentioned that in the outline, yes. Any florida or South Carolina but the white supremacist part in the state which became indiana. Then i knew i wanted to have the opening so coras grandmother follow her from africa two different plantations. And i figured i would move on to coras life. And it could be a way to open the world where cora cannot go. Even though there was a strong structure with a short biographical chapters in medical school. And then coras mother gets hers. After certain sections i would think who should get them. And a husbandandwife team who took cora in and what things he learns and what can ethel bring to the book. So even though i do have a strong structure before you have to be open to the process and where it takes you and those short sections are very useful in terms of giving voice to how the book evolves. Host can you read the underground railroad as historical fiction . I think if you are wellversed in historical fiction, you will know this actually didnt happen in 1815 i moving something from the late 19th century. I had the idea to make the underground railroad a metaphor into something for real the metamorphosis i had on my couch so there was a fantastic elemen element. Which means i can do a lot of Different Things in the boo book, have the different alternative americans and power and successful conception comes from having a fantastic structure. But no, not a historical novel. I take many liberties. I would not stick to the facts but larger american truth thats not bound by chronology and what actually happened but a different kind of connection that i can make and give to the reader with different historical episodes. Host did the rental plantation actually exist . Did you visit these places in your research . The rental plantation where cora is raised and enslaved is my own creation. I had the latitude and from pop culture to have this idea of a plantation thats big with 100 slaves. When you could be one of three slaves on a small family farm or a midsize plantation or domestic slave in a townhouse in baltimore. And it goes from how plantations actually work but it service my artistic needs. In terms of visiting plantations to figure lets be a wheel writer to do some Field Research i went to new orleans with my wife and we took to plantation tours and i got on the tour bus. I was only the black person. [laughter] going north and the guide is giving feel that this is a river erode to go northern louisiana to new orleans as a port city. Its very complicated. You dont just sit on the porch you have to keep track of the account in the workers not just sit being men to juleps and the workers as opposed to slaves. [laughter] obviously not in a historically rigorous travelogue. I went to two places. One was a museum that the slaves experienced. And for a fiction writer to feel the atmosphere on my skin and the sounds and the insects and they were describe the various exhibits how much slaves were sold and when people came in for me just writing down names from the plantation how much people were sold for. Then we get back on the bus and the next plantation what you have seen in movies beyonce has done a video there. That a very stereotypical plantation. If you want the antebellum the wedding you can rent the costumes. They have hotel rooms it says on the website if you want to break free from hotel chains you can stay here. Get it . But writing a book about slavery comes across early 21st century irony nothing compared to the Actual Stories of slavery. It was a weird adventure. Host is the tour guide and be the only africanamerican and did the tour guide spent too much time talking to you or ignore you . Neither. She gives the same speech two times a day. One hundred times a year. Its a script. And how we think about slavery we dont think about day to day conditions of slaves or the complete vast array of dehumanizing apparatus for slavery we dont examine our assumptions what it cost in terms of peoples families and psychology the same way the way they think about slavery and with a complete understanding. And it was a monthlong read. I will read one question from a colleague. She wants to know about the five ads for the escaped slaves in the book. Are the other ones actual ads from newspapers . They are. The university of North Carolina has digitized and they invite me to speak. And so when the slave runs awa away, what do you do you place a classified ad in the newspaper. As a fiction writer i like to hear peoples voices and hear them talk and then to run away for no reason at all. We know why. She has a downcast expression a burn on an arm from an accident. That was last seen in the vicinity how did she get the burn . So many levels of denial that i decided to stick them in their and then to do the research and with that observation to be a farmer or slave master you can be a journalist writing a classified ad and you are upholding the slave system and the enterprise as the leak in the chain on the link in the chain that keeps it going. You make shackles but also the iron rims for the wheels for the cards taking cotton to the market. You are making nails for the houses that are popping up so while researching thinking how vast the enterprise was and there was a blacksmith to broaden the idea and the scope of the world of how vast and insidious. Everybody is working for eli whitney. Yes the cotton gin. As a slave catcher he is as much as a slave to the system everyone and pop set up with that insidious grip. Host did i miss read this or is there a sympathetic aspect . I want a wellrounded compelling antagonist. And i thank you should see yourself in the heroes and the villains to make threedimensional and recognizable. Its a terrible philosophy but the same way that cora does her flaws to see her as a human being and then to recognize how he sees the world and to recognize that quality and yourself, that makes artwork the recognition. Host when you teach a class, youve taught at several universities over the years what are the two things you want the students to leave with . Three months and people can write three stories. But if you only like stories with your goal from new jersey write about a 22 yearold boy from pennsylvania. If you have three months with a sympathetic workshop and audience try these different stories if you always avoid the firstperson voice, try it. Why do you avoid it . Maybe it works and you have and trepidation. You have three months to fail and pick yourself up and then if you find an author and the architects and engineers and art class and those that read once they get out of school but figure out why you are attracted to the work and what makes them compelling and then to find out what kind of writer you want to be and what kind you actually are. So with those inspiring voices we encounter as we find her own voice is important. Host was a hard to write your antagonist as a white southerner . Or a male southerner . No more than having the elevator inspector. [laughter] i am a human being and i know people. You always pull on your own knowledge of the self whether you speculate how people operate so whatever small collection of insight you have about humanity. If you have a big cast Like Underground Railroad or a small cast like sag harbor , you always find yourself in places where you are different. And hopefully what you know about yourself and those who are not like you recognizable on the page. Host another colleague at cspan has been reading all of your books and has been tweeting out had questions for several but i will start with the intuition as he wanted to know who was james holton . Thats funny because the first the person i think about if you write a book is not yours anymore and people have questions and academics have questions. In the book came out i was invited to a college and somebody asked me obviously james is based on somebody else . I said no i looked out the window thats a first name i saw. James fulton is the inventor of the intuition is school of elevator inspection so to step into the elevator like to use the force what is wrong with it. Hopefully the elevator inspectors in your community do it the right way but in my book it is the insurgent progressive force. James holton is the man who comes up with their philosophy. I grew up in the eighties with the canonist stand at the Elevator School you could have a conservative and progressive for play out the intuition a star the multiculturalist so at this point my book either sounds good or bad. Bed to go back to your first question it sounds cool or totally stupid at this point. [laughter] so i am recreating my own way of telling it. [laughter] and thats my book. Host i literally have no idea what you just said. But im sure the audience caught that. [laughter] host is sag harbor a real place . On the tip of long island. The hamptons resort community the last couple decades and the town of sag harbor is nestled in the hamptons and then movie dick is starting in the thirties and forties doctors lawyers and teachers were going out there getting some are places with some extra money and started a little community. Is a safe place to go people from harlem were going in their thirties and forties until their cousins in jersey. So my mom started to go in the forties and i would spend my summers out there through college. Sag harbor the book is based on my adventures in sag harbor the town. Host you write was there anything worse than a bigger kid playing keep away with your stuff and the dreary rehearsal for adulthood. Yes. Benji is 15. He is in identity formation. Hes figuring out where he is part of this community. His peers can you like run dmc . And figuring out if this is a person. And a lot of that is the weird identity battles that continue as you get older with the psychological warfare to be engaged in your community and the world. As a teenager you wake up. What does it mean to be bougie . Upscale middleclass pretensions. That you have made it. Also like embracing the fact you are a little bit posh. Host back to sag harbor getting rid of the sag house was unforgivable like selling your kids off to the circus for crack many the seventies to have the steakhouse . My mom is living out there she owns it. But what is lovely people go out there for generations and my grandparents and their peers own plots of land and the kids grew up in them and the grandkids spend their summers in them. Of course like any place in the world the Community Changes i dont want to say gentrified but in michigan you dont go out to sag harbor anymore so you sell the house and then new people take over the neighborhood and with this piece of land and then to realize its now a beachfront property. So what has changed from when i was a kid in part of the book is to talk about that place in that moment where it becomes part of the hamptons proper and posh environment. Host what was your moms reaction when sag harbor came out . My dad passed away a short time before. Im not sure he would have liked it. My mom dug it. Im not sure if my friends would like it when it came out. People embraced it. My friend jeff he said. Host who . He is somebody. [laughter] he said i heard that its good. He does voiceover work and my friends were in the book i havent read it yet. The those that were in the book were not bothered. Host if your mom read it what was the reaction to this line, again this is fiction , we were a madefortv family and when he called action we hit our marks and delivered our lines. The scripts were all the same, we had the formula down. My family actually deals with popculture and im talking about the cosby show. When it came out middleclass black people embraced it as we are finally on tv. With a brownstone in Brooklyn Heights to parents who are professionals and in many ways we saw ourselves in a particular way on tv. Popculture is very important to the main character. So the relationship to the cosby show is a way of talking about the lie behind the cosby show fiction. Now we know bill cosby. [laughter] his own life has underscored the separation between the Television Reality and the real world. But talking about the cosby show and road warrior. Or hiphop so when i said i had to exaggerate to make the story interesting. That is a proud family of zombie movie watching folks. Host did jet magazine really put in whatever black people would be on tv . Sure. In the sixties and seventies diane carol would be on the tonight show so jet magazine but have a listing of any black person to be on tv. It was so rare and lovely. That the black press would tell you when you would be on tv. A little inside view into that magnificent creative process. He always talks to me about having with harvest time you have to get up and be stuck in how this character is developing and i does this character have a life of its own, you want to craft it in a certain way and he also talks about moving that forward and the structure and things of that nature. Then also, the beauty and difficulties in opening yourself up to in the historical novel. It helps in terms of the story development, but in terms of being true to what the story is trying to convey. My question has to do with their spin so much colson talked about him and the story of element, he has this sort of idea plot, structure, background. Sometimes you get bogged down and not know exactly where you want to take something, but he persevered and just sometimes have to write those pages found. My friend had said about persevering sometimes when you have this daunting task ahead of you and it can be overwhelming and maybe just getting of a few pages a day. Host lets see what Colson Whitehead has to say, charles. Thanks for calling. Guest it is work, and some days it definitely is in tune with the project and everything sort of coming together, then other days it is struggling with a paragraph a day as a victory. A novel is a marathon, so that one paragraph is a lot. My own way of keeping sane as if i do eight pages a week that is a good accumulation, thats like 400 year, unlawful, that is a way of thinking about it. Sometimes i get up monday, start working, see a movie [laughter] read a book, maybe tuesday, wednesday, saturday and sunday were sometimes tuesday through friday. It could be one page or three pages. But its sort of keeps me sane. Some days i wake up and dont feel like working and i will improvise and of course that his work. You are making progress toward the end of the book. Host do you have a sense of detachment from your characters . Have you ever gotten mad . Guest not mad, the intuitionist there is a show seen and i remember writing it and getting angry. With regards to sag harbor, i was a little more removed from my previous characters in sag harbor, and it is very personal. So, i felt very raw writing that. And then with writing about slavery and the underground railraid come into my new book that also deals with institutional racism and more horrific aspects of america, i do get angry when my research into sort of conceive of it. When i actually write, it is separate. It an act of creation and not of grievance. To put things together, but to come to the story. Host you have a big play here in underground railroad, homer. Guest he is a little black boy, and i had the idea for the book many years ago. I think i waited until i was ready to write. Ten years ago i would over explain his psychology, but for him, hes going to do what he wants, so he is a black assistant to a white slave catcher. He was a slave that has been set free and keeps hanging out with ridgeway and working for him. There were these weird corners of the master slave relationship. There were those that upon being free in the civil war stayed with their masters. They knew nothing else except for the plantation. And we cant really conceive of the kind of psychology, but it actually happened. There were slave masters maybe raised and squared betsy is part of the family, she raised me but of course torture, rape, abuse, her family, her children and you have the file, that the maya with the slave master. So, ridgeway and homer in a different episode illuminate for us kind of very, very odd dynamics of the master and slave. Host martin in erie, pennsylvania. Good afternoon. You are on the Colson Whitehead. Caller good afternoon, mr. Colson whitehead. Question, have you considered writing drama, either for stage or media, cinema . Host thank you. Guest thanks, morgan. I did i went to harvard for undergrad in the conservative English Department. They had one class, American Fiction after 1945 basically. I did study drama. I took classes in the africanamerican studies department and the drama department. I didnt act, but i studied plays. I think dialogue is kind of reactive structure is important in my work. In times where i needed money, i thought do i want to teach, they be write a screenplay on a screenplay i got three pages in and thought this sucks come i will have to write a novel. So i ended up going back to fiction. But i grew up on tv and film coming into those mediums are important to me. I thought a lot of ideas from film. One comes from Science Fiction and art in the 70s. I was a tv critic, but i could to fiction and nonfiction but i dont really have the chops to leave those two genres. Host is the underground railraid being serialized . Guest usually my books have too many black people to be adapted for a film, but this book has been embraced, and when it came out, we sent it to hollywood and various people looked at it and we got a call from a Young Filmmaker and he had great ideas and it was Barry Jenkins hooted moonlight, which hadnt come out yet but we saw an early version of it. So i interviewed him and working with him i dont know what to ask filmmakers. He said he didnt know about slave movies, but that he was thinking paul thomas anderson. We got the oscar and contracts weeks later said he was taking around and pitching folks and Amazon Studios is going to do a series and we will see if it goes forward, but its pretty exciting. Host dean is in new jersey, is that right . I cant see it on my screen. Caller ma maybe about 6 mils north of princeton. You were kind enough to autograph my copy of the underground railraid at the Schaumburg Center i think last year, and i know you and kevin young he was ahead of you coming they were classmates at . Guest yes host who is kevin young . Guest nonfiction writer. Though host we are going to let you go ahead caller guest we knew each other as young writers in college. He was a sort of professional one and i was more slacking. He always sort of knew what he was doing and he had a first approach and now hes at the schaumburg library, africanamerican library in new york city and editor of the new yorker. A book came out a few months ago about hoaxes in america and the way of calming the public. Weve always treated work. Host please go ahead. Caller i was just asking about how they came up with underground railroad and how were they built and. There was a slave that ran away from his mastery of the master woke up the next day and said to himself theres no trace of him. It as if he disappeared from the underground railroad and became determined from this network that would help the slaves escape to the north. It could be a person with a celery and hiding someone for a couple of weeks until the coast is clear. Maybe they are taking someone in a wagon, 200 miles to the next city. There were eastern seaboard routes to. There were people that have gone for decades. Host was their significance in the fact that the different underground stations somewhere decorated beautifully into some were very utilitarian . Guest there was a station with a white subway tile. I wanted them to be different and some were roughly carved out of rock. What is a typical day of writing like for you . Guest i get up, usually take my son to school, come back home, first map of the day on the couch, start working, writing at page, have a snack, write another page. One to three pages a day is a pretty good today. And i am the kind of person if i had a doctors appointment at 1 00 im like the whole day is shot. But three to five days a week, eight pages a week is typical. My only hobby is really cooking. Around 3 30 i figured out what to make for the family. When you cook for a couple of hours and have a sense of completion and write a novel i like the sense of accomplishme accomplishment. You get the satisfaction of sharing with people and not waiting 24 months. Host lets go back to the crying. [laughter] guest some people go to cafes to work. Id rather be able to make a sandwich, take a nap. You cant really take a nap in a cafe. If you leave the house there are so many whats the word, people out there. [laughter] i stay home a lot, keep focused. It works. Host with your notoriety now because of the underground railraid, can you still be anonymous . Guest from the communities since the book has come out and ive done more tv than usual and more magazine stuff, i am recognized and it is sort of uncomfortable. People say i am teaching a book, i read your book, i could be on some sort of taxicab. Its always nice when you need someone taking the time to read the book and it brings you back to the nice place. Host in 2002 he were invited to the symposium at the white house. The Washington Post book editor at the time asked you the question how you felt about africanamerican section in the bookstore and you kind of didnt give an answer and i wonder if you have a more definitive answer about that . Guest there was a longstanding policy of having the africanamerican book section and sometimes it would be there and not literature. Ideally, doing both. I was in high school and would go to the black section and browse and you find a random person you never heard about. Frederick douglass, who is this guy a. Theres a place to find books about your culture and it was a good idea in the 70s. But then you have more and it should be in both. I think now my bookstore and the book sections its not as big a host next call comes from tina. You are on book tv. Caller thank you, sir. I would like to tell this gentle man, i was raised in a suburban philadelphia. We were never, never taught that there was a variable and i apologize to you that this is what you have experienced. So thank you for your work. Its wonderful and i appreciate all that youve gone through. Thank you. Guest thank you and im glad that you grew up in a very progressive place like philadelphia. A lot of the country has its sort of terrible side and terrible part of the human director ends up determining so much of our history. But thanks for reading. Host you grew up middle class, upper middle class. Did you go through a lot of . Guest most get stopped by police handcuffed, interrogated for being on the wrong block at the wrong time. You never know when that will escalate to something lethal. They had a conversation about Police Brutality and we have these conversations and then they stop. Then we talked about it for two years and stop talking about it so whether there is this National Conversation ever since i broke and became seen as a target. I think the first person to give it to me was Richard Pryor about being stopped by the police. When you go to show them you applied for the registration, he says i am reaching into my glove compartment. So the person giving the talk is Richard Pryor and many times i was made aware of that. Host from our Facebook Page, my question did you always write such brilliantly descriptive sentences . Yesterday i quoted you on my Facebook Page as an example of your skill. Can it proceed in a series of light the blaze devoured the next towns on the road. Did you write them or was that your original sentence . Guest its nice of you to say. And there is a narrator in more encyclopedic and as much for computed then the narrator of this book so you pick the right narrator for the job. Im in a concise mode right now and im working on a fiel feel t this from trying different kinds of voices and narrative styles. New exhaust one and move on to the next and try to integrate what youve done before. And like i said before, hopefully you get better at it. Host you mentioned a new book are you going to tell us about that . Guest that takes place and i go to a funnier book or a darker book and underground railroad has the smallest per page count and 300 pages. But its also maybe i should mix up and the next one could be later. Host lets hear from it in keokuk iowa. Caller can i call you colson guest colson is great. Caller i said i would go in the next room here because i didnt know if it was pre recorded but you said it was live. Im 73 and ive had books in my hand for years and ive had people tell me you know how it is you get busy trying to make a life for your family but by the little stories and they always told her i was going to write about her because she had a powerful impact on me like her father had an impact on her. The title [inaudible] that was the only thing i remember calling her because my dad always called her this. I had older ladies that took me to church. And they said thats horrible, called her mother. Every time i did she would say youre pulling away from me. [inaudible] host he has some books in his head. 73yearsold. Lived in iowa. Guest i. E. Teach people in graduate school and workshops where people are in their 60s and 70s autobiographical story theyve been carrying around and they finally have the time to go to it. This is my eighth book and i still struggle with when do i have time having a family, having a job that is always a struggle but im not going to write it for you. The sooner you start, the sooner we will be done. I realized in my 20s just gets to page 100. Dont get caught making the first hundred pages perfect. Keep going. Dont get stuck thinking that. Host cleveland, good afternoon. Caller have two questions for mr. Whitehead. The first is when you are writing, who is your target audience, and my second question is there any subject that is off limits . Guest my ideal audience member i think invisible man at an early age, who is this goofy dude and then the book came out and there was no 16yearold kid in the audience, white or black and i stopped expecting for my audience is. Less hard to describe. Then i followed up with a book about zombies and lost all those people so im interested in getting new readers and then i move on with my next book and i dont think about the audience anymore. I dont know much about football so it is unlikely but i think i never thought i would write a book about this but as you go through life, Different Things become more or less interesting to use of that is no way that i could have predicted. But a reading the autobiography of stanley he described where some came down to east africa especially and 30 to 40,000 villagers and to get 5,000 slaves. Of course there are buyers in the new world. If theres buyers, people supplied drugs or slaves, so i would like your comment on that. Caller guest i have a section on the african slave trade and before i get to american slavery that is all ive written on the subject, but people tend to explore the worst impulses, so thertheres a lot of money in te slave trade and there is money now, stories about slavery now father it is building icons in a factory or shrimping boats, money makes people do terrible things. Host lindsay is in long branch new jersey. Please go ahead with your question or comment. Caller ive read the book the intuitionist and our interpretations were all over the place. Can you expand more about it and that character . Guest sure. The book is open and more ambiguous than my other books which sometimes have bigger endings and is sometimes not. What does it mean, something in terms of technology in the cities. When i started my books without elevators you can have the modern city. Beforif religion was invented as space elevator. That is one meaning of the updater. I was writing the book and uplift the race occurred to me. I was writing elevation and then sometimes its about transcendence, achieving a Higher Consciousness or higher level of being so its very open to a lot of interpretations and once im done with the book you need to read, interpret, ignore and whatever reading you have, have fun with it. Host when you are done with the book it is yours. Our conversation continues. If you want to make a phone call or have a comment or question is how you get through 202 7488200. In east and central time zones 202 7488201. For those in the mountain and pacific time zones ive also have several ways on social media to make a comment or ask a question. Twitter, facebook, remember but tv, email booktv cspan. Org. We want to show you a Colson Whiteheads acceptance speech at the National Book award late november, 2016. We are also going to show you some of his favorite books and influences of some of the books he isok reading now. The last four months have been so incredible. Its like i is that they make a wish foundation, emi dying or something, everyone being nice to me. So its all so confusing. My model for acceptance speeches is the oscars. The first one i saw was like 77 where star wars was put against annie hall. I was crushed and i never thought i would become a writer and actually be at one of these things. It for the teen years like who gets to stay the same and then robert caro [laughter] well done, sir. [laughter] my daughter is at home watching, if she didnt go to bed. You are 12yearsold and i started living the day that they were born. Thank you for your ongoing gift to my wife. [applause]t beckett is three. I dont know who you are yet but im excited to find out. [laughter] but its so much fun watching your ideas about things. My book is dedicated toed my wi, julie. [applause] its okay writing good books when you are unhappy that its better to write them when you are happy so thank you, love. [applause] magazines and Oprah Winfrey got the word out and usually people read my coffee like i dont kn know. This time last year i was finishing on w the book. Now the book is out and i never thought i would be standing he here. We are happy here. Outside is the last days of the fill hole but who knows what is going to happen a year from now. Any words about the election . Not really im sort of stunned. Thenow heres something that was making me feel better and i guess thatt it was a be kind, everybody. Make art and fight the power. That seemed like a pretty good formula for me anyway. [applause] Colson Whitehead come in your speech, you referred to the terror that is trump land. Were you pretty shocked that was just a couple of the after . Guest as a teenager it is a weird tabloid buffoon creatu creature. I watched the apprentice, ridiculous reality show and he was so repellent with his various races and a xenophobic speeches and frederick that it was startling having written a book about White Supremacy. Guest they say a lot of racist things and govern in a way that isnt meant to people of color consistently and overtime. If you say that they were emerging in charlottesville and raising flags it as evidence of a certain sympathy. Host are the books that inspired you . Guest its sort of captors the story of people that move to the north in every part of this country that is how my family ended up in new jersey and new york. My dads family came from florida from out of town supposedly. So on the porch with a shotgun is the classic story. My mothers family is from virginia, they got to newark and thought it was new york and got off the train but it was new jersey. They thought they were in new yorks penn station. So that is the story of so much of black america is keeping jim crow, finding opportunity and thats how i became a new yorker. Host i think at some point in an interview you said your mothers family were freed blacks . Guest my mothers side to send it from a biracial woman named sally madden who came over 17 something, half white irish, half black came over and worked on James Madisons farm plantation, had eight kids, they were freed, so that line and then my fathers comes from a sugar Plantation Island and the american south, georgia and florida. Host does invisible man holed up after all these years . Guest eight years ago i taught it and it is a marvelous book. I could have lost a few words in the sermon that i mentioned a reading the first section excerpted in my seventh grade printer of american short stories and at that point i was reading fantastic literature and there was so much absurdity i felt a little kinship. It was important to me when i was younger and is still an inspiration. Host what do you get from Allen Ginsberg . Guest ecstatic american voice that is tragic, sarcastic, loving, cool. On twitter theres lines from howell on an infinite loop so i will be angry watching the news on twitter and defend three lines pop up and i might he is a genius. So this series of essays about the city. Hopefully it reaches that voice that seemed ginsberg and walt whitman. Host from the underground railroad, Colson Whitehead writes that the divine thread connecting all human endeavors if you can keep it it is yours, that his destiny. Guest you cant take capitalism from human slavery. People were objects, they were bought and sold. They had a value placed on their lives and the more they worked, the more they made money for people who owned them so also a part of capitalism and make america into a Global Player because of slavery. So we have imperialism, capitalism, manifest destiny so it is trying to wrestle with all of those major forces that shape the country. Host next call this from bill in new york. Bill, and you are on the tv. Goahead. Caller host are you with us . Im sorry we are going to have to lose the. A reminder, turn down your tv when you are on the air otherwise there is a delay and it gets a little confusing. Whats your from ken in spartanburg. We are listening. Caller hello, mr. Whitehead. Im enjoying the program. My question is seems has been answered but i wanted to know who is like one of your favorite authors and what type inspiration did you get from that author and when did you know right thing was going to be your lifetime duty instead of going out and getting as they say a real job host we are going to get an answer to that in just a minute. Who is a writer though that has inspired you and which one of mr. Whiteheads books have you read . Guest caller Toni Morrison has been one of my most inspirational. Im reading mr. Whiteheads book now, the underground railroad. Im presently reading it now and enjoying every bit of it so its been a treat for me. Thank you. Host what do you do in spartanburg South Carolina . Guest caller i work for the hospital here. Im a nurse and i like to read. Host thank you. Guest thank you. I hope the end of the book isnt disappointing. Im glad you are enjoying the first half. So many writers inspire me in different books. Something from raymond harbour of realistic stories, something from ralph ellison. Early influences, Twilight Zone and stephen king. I wanted to write horror like the black salems lot was shining if you take stephen king titles and put black in front of that is basically what i wanted to do. Then i started reading people like marquez and Samuel Beckett and these were people that were playing sciencefiction so my early love for genre storytelling. There are fantasies you use here and not there. Host what does the term magical realism mean to you . Guest it seems to me that the real and the fake are both presented in the same registers marquez came up with it from listening to his grandmother. She would tell stories about her village when she was growing up and have a deep within the sheriff sprouted wings and flew away. He never knew because of her face what was real. If you read his work and other realists and view something as fantastic and come back and there is theres a matteroffag of the two. When i was working on this book for many years was more sciencefiction and each state is different in terms of time and had a much more blog scene. I went back to solitude and thought instead of having it cranked up what if i buy a let down to magical realism one. So in these contested court absurd moments its presented with a brick face come a matteroffact tone and i think it serves the book. Host what did you study at harvard . Guest i was an english major in a very conservative department so African American studies classes. I went back in 2001 and named david, to someone teaching the intuitionist and thought isnt that something to be teaching in the conservative department. It was the 21st century city said about 20th century books can be taught because its old. [laughter] host is there any connection to harvard in their . Guest i go to harvard names because i remember going there like what kind of name is. Sorry. But it seems like [inaudible] if i cant think of anything i will go for a harvard dorm room name. Host someone that teaches regularly, what is your take on First Amendment discussions that are being held on College Campuses . Guest people get upset with College Students, but College Students are supposed to be annoying. Let them be annoying for those four years than to be out here with us. They are first learning about other cultures and races, getting out of their bubble of their small towns that grew up in so you are learning things for the first time and it makes you engaged in things. But again, that her for that for years been out here with us. Host joel and emails in use mentioned depression and being sad at times yet your sense of humor comes through in this interview. How does this work with your pics . Guest i think i mentioned Richard Pryor earlier, george carlin, a comedian that i saw when i was very young. Presenting the world and all of its absurdity and then go back. It is life. Colossus has a narrative voice that goes from the tragic to the ecstatic to the universal and i think we see those extremes in our lives. I was trying to cap her that in the book. I write books that are funny and i can accommodate a part of my personality books that are a little darker. Host is that outlined in the book youre putting together im going to do this first person and its going to be outrageous and then we are going to go sat here and its going to be third person . Host perhaps if i am not always conscious of it i know the book will be satirical. I knew that this treatment wasnt going to be my satirical distance. I knew that i would have fewer jokes. So i sort of knew that going in. After the first couple of pages its like thats how im going to tell the story. Host lets hear from gloria in california. Caller thats correct. Two questions, one, is colson a family name and secondly, there were a couple of ways enslaved people communicated to each other about the underground railroad. One was of course through song. Were there any other ways that they communicated to each other . Guest thank you, maam. Host is colson a family name . Guest it is. My first name is actually arch. My father hated his name archibald so they named me arch. My grandfather was named colson and his father or grandfather worked in a hotel in virginia in a small town. Ive never been there. I think maybe it was lynchburg. He worked in a hotel on weekends and he kept doing that and they hired him and his daughter out of slavery so it goes back to that individual who got out of slavery by paying off his owners fee. Communication with underground railroad folks if you were caught you would be put to dea death. In my book she comes from georgia. It didnt operate that far south. He would never make it through the carolinas. You could escape south if you were that far south but theres so many different ways people communicated and again if you were caught you could be jailed, beaten to death. Host marshall, houston. Good afternoon. Caller thank you both for this. Two questions come in do you need to come from an m. S. A program to become an agent and what if you write different genres how do you settle on an agent and hel for help as an agt settle on new . Thank you. Guest thank you and good luck with your writing. Half of my friends that wright did go to grad school and some that end. For me my apprenticeship was working at the newspaper the Village Voice and that is how i learned to sit down for five hours and walk out of peace otherwise i couldnt get and immigrants i had to collaborate with other writers. My first agent by new nonfiction writers and agents so there were some i knew. One of my age and time now for 20 years i got a recommendation from someone who passed on my first book and i asked her im writing this crazy book, who do you think would be open to this and she welcomed a new agent at that point they represented a gina. From her list she had a sensibility that overlap with mine. You can google it now but you have an author that writes the same as you, find out their agent. In my case, i wrote a twopage progress and description of the book that was intriguing i guess and thats how i found my agent. But you have to find who is representing books like yours. Host underground railroad has been a bit of a phenomenon. Youve been talking about it for two years, working on it for x. Number of years. Are you getting tired . Guest host are you getting bored . Guest i am not getting bored or tired. Its an incredible four years of writing, something i could never have dreamed of in terms of people who pick it up and endorse it. I am enjoying and appreciating it. Host how do you find out that he won a pulitzer . Guest finding out is not anti, dick, but it is a live stream from columbia. The puppets are for this goes to this newspaper and so it isnt really theatrical. Its really quick and sort of lifestream. My wife went to work and i was like can you watch with me. They said my name and they had a little dance party, broke out the rose and met with some friends and my agent and celebrated. So i took it as encouragement, i wasnt anxious about it. And the pressure to live up to. To do exactly what you are supposed to be doing. Keep doing it. Host and ohio john you are on with author and novelist Colson Whitehead. Caller thank you very much. The praise that you received from Rolling Stone and Washington Post in miami herald, you deserve it. You are stepping in high cotton but just give a short overview of sag harbor because you and i both come from north new jersey and i am a curator of the underground railroad here in my town so tell us what you can. Host was there a station in flushing ohio . There certainly was the Northwest Territory ohio indiana michigan wisconsin right of the ohio river. But colson has said is uptodate. Thanks for watching. Sag harbor is an important book for me because its the moment i started with the intellectual questions i was trying with the promise of the novel so john henry. What if i updated the Industrial Age of john henry from the Information Age what kind of story could i generate from that . And then it seems i had been avoid writing john from personal material that it seemed for books novels in it was time. It was an important to me as a writer to access different parts of my personality in my world with a book about them. And it started with a character as an intellectual question. But since then i think with a bigger emphasis to put more work into my characters i think with cora and its a combination of two periods of my work. There is are really strong character grounding it and then from sag harbor and then the other book i think is the last eight years. And with the starkness of abstract premise what if i made the underground railroad into Something Real . There was the abstract premise and then the character work that comes together in this book so sag harbor is important as a writer in person and i see influence in the work. Host new work delaware. Caller good evening. I am here in the state of delaware. I am amazed how this gentleman who wrote this book i just got finished reading my soul is rested. And it is amazing you are definitely the ink in your ink pen you have a sense of humo humor, you are doing it. So i am learning something off of you. That last name of yours. How do i say that . Is that a slave last name . You know because my father is also who was from virginia but his family was from barbados and my family had a hard so how did you keep that sense of humor . The name whitehead is not from the barbados side, that name is clark. The clark family comes to new york through ellis island in 1920. Talking about the book i talk about some parts of my Family History in virginia not knowing others and then last year someone sent me a genealogy they did for me piecing together what i talked about. Whitehead a person traced it back to florida and before that georgia in the mid 19th century so before that im not sure. I know there a lot of white people named whitehead im not sure if thats a slave masters name. But with the work, when you are writing you can only get better by doing it the next one will be better maybe you have a relapse but then you learn from that. I keep a sense of humor about my work because its my point of view on the world. And thats why i keep going and keep Getting Better. Host Maria El Paso texas. Hello. I have a question. How much should i accept a Nonfiction Book as factual . Is there a writers bias . Or can i rely on the facts from a Nonfiction Book . Host do you have a specific book you are referring to . Just in general. I like history, autobiography. And fiction just a novel that they could have historical facts but it may not be the truth but i will give you an example so that bill oreilly book on the pacific war the son of somethin something, how factual is the bill oreilly book . Strangely i read a lot of bill oreilly. [laughter] but i grew up in the eighties so there is no objective truth with the political bias and social conditioning affects how you tell a story. If you write a history of slavery now a catholic interpretation is possible if you write a history five years ago so your culture or point of view in terms of how a story is told in a memoir it is subjective account of how you saw things your mom and your cousin may disagree. In terms of how much do you believe . You hope they get it right there is a difference between fiction and nonfiction but nonfiction has to get it right and nonfiction can make it up. I havent asked but in terms of the underground Railroad People who read nonfiction arent you getting in trouble mixing the real and fake in the age of fake news that you have a responsibility to your reader . The answer is no. I dont have a responsibility to the reader. [laughter] i assume that if the book says the underground railroad, a novel you know its a piece of fiction and should be taken and not how it actually happened. People die every year when they step into tornadoes thinking it will take them to the wizard of oz. That is an error. Dont take fiction seriously. I for one refuse to go to costa rica because im deathly afraid of dinosaurs and i dont want to get eaten. But for most people dont have that problem and can differentiate between fiction and nonfiction. Host you really want go to costa rica . Im joking. [laughter] host i just wanted to check on that is there is significance to the fact the protagonist has a j for the first name . I have been cagey about peoples names and john henry. I was trying to take a figure of folklore to find different avatars in the blues singer in the thirties and the main character. And he is another avatar. I will leave it at that. Host something that you said to the last caller that you do not feel a responsibility to the reader . To tell a good story, yes. And to educate about history. I think what is nice is that tuskegee experiment did not happen in 1950 but the thirties and forties and beyond. So poor people in immigrants and people of color didnt happen. What happened later and people have heard about the episodes in history or if they have and they had been moved from our research. Thats great. I have the responsibility not to bore people too much and have their one the books to be worth their while in responsibility to friends and family and a good husband and father and friend. Besides that, if you think the advertising book sounds compelling pick it up. If you dont the dont. Host the next call from tennessee. Caller hello. I just called to give him the message i cannot even see well enough to read very much but he was talking about the way the black people, the things that they would quilting and felt the patterns into certain quilts and hang them on the closed lines. That was used in the deep south. Im a white lady i am elderly im not welleducated i have read a lot of history and i had a lot of loving me. I love people. I read a lot of books. Black and white. God gave me a lot of love in my heart. This guy is really interesting to watch. But i havent read his books but that is something he needs to know. I have a paper here somewhere that shows the different patterns if i could find it again. Of the quilts where they hang them on the clothesline every 50 miles or 100 miles it would be a signal and they would use that. Host before we let you go tell us about yourself and if you were raised in tennessee and what it was like over the years. Raised in tennessee but i lived in georgia for about four years in different parts and thats when i realized that part of tennessee, was raised in the mountains and we didnt have that prejudice. But the part of georgia, and i met some real sweet black people i have never forgot them. I cannot believe. I couldnt believe the things that i seen. I just couldnt believe it. Lets sit on the front porch and rocked the baby. They say no we cant do that. That was 56 years ago. It was painful but with the quilting that the quilting was used in the deep south. Host thank you. Thank you for tuning in. The audiobook is very well done. So if i practice them and it builds character and it goes into a dramatic reading of the novel. And professional actors and like the underground railroad. Talk about tennessee and georgia and when the book came out they said it would be weird to take this book down to the south where slavery happened. And in new york as well. So its not the south. North carolina gets a bad rap in my book as a white supremacist state and an exaggeration under jim crow. Host South Carolina and georgia. I think carolina gets at the worst. I am going to greensboro and durham this week. I have been there five times since the book has come out it has been embraced by colleges of libraries. And it is a reckoning if you grew up on a piece of propert property, if you are a white person how do you reckon with the fact your great great great great grandfather brutalized people . And as a black person as i was researching the story is a grownup in many ways i should not be here. It is just luck my great great great great grandparents were not killed on a plantation. Its in the book. No matter where you are coming from, its interesting to see reactions coming out in france and people connected with the not see any underground railroad worker. Getting people to safety. Its interesting to see culture and countries react. Host do you enjoy the College Lecture circuit . Does it give you anxiety . Ive talked about the book enough it doesnt give me anxiety. If its for the first time but if i start reading for my new book later this spring and how people respond. Host is it finished . Two thirds of the way through. But with certain books it is helpful to road test. If people are laughing at the jokes, do they fall silent at the terrible parts. And also if you get a good reaction people are understanding of what you are trying to do. Host without going too far into your character come if you did not sign up for the College Lecture circuit, would you essentially be tethered to your couch . Could easily do that . I work at home. I do spend a lot of time there. Going to foreign travel with publication two different countries, North Carolina and tucson is a way to not be such a hermit and travel allows me to see places i dont normally go. So its a good and positive. Host president obama praised underground railroad did you get a chance to meet him while he was in office . I did. Very strange. I got the email from one of his assistants. I thought somebody was breaking me again. And then it turns out it was from the white house. [laughter] so i went and invited a bunch of novelist. And he said he had been in the white house for almost eight years it was a week before he would leave and said he always wanted to chat with writers and have lunch with them now he only had a couple of days left. Time was running out. [laughter] being left writers we were dazed by the news that trump was coming in and at the point of lineup. And to Start Talking about writing. He had some great books and guy animated writing his first book. He was on the indonesian island writing in a hut and some wizards and he got animated just thinking of the thrill of the creative act. Host where were you writing your first book . [laughter] iam find of early days. And writing articles that would give me three days of work. That i would write another article on that would buy me another couple days. Living in various rooms of slanted floors forgot the end of the day with my writing or on a chair with those terrible apartments but thats what you did when you were that age. Host honolulu good afternoon. Caller its so nice to be here with you. Thank you cspan. Colson are you familiar with the writing of one italian . The most famous work is the cosmic comics its not a novel. Each chapter is like a short story unto itself but when i hear you laugh i thought maybe you would like the humor i know how to translated in english that the climbing barron or the baron in the trees. Host why is this appealing to you . Caller it is the magical realism. Became a little bit earlier but about the same time. The language is just beautiful and intriguing with his imagination is that a familiar author . He is great and cosmic comics. And those books. And again, have an affinity with him when i encountered his work in college from being someone who writes fantasy, and he was a highbrow writer using the tools that we adored growing up. And or clark 11 and the right for the job and that whimsical or fantastical voice to be inspirational and if youre watching the books or short. Pick them up. Host according to what you sent us you are reading a comic book. Mr. Miracle . Yes. When i was writing sag harbor sometimes you do Real Research like go to plantations. With sag harbor which is 1985 and pop culture i recreated some of my mixed tapes from 80 and comics. Im not up on all the stuff coming out nowadays. But mr. Miracle is getting a lot of great reviews. So i downloaded it. It is a small corner of the dc comics world. And this keying is having a postmodern 20th century take. Pick them up. Host tolstoy you are on book tv. Caller thank you for taking my call. To preface my comment, one of the most interesting summers i ever spent as a teacher in 2003 as a Teaching Fellow for cspan. And as mr. Whitehead probably knows, its very difficult to encourage students to read. That he stand a message to my students the benefits to reading books as opposed to other activities . Sure. I am a writer because i love reading as a kid and the stuff i was supposed to read and it was Science Fiction. And wanting to write stories about zombies and robots and may be want to write serious fiction. It doesnt matter if it is twilight or hunger games. If you like it, read it. Dont worry what other people say. If you like hunger games, go to dystopian books and the dystopian take on Society Might also like from different writers i think you can be, gateway through different kinds of fiction likes even king was a gateway. That yes, occasionally i will be at a library and say to the website Say Something nice about libraries. Why do we need books . Why do we breathe . Why do we eat . They sustain us to live. Host are your kids readers . Yes. The four yearold, not so much. He likes to take a legal catalo catalog. [laughter] batman and joker sets. 2000 pieces ages three through seven. [laughter] my daughter, graphic novels for younger readers are big now. So thats a big part of her reading. She is 13 now shes moving into young adult stuff. Host myrtle from new jersey you are on book tv. Caller i want to every week on sunday. Sometimes during the week. Mr. Whitehead. Will you do a book review with the Elizabeth Newark area . Im not sure where that is but my website says where i will be a in the spring and perhaps i am coming to my town near you. Host she is a new jersey . I was there for a book festival a year and a half ago im going to newark on tuesday actually so thats not too far. Maybe we will see you there. If you do come wave. Your speaking at rutgers . What is the most common comment people make to you and what is the most offenses somebody has made to you . Offensive . [laughter] i will wake up and that was totally messed up. [laughter] its funny because definitely in europe there is a difference lack of acquaintance with africanamerican black culture so there are basic questions of the underground railroad and how it works which makes sense. But then questions like could all white person have written this book talking about my authenticity but you would never ask a white person could a black person have written this book. We all know can white people right outside of race and thats a big question now for authenticity. And it is framed in a way that has nothing to do with my book but you are the exotic black person. Let me ask you. [laughter] host these are questions you get in europe . Yes. Do you get apologized in the south are in the us. People are moved to apologize for the culture or what the great great great great grandparents did or did not do. It is a small percentage. That the most common question of the female protagonist which answered. Inspired by henry jacobs. But then to answer the engage. Because of the underground railroad have you become an africanamerican writer . With a slam recognition, people do want you to talk about black lives matter and they want to talk at the 4 00 oclock spot. Have somebody from black lives matter talk not a novelist. Talk about White Supremacy and racism of the 18 fifties because things have changed contemporary and its not my job to be the fourth seat i really and the writer. Grade missouri good afternoon. Thank you for the fascinating interview. Mr. Whitehead are you familiar with the slave writings of faulkner especially in the long short stories of stream of consciousness technique . And the second question is what you think of the post modern novel and that school. Host what do you think of them . Caller they are fascinating. Roberts postmodern novel of executions in the fifties called the public burning. Willie gatz from st. Louis who just passed away at age 88 and fascinating novels like the tunnel that an interesting school writing. Host thank you. I have read faulkner. Im blanking on the others i dont see them often enough as an influence i dont have much use for them in terms of my work and havent read and 30 years postmodernist i remember reading the babysitter first month of a freshman in college. That was important for me and one of the first writers that i read in class and about the books that summer so to continue to study up on them. I definitely did my time with the recognitions. And jr. And distinctly american novels, the kaleidoscope interpretations of american culture. Richard nixon is there is a character for the rosenbergs and that way to take the characters to put them in your book. It was okay to do that. Host from a profile in the guardian 2017 parents randy executive Recruitment Firm and were less than delighted when he announced the desire to become a writer. Sure. My father grew up poor and firstgeneration college. And helped for his children would not be broke. [laughter] and i was broke many times since i got out of college because of my career choice. They were hoping for another time i would get a straight job and become a lawyer but then when the intuition is came out they knew i was in it for the long haul. Host is the father in your book sag harbor . He kept changing the channel out of habit him and the nightly news with the only thing they watch the faces on the screen, the newsmakers this days victim and all the everyday heroes were a parade of shifting masks. Props of an idea like the souvenirs our friends and neighbors brought back across the atlantic. The two faces bonita and called them out. He didnt need a teleprompter he knew his commentary by heart. The televangelist put his hand into the collection box. The problem with black people is they waste time praying to god when they should be out looking for a job. Nobody ever gave me anything, didnt ask for anything some people need to get off their asses. Sure. That was a conservative take from pulling yourself up from your bootstraps. Owning his own company definitely with that last part. Sadly the first part you only get the tv news now it sounds like me. Now i have become him. [laughter] was cnn and msnbc. Host did you think about changing the channel . Exactly. Normally when i work i have to have six months free. I became such a news junkie. Between ten and three i was off the tv news nipple. Host have you remained sober . Exactly. [laughter] unless something is crazy is happening. Is this actually happening . Then i get sucked back in. That i finished this book before our latest charming round of news because i know people now who are writing. Host which round of news are you talking . Did trump really say that . You will really open up National Parks to uranium . This type of thing. I know people in a good liberal tradition i was writing a comedy in our living in such a dark time. That i finish my book before i got sucked into the new cycle. Host new york city go ahead. Caller how are you. Thank you for taking my call. To questions. What does mr. White house think of the use of the and word today and second, if there is a difference in his mind be tweeting stereotype and racism or any time on any type of background. Host what is your answer to both of those questions . I live in Washington Heights for the past 30 years as a white woman so i hear that n word a lot that god forbid if i let it slip it would be a big wrong. So my personal opinion is that all vocabulary should be available to all people. I think stereotyping is a gateway toward racism or it could be a mindset. But there is a difference. If somebody says black people have a great sense of rhythm is that racism or stereotyping or is that dangerous stereotyping . Host where did you grow up . Caller originally i am from germany and immigrated 32 years ago to new york city. Host thank you. The deep differences between the stereotype and racism. Racism depends on negative stereotypes of people with different skin. Misogyny on stereotypes about gender. Zeno phobia. People from other cultures. Those that im not smart enough to make. In terms of the n word. That has been part of our culture for many years and at this point in history to say who can use it and who cant is exhausting. [laughter] it is tiring. If you are white person who wants to say that n word why do you want to say it and why is it an issue . Why you asking . Why to spend time wondering why can you not use the n word . And it is used in different ways. The way the word pitch bitch can talk about a personality that is brassy or a misogynist way between males and females personality or power. If you wonder if you can say it, dont. [laughter] you are probably racist. Host how important were your teachers impacting your current literary career . People ask if there is a special teacher or mentor that took a shine to you . No. Nobody singled me out for special treatment. I think about mr. Johnson introducing me. To a teacher who is racist but did as a senior in high school. So no one took me aside and said you are special. So in my development as a writer i still think of the things that i read in Elementary School reading the lottery for the first time and with 19 fifties america. And to be introduced to this novel as a freshman in college and there is the explosive dynamic talent. So they introduced me to very important books. Host michigan we have a few minutes left in our program with author colson white house. Caller hi there. I am calling because i love your hair do. It is cool. And peter read the quotation by your father and i think he went to my high school. We lived thought the same way we lived in a mixed area we lived together and set together and did not call each other names. And a lot of people that graduated with me of color or non color went on to really great things. In fact two of the officers from our graduating class are people of color. We didnt call each other names nobody called me a dirty jew i did not call them another name. We lived together in the same neighborhood and got along grea great. This new racism is ugly and i dont like the groups that get together in government to fight each other. Host what do you mean by the new racism . Caller you have all these subgroups in our government that get together five or six and then they fight for certain cause when it should be one person one vote. They should be speaking for their constituents. Not themselves are wearing colors. This is america i wish they would get back to it. Sadly its not new racism. The manifestation of american and darkness going back centuries. When obama was elected people said this is a new society at are no black folks who said we now have a post Racial Society because it happens and obviously the people who didnt vote for obama 49 percent did ended up voting for donald trump. When we talk about hate crimes on the rise, people marching with neonazi and conservative flags. Unashamed to show their faces. They dont even bother to where the kkk mask. Talk about the return or reemergence of something that has been there. And it will continue to be with us for a very long time unfortunately. Host and he took out all the references to race in sag harbor that could have been written by anybody. It is a book about becoming a teenager and entering a new identity. To me its not a black kid figuring himself out but the identity formation we all go through in our teens where you start and my community ends. Why did apex want to change its name . Apex is a town in the midwest they want to rebrand themselves so they hire the nomenclature consultant who is a protagonist in the book he names new antidepressants and names a bandaid that comes in different skin tones see you can find your own skin color and not be ashamed versus the flesh tone bandaid. So they want to change the name of their town for branding. The same way neonazis and white supremacist have branded themselves to be offwhite. If you want a new image to protect on project a new identity for yourself, start with the name. Host so what names are considered . We will not give away the endin ending. The main character is faced with what is the essence of the town and american history, how can the new name of the town capture where winthrop is going and where it has been. Do they tell the truth or to sell the new identity . And it comes to adventures with a solution that comes up to his worldview not necessarily to look great on tshirts or signs but it is his solution to the towns problem. Host tennessee you are on book tv. Caller hello. I wanted to ask a question. Listening to the program some humor in your written works have you thought about writing something that is humorous or a satire on a serious subject like slavery or lynching or the civil rights. With jim crow possibly . There are different moments of black history through a satirical lens. Apex hides the hurt and also humor is used if it is the right job for this story or not. My comic book is the noble hustle. I certainly had a lot of fun writing it. The first line is i have a good poker face because im half dead inside. You find that funny or you dont. Either that is miserable humor or not. [laughter] but that sums up where it comes from the netbook. Host Madison Wisconsin go ahead. Caller hi. Thank you for taking my call. I am a librarian. The books that you loved that were important to you in high school and middle school . Thank you. Hours of solitude as a High School Senior was great. I had a cool english teacher teaching a class on fabulous and that is fantastic. And then we read the old british religious story with the a series of adventures and the template for cora and underground railroad and the structure and then obviously the introduction to magic realism. Earlier, stephen king and carrie has an interesting structure. So in her high school and in her town and in that narrative the accounts of the carnage that carrie unleashes it is foreshadowing and the text outside the main text to be assertive i remember that you can have that seventhgrade phrasing you can play with structure and that way . [laughter] i remember thinking that by reading stephen kings carry. Host did you have any trouble naming your main character mark spitz . Of course he 18 or nine or ten gold medals in the seventies olympics for swimming. In my book cannot swim so the ironic name. [laughter] host barbara Virginia Beach virginia. Caller thank you for taking my call. Such a fascinating interview. I am enjoying so much. I would like to ask Colson Whitehead if he admires or likes the work of Walter Mosley . A writer i very much enjoy and writer who is versatile like himself in terms of genre. And also as someone who can talk about a black man in modern america. Thank you for taking my call. Thank you for calling. Walter mosley is great trying to find a model for a book with a plot and to become a better writer and structure and reading a lot of protective books and Walter Mosley mosley his books were a great couple months of my life to bring in politics same with james elroy and bringing in race as long as mostly and i was fortunate when the intuition asked why is finished sending out to people for blurbs and Walter Mosley was very kind and gave me a few sentences and i have met him since then. In the book came out people would say i buy your book because Walter Mosley was on the back and i like him. It was sweet of him to take the time. Host he will be sitting in that chair and april for her fiction authors he will be there in two months. Our last call from georgia go ahead. Caller good afternoon. Mr. Whitehead you are a refreshing breath of fresh air. Do you know the work of Charles Chestnut from the 18 nineties . He was an africanamerican attorney in chicago but do you know that his fiction . I do. Indeed. I told you my English Department in college was very conservative thats where i first came across slave narratives and Charles Chestnuts on chestnut, a very early black fiction writer. It is group great and has a word for a magic and i was lucky all of those crazy words as a writer and i was lucky that i could use the word grouper in underground railroad because there was a freight master would hire people to put the tax on their plantation to prevent slaves from running away as a binding spell so people would be afraid to run a way to cross the magical line to be a grouper and second by this bad magic and of course i assume the magic did not work but as cynical 21st century person does not agree in conjuring. Host national all book award winner Pulitzer Prize winner, Colson Whitehead. Com he is our guest on end up here is a list of his books. Your new book is out when . The end of this year or next year. Host thank you for spending three hours with our audience. Thank you for tuning in america. Im not trying to diminish or sugarcoat or ignore any of the real problems we face. Instead im trying to be accurate about the broad picture of the American Experience and how American Life is experienced in those circumstances. I think we are focusing so much on the pockets of real struggle we are confusing as pockets of struggle for the common experience facing people they keep hearing that their experiences the same of people for those that are suffering and struggling and i want to deny that suffering or the struggle but those are atypical situations in the common experience is much more positive than the narrative suggest. Now on booktv after w msnbc political analyst Zerlina Maxwell offers her thoughts on identity politics and how to create a more inclusive democratic party. Shes interviewed by maria kumar. Interviewing top nonfiction authors about their latest work after words programs are also available as podcasts