The selection and presentation of library of congress for fiction is one of my favorite responsibilities the product is this Great Institution an opportunity to honor the novelist for short story writers to interview books from the most recent novels and short story collections past prizewinners include luminaries Toni Morrison it is my distinct honor and pleasure to award the prize this year to one of our nations most gifted writers someone Time Magazine the longest largest recipient and only one of four writers in history to receive the Pulitzer Prize for fiction twice i am talking about none other than none other than colson whitehea whiteheads most recent novel, the nickel boys won this years pulitzer as did his 2016 novel the underground railroad. Colson has an extraordinary ability to write about historical events and transform them into meaningful events of today the rewriter of literary fiction whose works are best sellers a testament to his talent to communicate to everyone who cares to listen to this award is the result of the recommendation of more than 60 literary peers and i was happy to accept. Colson whitehead please accept the library of congress 2020 price for american fiction. Guest wow that is an honor. I have been writing 29 years now first as a journalist at the newspaper new york which closed down last year and then as a novelist. I have had many ups and downs sometimes you write a book sometimes people get it. Sometimes they dont. They say keep going. Dont give up or else you have to get a real job and lord knows you dont want to do that. Thank you library of congress for affirming my resolve not to get a real job. I will definitely think about this moment when i feel low and the future when the book isnt going that well. Thanks a lot. Host a very big congratulations to you from the library of congress i am sitting right now in washington dc. Well talk about your career. First my name is marie the literary director of the library of congress. We are very proud to be giving this award to you Colson Whitehead with a series of achievements you have made in such a short time. Century first publication in 2000, it has been 20 years and we are super impressed you are the youngest person ever to receive this prize. You will go on to do a lot more in your Lifetime Achievement a big cheer from the library of congress to you to do a walk through your career and to start with a little background he went to school in manhattan and born in manhattan and then as you mentioned you started in journalism at the Village Voice where did the writing bug bite you . Were did that start . Guest i was very young my perfect day when i was a little kid was staying home reading comic books watching Twilight Zone and read with one reruns and watching stephen king every year my mom and buy a new stephen king novel late seventies and early eighties and we would all sit around the house i thought if i could recreate that writing of spiderman would be a great job writing novels about vampires would be very cool i could work from home and not talk to people that seemed like a good gig. Host you talked about this many times its nothing new but your first attempt at a novel that you call a failure and was rejected anyone back to the drawing board to do it better and do it right. What made you stick to it . Guest i wanted to write in college but i became a writer by being rejected and realizing even if no one understood what i was doing i had no choice but to keep coping. May be the next one after that are after that or just to write the Different Things they may like or may not like so it is really just realizing they have to put myself up and write a page and then another page and then it adds up if you keep doing it. So dont waste any time. Thats a good lesson in general the Creative Life doesnt always so thats very good luck for the rest of us so the first time we saw you and your public knew you were what is your first book that was published called the intuition asked it was compared to other writers it was a little bit hallucinatory about an invisible man but it was funny so i see those comparisons. What do you think of when people make those comparisons of you . Do you have those models of those particular authors . I remember reading the first chapter invisible man in seventh grade short stories for Elementary School kids and inevitably the lottery and then invisible man first chapter and i remember thinking that this is crazy but if he is doing it maybe i can do it and with those pieces of invisible man or Garcia Marquez to be a tool of the realistic to say im always flattered of such a frame of reference as a letter to the editor. You went on from intuitionist to make a very big splash to John Henry Days in the extraordinary competition and colossus of new york and sag harbor but i have to say each of your books has been a New Invention there is no genre of Colson Whitehead or formula here and here the same place in every book doing that to happen . Guest it happens that way partially if i do a book thats very serious then ill do one thats a little more funny with capacity for humor or a short book or novel nonfiction but david bowie and Stanley Kubrick and they take it from project to project war movies Science Fiction movie all the different genres and if you do something once then why do it again and david bowie in the seventies and eighties would always changes. So one persona from record to record so if you do something once why would you do it again the next time so just like nickel boys it deals with american and history and institutional racism but one is fantasy the other is shorter and more realistic that switching up is the way to keep it fresh for me maybe we come back with the next one after that. Host i think it disappoints anyone but it comes from criticism you dont want to love anything more than to pigeonhole someone and we cannot pigeonhole you. Up with one if they were trying they would say sag harbo harbor, nickel boys you dont get much further you could say train, john henry, underground railroad but you dont get much further than that. It is impressive, really, the invention and imagination that it goes different places with you every time. Guest thank you. New york city is my hometown a bit of John Henry Days in the book of essays and it is fantastic a pox on apocalypse in the book i finished writing takes place in harlem in the sixties find the boys to talk about it because if i do it one way was the point of doing it again. Host talking about your hometown you come from a family that was into commerce and finance both of her family were business peoples you are very attuned to the commercial world and there are not many writers today who were talking about work or business or commerce. But i see it in your work and there is a strong infinity of understanding. So definitely our roles of business is important the way they have Consumer Products is a recurring theme. So you can talk about america unless you talk about race and class. So where i take a step back to figure out how the world works is a big part of it. Host you mention race there is a constant awareness of race and all of your books. It almost takes it in a Toni Morrison way bad it takes race and goes into the big picture you can actually read your books to say more than what is on the page. Obviously this is very much on your mind. Is a deliberate or it is just they are the way you speak and see the world . My american this and my new york notice defines the lenses through which i view the world. Some books races important others. Is not at all like my book about new york its about rushhour and central park its not black rushhour just rushhour. But then to define so much of my experiences in life im glad i can address that. And then to find different ways of talking about it race functions one way in sag harbor being one way in the eighties meaning different than the underground railroad which examines slavery and institutional racism and how an attitude toward blackness and White Supremacy has defined our country. So find different ways to talk about race and history i am doing my job. It is incredible. Because you talk about your work and you actually describe it as joking and then serious then joking and serious but the last two books both Pulitzer Prize winners take a deep dive into race and history very strongly so to what extent your journalistic background lead you to this direction and with the underground railroad you view history in a way so it seems to me you are being drawn into a historical mode in the latest to works is this a passion of yours or is the phase . I think an apex hides the hurt i was writing about contemporary society i think i said my fill i have nothing new to say about how we live right now but the material forces me to think how we got here in different ways. Coming to slavery as someone in their forties as opposed to little kids seeing roots to understand slavery in a different way. To research the jim crow era and nickel boys how that provide daily humiliation for black citizens i understand that differently. I found more things to talk about it takes place in harlem in the sixties the institutional racism deals with class and money with new york city. But i was forced to write about it in a new way to research the city just before i appeared on the scene being born in 69. But in doing research i find a different way of doing things and it has been very useful for my work. Absolutely. What do you do for relief or fun when you are working . Because as we all know being a writer in a very deep rabbit hole working in a solitary fashion, sometimes you are in a trance and if youre in the zone its a good thing what do you read . What interest you apart from writing . Speculative interest me is cooking right out of college it takes years to make a meal and then you actually get to enjoy it. [laughter] so thats good but during the pandemic and with the onslaught of bad news and politics actually do journalism then books for research so those days that there was less news to distract me and were not working on something and there is a new book called the vanishing act and that was her debut when it came out and to see the old folks continue to thrive with Science Fiction and fantasy read the fifth season book two years ago it was the city we became that was a fantastic lens which was my concerns about the city so im excited to see how she does it. Unfortunately all i can do right now is read book for research and then another book about new york i wish i had the Attention Span to read for fun but perhaps one day. Host that is wonderful. I should say the library of congress always gives the prize during the National Book festival. So here we are so thats a good thing you just gave jamison a nice nod. Thats a pity you would at a great time at the party. But i want to say to you the theme of the festival is american and ingenuity. You are meant to think about for a moment perhaps at least while the festival is on stage and in public view, the abiding good stuff that deep down and the creative world of ingenious people like you who bring us these tremendously wonderful and nourishing adventures and stories the theme is American Ingenuity and what exactly word you say colton is to you . How do you say American Ingenuity if we have that . Working on the last six years i would say it survival a slave escaping for surviving protecting their child so they can be born to a better world. In that generation after that to enjoy freedom. And then ive been reading a lot about new york in the seventies and after the pandemic and then to receive tlc then new york bounces back about the arts of new york the cities and the seventies the terrible place it was broken dirty everyone angry and artist were inventing hiphop and punk and a new form of jazz, salsa so in this dilapidated new york city those artist coming together with these viral songs and new forms that dig not date on did not exist so that was transcending your environment those are my two thoughts. That is a great thought so survival or maybe the resilience with those last two books of yours that are very high stakes and violence all around and that sense that is so strong there it is important to be aware of history and to go back and review the history of black americans and to look at them in the eye why is that important to you, colton . Guest the simple answer is to not repeat mistakes and to see how much we have yet to do in terms of race black folks or native americans and to say the original sin of slavery but i think that is genocide of native americans. Thats not todd very thoroughly in schools now better than when i was a kid but not as good as it should be but as we all know where we screwed up and what we have to fix. Host i was impressed when i heard you say the other day that you use primary sources. Thats very important to you because you going back looking at slave narratives and source material that comes from memory its not historians writing it or imposing that point of view but themselves so why is memory just as important as examined history . There is so much in underground and in nickel boys that doesnt exist because thats the slaying that escapes the initial narrative so i was going to slave narratives and then they put writers back to work in an interview former slaves all that language and what they wore and what they planted is with those firstperson accounts but a historian would never think to preserve. But those last two stories we have seen it without those firstperson accounts we lose how much we are supposed to liv live. Host are you a student of history and harvard when you were there . No. The department was conservative there was one class that todd the american novel after 1945 got to read the invisible man not just the first section i took classes and Africanamerican Studies Program it wasnt accurate and some of those classes so i think i became a student of history so its one thing to say its an idea to go railroad but how does slavery work how do we make this story real . One that was just listening to eighties hiphop and those that require a different kind of research. Host im sitting in the library of congress and ride upstairs is the Thomas Jefferson original collection which is the foundation of the library of congress when the library bring down in 18th the british attack on washington jefferson said okay all the books burned down or you can buy mine thousands came from the jefferson collection and they are sitting here in the way he organized his library was the way franklin organized his which was memory, reason and then imagination. Memory would be history , reason is philosophy and science and imagination is fiction. So where do you fit or do you straddle all three . Apparently people in the world leading happy lives so im happy they exist at all. So if we talk about switching genres im so happy the books are out there and someone can say with sag harbor he is a writer of humor and then to say a historical novelist to say a nonfiction writer i dont think too much how to classify these things. So i think i will leave that to other people not even an issue to talk about. Host somehow you absorb all three of those things and do a beautifully. You do straddle it we are living in these very Uncertain Times we have a lot of issues to resolve we have a country that is in flux and in pain to some degree this feeling of unrest to the people out there that are listening to you what is the message to the ordinary people who value your wisdom right now . It is a way for people that are older of that younger. Anyone in their twenties do what we did left a lot of messes and problems for you. You are still young maybe not stuck in your ways you have no choice if you want to live on a planet not 120 degrees every day so dont do what we did. Not very cheerful. I apologize. [laughter] host very very nicely pledge. Congratulations Colson Whitehead the library of American Congress price for fiction we are so delighted to give this to you and is such an honor to talk to as well. Guest mine as well stay safe hope to see you in person not too far from now. Host absolutely. Thank you. Host thank you for joining us this evening 20th annual National Book festival. There are several ways to connect with book tv and the library of congress at book tv is our handle for all social media and the ways to connect with the library net book fast here is the next author