Good evening everyoneand thank you so much for joining us. My name is bennett and im a bookseller and Event Coordinator and im going to be your host tonight for literati featuring miles and donovon hohn. I wanted to extend a thank you to everyone for your support of our Virtual Events programming. We feel incredibly lucky that we are able to continue to offer Virtual Events during these difficult times and we wouldnt be able to do that and gather and hear about king of confidence if it wasnt for you all showing up and stopping by so thank you for doing that. Id like to quickly go over our zoom policies. We do ask you keep your video feed disabled throughout the duration of the event and if you enable it we will disable it for you and if you and he let a second time we will have toreview remove you from the event. We appreciate your cooperation. I wanted to go over our format, were going to have a reading by miles and donovan to start us off and after miles reads from the king of confidence which was published this past tuesday and donovan reads from the inner coast was published early last month in june were going to hear an extended conversation to the two of them for 30 to 35 minutes and have a few slides here and there as needed and this adds some supplemental images to the conversation and once were done going to wrap things up in audience q a so if you have questions for miles or donovan feel free to send them my way through the chat. Ill be screening those and sharing them tonight. And now im going to readsome bios and were going to get the reading out of the way. Miles is the author of the national and interests International Bestseller in the journalism fellowship. His book stranger in a savage land was named chicago best book of the year and he teaches at Depaul University and his interlocutor donovon hohn is the author of moby duck, the New York Times notable book and a winner of the penn John Kenneth Galbraith award for fiction and a literary science writing award and his second book the inner coast was published early last month and i think a lot of us know this but both of these men graduated from the mfa program at the university of michigan a few blocks away from the bookstore so i wanted to show that to those who are familiar but otherwise id appreciate it if you wouldnt mind putting your virtual zoom reactions together for tonights first reader. Harvey, thank you. Hey miles. Hey donovan. Good to see you. At the us and a Program Works in and i was poetry. Its probably why your book is longer than nine and also we both teach nonfiction here in chicago and i do it in detroit so its nice seeing you are in the zoom space. And i want to be clear to everyone that this is miles event. He kindly is sharing our stage with me. Im going to get ahead of you with your reading and a quote in your book, when the antihero of the book and youre going to tell us about tonight is gettingcrowned as king , youre right somehow this man, this king that managed to convince the 235 lonely souls gathered in the tabernacle that his paper crown was a dazzling royal diadem, that is wooden scepter on with a cold energy and his red robes stitched together by ladies of the church enveloped in an righteousness and splendor so in tonights event we dont have 235 lonely souls gathered in this tabernacle you are the king with the paper crown my friend and im going to be george adams, the theatricalrosario. So why do you start. Ive always as ive said to you beforehand sometimes with nonfiction we end up being, Holding Forth as experts on the subject but i really love the pros so i want you to read some and i think youre going to go with something thatsgoing to help us understand the title. I know youre a journalist but will get to that in a minute. Bennett, if you could, i thought id introduce our zoom audience to the title character of mybook. All right, there he is. So im going to read a little bit about this man James J Strang and his time which is the decades leadingup to the civil war. And this is the guy and you wonder how he managed to establish it. You can leave it up. You can leave side one up. No one wants to watch meread. So if he doesnt look like the most charismatic guy to you, listen to this. Although james strang was physically unimposing at two inches over five feet and the ball with an oddly bulging for head, he did possess one distinguishing feature. His dark brown eyes which one acquaintance described as rather small but very bright and piercing, giving an extremely animated expression to his whole countenance. Another claimed that those eyes seemed as though they could bore right through a person but more than any tangibleattribute , strang possessed an invisible ineffable aura called confidence. In those days for electrical power, confidence was what made the antebellum era,. Confidence was black magic, good fortune and hard cash combined. Confidence could turn worthless paper into glittering gold, countdowns into cities, and the lots into bustling businesses, losers into winners, authors into millionaires. Confidence was a charm deployed by bankers and merchants, philosophers and politician. Confidence was the soul of the trade in the words of one leading financial publication. Without it added herman melville, commerce between man and man as between country and country would like a watch run down and stop. In an age before the federal government began printing paper money, and age when people had to trust in privately issued banknotes, glorified ious, confidence was the de facto national currency. So thats what this guy possessed and confidence and his ability to wield it was what took him from being an obscure farmboy in north new york and a failed lawyer, failed newspaper publisher, failed postmaster to the midwest which we then call the far west where he became a Mormon Prophet and a real threat to Brigham Young in the church and where he ran a couple utopian colonies which illtalk about, one of them in michigan. But you know donovan i want to talk to you about your book. We took a word out of my title. Lets take a word outof your title. Post, what is that all about . My book is called the inner coast and i talk about both the adjective and the noun but to use a noun, since here we are unfortunately speaking here in chicago. Im over here on the other side of michigan. But its part of what i was thinking about with this. I grew up on the coast of california the son of misplaced midwesterners and ive spent much of my life here by the great lakes and i kind of wanted to make the case for the great lakes at the coast. Coasts have always been contact zones between hereand elsewhere. Etymologically the word Coast Designs from latin and in middle english its a coast of lamb meeting a rack of ribs. The seacoast was the rib cage of the landand its primary sense , coast refers to the place where land ends and see begins and all coast are by definitionouter and oceanic ones. The usual term for the edge of the lake or stream bank for sure the maritime geography of the midwest is a paradox. Michigan is midwestern. Its also coastal. Peninsular in fact reared its shoreline is speckled with antilighthouses as new england is larger than californians, florida and that of the other states besides alaska. Standing on a midwestern beach you can watch freighters across the horizon and in nautical terms to coast is to travel by water while keeping the land nearby but in that sense you can coast through the heart of north america, circumnavigating all the states east of the mississippi without ever laying eyes onthe pacific. These days, the word coastal is as sociological as it is geographic and phrases like coastal living or coastal elites, the word collapse the west coast and eased into a conjoined seaboard inhabited by decadent sophisticates as if brooklyn were next to berkeley or boston and commuting distance of seattle. Certainly chicagoans or holiday goers are michigans gold coast might qualify as coastal in this sense but not the residence of gary or sandusky. Or of dearborn, home to the Largest Community states as a panel down the river from rouge erie and osborne an area on the north side of detroit and become popular with immigrants in vietnam. Ill stop there, its a little taste of what im trying to think i knew about that word coast. Lets go back to confidence though because you touched on , you brought in melville who wrote the confidence man and you talked about how this idea of confidence was required economically but was also a kind of secret power for the charismatic like strang. You talk later andcan you tell the story of the origins of that word . You quote the newspaper story that introduced it into the lexicon. One of the things im fascinated by in your book is that all of the materials your drawing into the story are also doing a certain amount of as i was in that pacs passage of analogical excavation. Youre reminding us that what parts of the american vernacular originated in this antebellum period. Some of it is strange now, you do all things on the idea of thinking which i love but once the origin of the confidence man . One of the fun things i did with this book as i kept finding words that were not early enough in Oxford English dictionary as a lot of the people in our audience know, oed is sort of the Gold Standard for etymology and i look up the word that i found in a newspaper story from 1820 and it would be like 1890 and i would write a letter on and i dont know if they changed it were never wrote back but confidence man , that word comes to us in 1849 and this is a period where everything, theres been an economic crash that the countries yet to recover from and is a massive logical revolution. Youve got the telegraph and the photograph, the railroad. Theres a Communications Revolution that is like the internet superhighway in a lot of ways. People are displaced so this confidence become such an important thing and in 1849 i got is arrested in new york and a newspaper called him the confidence man. His game was to go up to people and say on the street, pay donovan, you dont remember me . You dont remember me and of course youd be very embarrassed and miles, miles hardy and youre saying miles, ive gotyou , can you just give me a watch just as a show of your confidence and he would do that and people would give him their watches but this word spreads like wildfire. And its really fun to watch it spread through the american lexicon at this time as it describes so many people in so many walks of life and i think strang epitomized this. He was a guy who was able in this period when truth was malleable and where facts work really facts a lot like our own time in some ways. People like strang arrived in those times and he was able to invent his own truth. And pull it off with a kind of bluster that people wanted to believe. Im going to do something a little weird miles because you posit strang as a his is from a writers point of view its this treasure for you. As you know, you write about a bit but i want to make you speak a little bit about the index of your book. And the acknowledgments. Its amazing, so im just going to share. The way i think about how this book works is you got this central figure in strang is almost like a planetary object that was like force of personality exerts like Gravitational Force on antebellum 19th century of the upper midwest, really the whole nation and so your book draws into it all these kind of marbles and wonders and obscurities. From that time so like just from under a in your index ipo these items. John wilkes booth and henry clay and darwin and the sky shores who invaded the keyboard. Somehow youve manage, its this magnetic power of area if you can gather all the other. In your acknowledgments to talk about that. You say at the beginning you talk about this story, the man of the crowd and how theres this central figure, he spots into was once arrested and absorbed my whole attention. Tell me about like how you think of the way, i dont know if you want to explain that analogy to the poe story that its not a traditional biography, your book, write . So how does strang work with all the rest of history . At least three good books about strang and they are very good, im not being the list the dismissively. They can to treat them as either a footnote to mormon history or a michigan story, a midwestern story. One of the books is called the assassination of the michigan king. From the start i saw strang as a lightning rod for all the enthusiasms and social movements and apocalyptic fears of the age. I just saw them as this embodiment, of this crazy crazy time. As my writing style ghost its funny because i so admire you and we dont do the same thing but you do something similar. The new york review, New York Times book review i just got a review from a writer admire and he called my style wonderfully aggressive which is like the biggest compliment ive ever had. He talked about, i hadnt thought about this, this is where you getting the big picture from these little parts. Donovan, i to go back to you n this. I think you are one of the really most wonderful nonfiction writers today in doing exactly what you just praised me for. Donovan has served this story 1 million times but theres an essay in your i think the second essay, right . Called a romance of rust. This essay i always tell donovan this was before i knew him, was a real source of inspiration for me. I read it one day 20 years ago in harpers, c15 ago, a a long time ago and it was just at a time where i needed to be inspired by another writer. I picked up harpers and start reading about this antique tool collector in michigan and i thought thats kind of interesting, i made to collectors. I have written about collectors before and i was interested in him but the way you brought american history, american commerce, our desire, our commercial desires into that was just incredible to me. If you want to talk about that. Yeah, sure. Yeah, that one for me was kind of an important one because i had been writing nonfiction but i came to nonfiction by way of fiction and poetry which is not all that uncommon that people come to from one of those more historically with the standard genres are many programs but by initial, my earliest essays were a personal essay or two of confessional essay and this is a person i wanted to do what youve done in this book, which is due the act i think of it as the art of finding where something catches your imagination. Like an ant detecting the pheromones and youll follow it. But once you have that, this acai city and your mind starts generating questions. I have some ideas about what the questions might be behind making of confidence, so for that essay i had this article i i have grt affection for who loose on the outskirts of ann arbor was a botanist by training. He had begun collecting kind of by chance, happen to pick up two ranches that were identical and he had this vision of symmetry come , like ethan two specimens of the same plant but it was ranches and the kind of come you know, obsessively at least began collecting from all over the upper midwest factories, estate sales, foreclosed farms, just all of these artifacts of history. He turned this part on the outskirts of new dexter, he turned into this kind of museum. It was not open to the public where he made these arrays of like the artifact, they look like specimens come to look like fossils, balance of dinosaurs or bugs he finds when he said when hundreds spigot handles that are all identical he will make one a array eventually scott this kind of a cabinet of wonders but not of the natural artifacts but of manmade. That became hugely fascinating and then that accompanying him narrative and into the narrative he get to try to create your own museum of an essay actually i think and theres a way in which you are doing something similar here with your charismatic figure you are following the finney allows you to follow your own curiosity and questions and make think speak to each other so that some at the inventor of the keyboard is adjacent to the guy who introduced the tomato to the midwest as a medicinal plant, this wonderful, accidental juxtapositions that come up. I think we may be working from a similar method and may do i hide such admiration for you as a writer. I always tell my students that i think, i dont make me predictions about the future of writing a one of them is i just feel a own work and would be interesting to hear from you and i can talk but an example of it is i feel like writers and curators are in the digital age economy more and more similar, like writing is increasingly an active duration. For me thats all really cool. I really love that and i think increasingly i find myself, this book had a 250 page single spaced timeline where i just list what was happening in the strength life and the world and then i just come its there, its the narrative making machine. I mean, i give an example, ill do another quick reading if you dont find. Go for it. Bennet, if you could just put up the picture, slide number six. Did we lose bennet . Here it comes. I thought i would read, and im going to read two really short paragraphs and then i will just in between them ill give you a little explanation but i think its important for this and i want to resist little bit about islands. Islands, Edgar Allen Poe wrote, loomed in the stormy seas of the psyche is place a perfect security where freedom from all restraint can be enjoyed. Tiny cosmos when normal laws, number rules of conduct and normal systems of logic dont apply. They are frequent locales for experimental communities including the original utopia which thomas moore set on an island in the famous 16th century book. I would just say theres many things we can say about the community, strang had a a beavr island and its a fascinating place and somewhat controversial but i wanted to talk about the draw. Sometimes people think what was this guy, what was his draw . One of the things we need to understand is just what apocalyptic times these were picked in 1848 rightwing strength was starting to starts colony on beaver ivan and really push it, this was the year of just apocalyptic fevers and the United States and in the world. I thought i would read about those and then youll see why the sea monster is here. Strang spent the summer of 1848. 2 what he described as ominous signs including a series of revolutions in europe, the u. S. War in mexico, and rising tensions between north and south. For months he had been urging his followers to prefer prepare for the end. Let me warn you the time draws near. Prophetic events are crowding post upon one another. His newspaper in reported mormons and local fisherman spotted a huge sea serpent off the coast of Beaver Island. One of many such sightings around the world during the years of ak47 and 1848. From a 21st century perspective of course its hard to know what to make of such an outlandish claim. But one possibility is that strang intended to equate his michigan monster with the beast from the state whose appearance was in the pocket but whats of of revelation. Knowing justice method claim such beasts symbolize quoteunquote the degenerate kingdoms of the wicked world unquote strang may have hoped to underscore the idea of Beaver Island as a new science of prophecy. That promise land where according to mormon teachings the latter day saints with help gather to usher in the Second Coming of christ and the advent of this 1000 year reign on earth. Now i should point out that his picture in front of you is not an illustration of the sea monster that strang said was spun off Beaver Island but it was one of the many sea monsters that legitimate people thought they saw in 1847 and 1840. This was this was a Royal Navy Ship that spotted the sea monster somewhere. That just gives you a sense of really intense time were talking about. Strang was not his only reason for going to the island. He also started a criminal enterprise. You can take it down now, bennet. He basically had a pirate colony running out of the island where he would send his people out all over the lake to raid various towns and draw the midwest to steal horses and other items. Theres been controversy about this. Early writers have said theres no proof that strang hold off any of these crimes and that is all antimormon bias. There was plenty of antimormon bias but strang pulled off these crimes. One of the thing i think the king of confidence does is move that along a little bit. Theres some pretty solid undeniable realtime reporting of strangs crimes in this book. You discovered theres a whole chapter on the horse rustlers in ohio. If i cant get right you did some, this is the research. Thats all new and i think its important, first of all, its lots of fun. There are a lot of great 19th century journalists in small towns and this is the guy who is he editor of a newspaper, was a wonderful sarcastic writer but this is important because, in real time theres a series of stories one after another, first a horse thief comes to the stand, steel sources. Theres a policy senator thune. Hes caught and brought back. Its one of top to top lieutenants, and a force it. The paper reports on that. The paper reports on strang come to town. The paper predicts strang will help get this got out of jail. Theres a i sent guilty but its overturned on a on the technics of the ship to develop some form or something. Papers any area right about how that technicality would seem to be, broadly and it was corruption and someone got bribed and sure enough strang aid doesnt go to the state penitentiary, stays in the local jail and theres a jailbreak and hes gone and he returns to Beaver Island. So yeah, theres just a lot more of that. Hey, i was wondering, since one of the things we both are interested in, as my region just showed, is the landscape of the midwest, donovan. I was wondering if theres some stuff from yeah, the introduction which i have read different, this came out in early june and ive a few of the event but intriguing stuff i havent read before. Ill did do a couple paragraphn the direction but youre right i think theres a similar, the way think all of these essays they have a formally and cinematically preoccupation with the idea of excavating. For me as somebody who is an adoptive midwesterner, by dissent, i think i grew up on, as my family very nostalgic for the illinois prairie, i grew up on the kind of mythic midwest, lots of little house on the print but not just that and so to me the whole project has been to try to do certain excavation. And your book, your book, this is the midwest like weve never imagined it. Its one thing before jumping to my own stuff, one of the things i love about the idea of islands, the tiny cosmos come it feels like your public is doing the logic of the microcosm. Here we could look closely at Beaver Island and strang becomes a representative man in so many ways. You didnt mention the rest of his career, state legislature, right . Amateur meteorologist at the dawn of meteorology is a a scientific discipline. To his credit abolitionist as the war approaches. Really a representative figure but the item becomes of this concentrate of america out there in the middle of lake michigan. For me my First Experience in this part of the country was a farm when it came down to us in our family. Ive got two got to paragraphsl read about it. This farm, was passed down through generations but it was over and door county near the edge of lake michigan. By the 1970s the pharmacy longer operational. The family had held onto it as a kind of heritage to which the increasingly scattered tribe would make pilgrimages, sharing deals and boiled walleye while commuting the statically with an agrarian past. Vestiges of which survived, place was like a museum of anachronisms. Exhibits included an empty red barn, an outhouse with the splintered door, a hand pump that drew water from a well, glistening unixes of amber flypaper that spiraled from the farmhouse raptors. There were also a few chickens including one whose beheading i was made to witness as an initiation into sort of brutal yet valuable knowledge farm life was to import. Headless, the chickens body rt a single flapping lap around the chopping block, at the bow gruesome and comical. At the edge of the farm was a shallow body of water called lost lake and according to legend a locker had one winter had driven oxen across it. Harvested timber, his wagon had supposedly broken through thin ice dragging the longer and oxen with, fate i compulsively thought about what paddling around with my brother in a dented aluminum canoe. Lost lake, shallow, you can touch a bottom paddle but the bottom was soft, the paddle blade would sink into it as far as you could plunge it, never touching hard ground. Who knew what was down there . I imagine if you fell overboard and tried to stand you would get sucked into the muck, disappearing, one of those hapless and unlikely prehistoric animals, miniature horses close and who was, sabertooth tigers that had mistaken targets as a watering hole. Illustrated encyclopedia of the prehistoric mammals of north america was among [inaudible] although it never visited them the tar pits were a prominent feature on the landscape of my inner life. Well, yes, for me what it thinks and you did it as a right is and to have images that become work as motives so the idea of being things buried down that you cant see below the history is kind of, especially for a collection of essays which is like a collection of poems need to different kind of unity than you have because you have a plot, right . I have to use music or themes to we find together. You have a plot and want to talk about that because thats thinking and and i want to make time in maybe five minutes to open it up for questions. You are not [inaudible] credentialed pistol in, right, what you dont have a phd in history. Im really curious because i try to work with history. Im curious about your method in the book. About, i know you spent many years, i know this in the archives and all the rest but im also wondering if you did the kind of thing that a know some trained historians do and i imagine the writer must have done because you are trying to bring the story to life with the kind of sensory detail and immediacy that we might encounter in a novel. There was this moment, thrilling moment, a wonderful moment, youll have like two dramatic climaxes, one is where the u. S. Navy since a gunship to Beaver Island which is amazing, i dont want to spoil the ending any br ending because its really good. The tragic story of course in the end, but theres this one thrilling moment where youre talking about this figure who is failing to go out to Beaver Island. The warship close in from the deck they could see the densely forested shores of Northern Michigan where hundred year old coffers soar high in the air. I underline that moment because it seemed to be exemplary of what distinguishes the narrative history you are doing, the creative nonfiction you doing here, the literary storytelling youre doing here from at least some kind of a scholarly history, but reminded me of this phrase about the historical imagination meeting to imagine yourself into these moments. Would you talk about the methods, like how did you go about getting a sense of place in detail . I mean, so first of all, i mean, its a little tricky to talk about this because not completely but poe would be one exception in the last come i dont know, 40 years im guessing. I really dont want to get slapped upside the head by some of my colleagues academic historians have pushed back on the idea of narrative. I just didnt when youre telling the story youre not telling another story. But my own feeling is people crave narrative and a good narrative history. I have a lot of work to make up for whenever i write about history because i have to learn it but sometimes against me of vision, that passage you wrote, theres a book called natures metropolis and its a classic book about chicagos role in the west. I just remembered from reading that book be fast and by the idea of these michigan pine trees being cut down and settling the prairie, like they were this called green gold. These are really precious commodities and then its a matter of just trying, whenever you can, i dont think you made stuff up but you know when some extent on a deck of the ship and anyone who has driven into kind of the upper zones of michigan knows what its like to get out of the car and smell the pine. I just want to get that little moment right. We used to go up to some friends and i built a log cabin in the Upper Peninsula and will be driving up on 100degree day and are airconditioned car and settling would get out north of green bay and that smell with you too. I just want to get that in the book. I have a defender of narrative storytelling in history and i love doing it but have a lot of work to do and have to be, i am so respectful of the academic historians. I will say this is something i Pay Attention to a small when i have drawn from historical sources. You do credit him which is more of a courtesy, like you quote their books and you honor the titles. The book you may be quote the most often or the title i noticed the most often was the one on pantaloons. Do you want to talk briefly before throat open to questions . I was astonished about how much passion this book is. Its a much about fashion, like how people addressing, his fake row and fake crown but theres this whole story being out of the type on Beaver Island. Its about michigan so 20 be about fashion, right . Everyone knows that. I think its about a lot of the book is about gender roles which were fascinating. Women on the island and started wearing pantaloons, basically pajama pants tied at the ankle ten years before the famous profeminist started wearing them as a symbol of the womens rights movement. They were so far ahead of the time which one of the interesting things. They look like big skirts that although the shorter in front and then wearing some really nonsexy pants but at the time they were really shocking, and eventually strang said all women on the island must wear pantaloons. This became sort of the outward point of rebellion that led to his assassination in 1856. In 1856. My own feeling is it was much deeper than that and i think we have something we think about right now, the way masks have become the symbol of loyalty or nonloyalty, right . If you were pantaloons or if your wife wore pontoons on Beaver Island you are with strang. In the same way that until yesterday when the president announced that masks were okay, not Wearing Masks was a symbol of loyalty to the president. To some extent i think aside from health and safety, at least trump believes people on the other side were Wearing Masks just to show their opposition to him. Clothes are always political. One of the great joys of this book was thinking about gender relations. I have not read margaret fuller, the great protofeminist right at this time. She is fascinating and good writer and when we talk about fluidity know, martha fuller was running but that in 1840 saying no when is completely never completely woman. There is a huge range. Just one of the many, many interesting aspects that i love writing about. It is close to strangs household because his second wife of his polyamorous household was [inaudible] travel safely with the freedoms of a man, right . Before we go to questions lets put up slide number five. Bennet, can you go to slide number five . This is strangs first wife alibi room passing as strangs nephew charles douglas. Strang, for many months, toward the east coast in 1849 as the word confidence man is come into fashion, introducing this young man as his nephew and personal secretary whom he shared a bed with. Charles douglas. In fact, she was a young woman named alibi redfield who strang had secretly married. We dont have time to tell the whole story. I think al byron is one of the most exciting aspects and is a very progressive woman for this time. Thanks for that, then it. I think we should, i hope we have peaked some curiosity. I think bennet, we should throw it open to questions for miles. If we havent. We have two. Thank you both for the reading of the conversation. The first question with coming up tonight is from Eileen Pollock and shes wondered, hey miles, i love the book and is hoping if you tell us what you learned about why people follow an obvious charlatan like strang . Thanks, eileen. Great friend and wonderful writer. Well, i think people like strang thrived in certain times, and so those times when theres a lot of change and when people dont know what to cling to, and when the truth becomes really porous, right, and so strang survived in his time. You know, i dont mention the current president in the book. I dont mention present times in the book. Theres a brief reference in the front and the back but have to say, like my time working on this book totally a most exactly overlapped with trumps candidacy and election and presidency. And so i went to sleep every night thinking about trump and woke up every morning thinking about strang, and had to say, like i think trump really helped me understand strang and her own era help me understand strang but strang help me understand trump so that was useful. Strang was really manipulate the media. He totally understood newspapers, this booming newspaper thing and interested how they could not only get in the news from Beaver Island through this information superhighway that was happening at the time, but how he could sort of control the conversatio conversation. I am struck by how many people like him are ahead of the time with mass communication. They call him the grand doctor, this guy in the 20s and 30s who implanted goat gonads come in who were worried about their really. How did he succeed . He was a really important early radio pioneer. He had these big stations first in kansas and was kicked out of the United States come 150,000watt station in new mexico. Among other things he helped convince Country Music on the radio. Hes like a Brilliant Media guy, as i think theres some, and we saw in 2016 how some dudes in a Little Office building outside moscow can have an impact on the u. S. Election. Again i think its been like one step ahead of us with technology. Thanks for that. We have another one from chris. Chris is asking a somewhat similar question about the parallels between strang and everything going on back then and right now. It boils down to our time is right. How much of the book did you feel was [inaudible] and that you want to take it its interesting, as i said in the last question, i didnt want to write a a book about ni didnt want to date my book by mentioning trump or our current times. I wanted people, i think will have hopes of books will be read ten, 20 years into the future. They may be vain hopes but there you go, have them as i did want to date it. Its interesting, and thanks for the question, chris, from the start early readers, i set out blurbs and critics alike have seen it as, you know, i didnt know, kind of an allegory for old times even though i dont mention our times. As an english professor which donovan and i both are, like i am a Firm Believer in the humanities even the humanities are getting cut everywhere. I think this is like what will save us. By studying the past you understand the present and the future and so i hope my book cannot do that. I know don evans will. Surely, miles, you must even cognizant when you wrote these two sentences about how they would be shadowed by the present. But you live in an era of the sudden transformation, an era when you could be broke one day in which the next Anonymous One day and famous the next. An era when lunatic fantasies could metamorphose into artifacts such a precarious time when nothing felt stable or certainly more. Favorite chameleons like a man who is no longer there. So it may be a little bit, it wasnt all like unconscious the ways in which you are no, it was conscious but, i mean, like i think, i guess in answer to your question, i think i wouldve written a different book in a different time, and i guess if i feel lucky about writing this book, its only because of a massive bad luck were all feeling, not all, obviously this country is divided but obviously referring about having a time when someone who to create his own truth, like strang, kimberly nudges take over Beaver Island or get elecd to the Michigan State legislature, but have much more power than that in the white house. So yeah, obviously trump influenced the book, and our world influenced this book but i think its true for writers all the time. In the essay because its true. Are the other questions, bennet . Bennet, or mic is often. Thanks for that. With one from the evanston ensemble. What is a like now and kate is wondering how did the trip influential writing and your thinking and editing the book . Well, i went to Beaver Island after visiting one of the questions, kate, educational f her family. In one way Beaver Island come those of you who know and if youre a lot of people out there in zululand know what, its very beautiful youthful place. One of the things that struck me about is how remote it still feels. Were on the south end of the island and i dont think with internet and we couldnt get cell signal that was like for teenage kids it was like trauma. This is like the worst possible moment of their lives. But for my wife and i it was just great. We set out and just laid out on the deck one night and watch this incredible meteor shower and is like you thought they would come down and hit your house. Strang has not left much in terms of architecture as to his murder in 1856. The mob i was trying not to give away your ending. Well, yeah. You know, so the mormons got wiped off the present. May be one building, maybe two, but where you really see strength is in the placement. So st. James is the only real town on the island. Thats st. James strang. Teens james hahn is the only real highway on the island and that was the kings highway he ordered his people to do so you really feel it more than that, and you can see this in don evans book because donovan is a go there and experience that kind of writer in the best way possible. I just dont like i want to go there. I wanted to see it and i didnt affect the book any profound way but i wanted to be in that spot surely when youre putting yourself using historical imagination into the place maybe just a little subtle way, a sense of, the distance between the north end of the ottawa st. James is on the south and where the fish mentor in revolt lippert you mustve at a sense of scale. Yeah, its like what you did with moby duck, this bestseller the claimed which is amazing but its about i dont know how many ducks, rubber ducks to give released into the ocean and where the old wind up but its about many other things in that way that donovan was talking about. Its sort of writing which both of us to which i hope is wonderfully digressive. If you dont like it, its awful. Its like why dont they get to the point . Donovan goes so many places in the book and see so many things, just to bear witness. I think bearing witness in such a powerful thing in our culture and something we dont do enough of. I know there may be other question but it really want to make a movie of this because it does feel cinematic. I know you have ideas about who should play strang. My 18yearold go ahead. I also want to know if you any ideas you should directed. I was reading and taking unlike a lot of narrative history theres actually a kind of tweening in humor to the storytelling. You would almost need like Charlie Kaufman or spike jones to adapt it if you get to it. You would have to get the town right because this series, its getting into a lot of serious stuff but youre trying to play with the genre of the tall tale almost come like play with that albert. Well, you know, i think voice is important. Youre such a wonderful voice writer, donovan, but for this book i just thought of it in the back of my head as the barnum voice. It wasnt anything like im going to write a pt barnum sentence but always thought about iqs always filtering like the barnum voice, that phrase was always there. Who would play strang . Bennet, if you could call up slide eight. I have no idea he would play strang, but heres what my son juuling, the c18 suggested, and and i think here we go. Here we go. It is jared lehto. If you look at the nose of these two guys, the eyes, i find it uncanny not to say jared has a kind of chaotic charisma to thank strang mightve had. I really struck. I feel like theres a genetic tie here, that only needs to be traced. Are there any other questions . Donovan and i want to get you something before we close out tonight. Got a few more here that have been coming in. Im hearing that Paul Giamatti would be a a a late period. The coen brothers would be good directors. Obvious a lot of questions on the connections between right now in democracy and specific at the time and what conmen were doing but this one question that came up that agility, that i would really like you to talk about, and its regarding his abolitionists release. Im hoping you could talk maybe about how you would shift insert respects but other things that i think that one is coming from your wife if i read that correctly. Thanks for that. Can we just about my wife, shes shes a wonderful, wonderful chicago [inaudible] but she did the audiobook for this book and it was really fun to work, kind of work with the come mostly give her suggestions and she said action under professional and i got this. Its great. Im listening to little bit of it. Its so much fun and im so proud to have my name associate with others anywhere but the mortgage. Okay, so what was the question again . It was about strangs abolitionism. I would say theres one thing that strang isnt slippery on, it says abolitionism. From his days as a young lawyer in new york he expresses an interest for this and i think one other thing i did to push our understanding of this along ways i kind of found out what mightve influenced he took a trip to virginia for a corrupt father from his father love was a very corrupt and now contracted with taken the money and run from virginia and he sent strang pandered to clean up the mess. Theres a letter from strang back to his fatherinlaw where hes just shocked at what he sees. What he sees is slave labor. You have a northerner going down to the south were slaves are working on this canal and strang sees on his fatherinlaw is a bit of the canal the most horrific conditions, and he is most clearly and upset by it. He carried that within his whole career. When is in the Michigan Legislature he worked hard against his own party, because strang was a democrat, and working with the new Republican Party which was brandnew then, abe lincoln, half of africanamericans. He also ordained a black elder into his church more than a century before the mainstream mormons do. This is one thing that is really when it interesting about straight. Just in general what is great about a writer is hes totally contradictory threedimensional figure it was so much fun to dig into. Can we id love to. If you could go to slide nine. Donovan and i would like to talk about some of the books you should read. You should buy our books i want to talk to you more about that, timberland, but he you can go o slide nine, we each have some books want to recommend to you. Bookstores are not fully functioning now and we just dont have the browsing capabilities. These are three books, like love a brilliant essayist. This got a start review today. I think its the last sexual taboo shes writing about. She writing about unconsummated passion, series of essays on unconsummated passion. I find that to be one of the most interesting subjects, i brits several of these essays. Its wonderful. Avalon is the new poetry collection what a great and prolific poet Richard Jones who runs poetry east and is a great colleague and friend of mine at depaul and cargill falls is a wonderful novel. Bill and i went to a program in ann arbor together. This is his latest novel. He such a beautiful stylist, this is such a great comingofage story. I wont ruin it but is its aba group of boys who find again with live ammunition in it in the force, and so its kind of a quite book with this intense tension at every second of it. Donovan, what have you got . Could you go to ten, please . Okay. I also been thinking a lot about other writers publishing into a pandemic, strange time, so for some going to recommend scorpion fish. Wonderful novelist set in contemporary greece of recent history during the greek economic crisis. Think of it almost as but by a young writer who also went through michigan teaches that when state. Cant recommend highly enough. This is one, that they view by one essays named jordan chester. I first and candor in the of the believer which is a terrific essay about a strange Debutante Ball that takes place on the texas border. My last one is avoid the day by a writer name j kirk. This book is so hard to describe im going to read my blog for it which goes like this which is, avoid the day is a marvel, half mad detective story but also a a fever dream of a memor at heart the book is is not for goes come lost manuscripts and the truth hidden behind are symbols. In the mountains of vermont to the backwaters of transylvania to get the ice fields of the hh arctic coming out any day now, its a july 2020 publication. Those are my three. Final word, miles . If i could see one more thing before we close and its sort of, like the arts parcel in trouble right now because of covid and bookstores or so in trouble and authors are so in trouble and their people in worse shape. My wife is an actors and theaters for shipment in chicago and going out of business. I want to urge folks listening to this to support literati and also to buy donna burns book and buy my book. I a big browser, like it would buy book from an event like this but we dont have the ability to browse like we used to. So if you think about mine both of our books, and i suggest you buy both of them, please do it now and please do it through literati. I just think were in times when we are going to see massive cultural fallout from this thing. And buying my book is not proving your fighting that but i think its really important that we support bookstores come support office come support the arts. I will do in amen to that by emphasizing that literati has been an amazing host threat has been dimmick for many writers and then it has been the wizard behind the zoom curtain. So thank you in particular to literati. Thanks, literati. Donovan, thanks to you. What an honor to share the computer screen with you, and bennet, thank you. Thanks to this huge crowd of people who showed up tonight. Thanks so much. I see so many friends names. Its a little intimidating. Im glad i didnt look at it before. A big thank you to both donovan and miles. Thanks so much for stopping by and joining us. Thank you all at home for tuning in. With. I would not be able to feature all to my apartment on a config in this team meeting so thats exciting. Hopefully well be seeing you again soon but otherwise had a good that stay safe and stay well. You are watching tv on cspan2 with top nonfiction books and authors at the weekend. Booktv, television for serious readers. Hello i i welcome t