One mans tool of depression, psychic torment and a bus tour of the holocaust t in conversation with ben and jerrys books will be available for sale and signing the tens marked on the as trend five or less of your outside of the building adam langer is a podcast producer and the author of the memoir five novels, a senior are both magazine and contributor to the New York Times currently serves as executive director of forward. Jerry stahl is the author of 10 books including from midnight, a memoir and a memoir, i fatty. He has written for television, csi is he laura for which he received a any knowledge it. Moderator ben has a is an awardwinning trainer, strategists, social worker and also the author of several inflamed both the short story hcollection of th. The Science Fiction novel orphans and as a collection lost in space. This session is being recorded, during the q a session we asked that you stand at the microphone so we can hear our message. Thank you for joining us today. Join me in welcoming our esteemed guests. [applause]. Do we just start . We could wait for the rain to my. First off i want to say thank you to miss thats for making this happen and how honored i am to be with you and having l read your wonderful books. They really were renting and what i wanted to open with was i asked everybody to read both books before they showed up so they could ask questions but in case you give us a brief synopsis of what your books are about . My novel and managing this relatively quickly is set in 1982 so is very much on novel about how we got to our current political moment. E it tells the story of 10 kids who got together to perform a production of the diary of an old things go poorly and 30 years later we take up lives and show how this production has gone on to alltheir lives. Its all from the perspective of the 10 characters in the diary of and frank. I can see from experience ive read yourbook, its spectacular. Hard to compete with it, im not going slot. My book is not too long. Its about a repressed sky written in the third person for no other reason, very depressed and decides why not go to most depressing place on earth where despair is entirely appropriate. So i end up getting this magazine to pay me to go on a bus tour of the holocaust, three concentration camps with a bunch of strangers, many of them have never seen a jew so i was both participants and sideshow on this trip and thats what this book is about. If theres a way for us to talk about people who have never met julius i dont know how im going to work that in. This is my question. They asked someone to come moderate of panel, i was thrilled. They and you title. Thats the title you came up with. All my years of marketing i might have gone a different direction but there is heat throughout the book as i was reading it the second half of your wish old disclosure i burst intotears at one point. Crying over a book with your coffee but one of the things that struck me as wildly invited us here to talk about eight, they really are books very much about trauma and you dont use that word until late in the book but i keep thinking for them, your book is about a series of children, students and the context of the play but then theres all layer of trauma around what the play is aboutis and jerry , youre also looking at your own trauma along the way, your career so all of you what i want to start with is how did you think about it from the perspective of how does one write about trauma in a way that is fully engaged. I dont want to hate, i want to have traumatized these people are. For my book and i cant see for jerrys book, i would say part of the reason why trauma doesnt show up until halfway is is about 1982. These are about people who dont realize they are traumatized until much much later so there are events that take place when you are okay and you think youre more mature than you are and you think you can handle it and only later do you look around and Say Something must have happened back there and you look back and using how did dpeople let that happen . So again, the title of this, im glad to know you to keep up with this largely because terry is dealing with a place where the embodiments of hate in these concentration camps i see my novel as a little bit more about hope that can arise out of trauma. Rather than the hatred and its impact. Jerry, what about your thoughts on this . Number one, whatever trauma i endured, though horrific beauty of a trip to a place like say auschwitz is once you realize all your karma, although worth stuff that ever happened to you, how petty they are. You go to a place and youre expecting almost like magnificent grief w. Get off the bus and the first thing i see is the auschwitz snack bar with a guy wearing and im with stupid teachers eating a pizza and slamming of fans which is its own fall because its not what youre expecting and last kind of visual i be having. I knew i was going to see the worst of you as he, i didnt think i see that particular resignation. Was there something that said auschwitz snack bar on it . It was the snack bar and it was in auschwitz. It didnt say like auschwitz nipples, it was just a pizza parlor weirdly enough with the most ham centric menu you can imagine wishes another. Is either a slap in the face or some kind of weird triumph that jews and like myself jare just so accepting, go ahead, have you are pork. Its hard to reconcile. One of the more fascinating, might not be more ridiculous is your caught between i need to feel something balanced against my own feelings and what this looks like. The snack bar. I was struck by Something Like said to me, that there are so many corporations and Companies Involved with the chants that exist today and she said how are we supposed to buy products from these people . The list is unbelievably long. Its hard to find a bar mitzvah of what has been fitted for a yugo boss or know that he designed the ss uniforms back in the day. You could just go on and on. Item, one of the things were talking about is how do you look at of pain thats so massive, so horrific but there were also children w go things and is also in the past. How do we did it feel real today . Both of your books are trying to make sense of something people dont think about. Were you thinking aboutthat all . Thinking about how difficult it is to teach young people holocaust . To write something about topic is people dont talk about or understand. Again, sometimes you choose things, sometimes they just choose you reason i chose to focus on the diary of anne frank is thats where people read about the holocaust. That is the one thing they latch onto that has become universal. I also wanted to look into what the experience of playing these roles might do to person or how it might affect them later on. Ive been working on a project where i go back to talk to members of the broadway cast and the 1959 film to see how their lives were changed and its kind of amazing to look at who played anne frank on broadway and it was their First Experience with the holocaust and it changed their lives just by playing these roles because when the play first cannot this was entirely new. Im projecting here. If you grew up in houses like we grew up is going to be talked about in some way at some point where his family members or my fathers endless focus on and is everywhere seems weird to me and it now i guess in both cases youre talking about people who dont have necessarily the impact but then they go in this play and visit these camps and they dont have any other exposure and was it like trying to understand . I can just speak for my own experience i thought i was going to go visit and to place this in a cultural political chronological context it was like 2016, trump is just heading into the presidency and it felt like i was visiting the future more than i was visiting thepast. What you learn when youre there and youre reading literature thats been baked over endlessly, one i myself does not realize that people ought hitler was a ass clown to and you can find endless magazine covers up in being mocked nine ways to sunday it was the same thing with tromp and were watching that antisentences and mounts, watching the mockery mounts and somehow the trunk and hitler wins out. I think its interesting to think that you said both you and jerry crew of hearing stories of the holocaust, i never heard the stories. This is something you didnt talk about. There were intimations of you cant have that set, get a lego. There were intimations that i learned about the holocaust from pop culture. I learned about it seeing the great dictator because our teacher showed us the holocaust miniseries with meryl streep street. That was my education but in the house it was something we lost her, no one died in the holocaust, they wanted nothing to do with. Its reflective generationally about how it came forward and the moving backward and i want to have to talk about this, im from new york and we dont need to make this political access to see when trump was running, nobody i ever had a drink with doesnt think hes ridiculous. To your point jerry somehow that translates into something we all totally grass bbut i thought its interesting in both your books that will books also seem to make time and Pay Attention to we want to tell contemporary story and even though we are still in it been trying to figure it out, i have to so what im interested in is a talk about this mainly with contemporary america which is still undefined in the past generation which is still being figure out. I know how it was for you but for myself is much more easy about it is as opposed to whats happening right now because what happens in 1982 you can look at trends. When youre writing about 2016 2070 everything is constantly in motion all your assumptions are changing as you write. You can go the landmarks are more than a year there also in constant change, a constant state of flux so it becomes more difficult for me. But you did, you still trying to unpack and look at it. It was what were all living through and were trying to make sense of it. Theres this ass clown on television. I mean to get over sophisticated. Forms the prejudice against ass clown because thats the goal as well. I thought there was an interesting section where i dont want to have to wait in but theres no way not to weigh in, i was curious ithow you are thinking about it. A particular problem for me because i went there in 2016 and for a variety of reasons i didnt end up writing anything until it was of pandemic book in 2041 so i have a different perspective and you are now with the guy running for governor of pennsylvania who says i want jews to support me its all these things you couldnt have imagined yet again, here they are. The imaginable becomes manifest as a gap, the obvious. The thing that struck me when i was writing my novel is that a lot of people translate to not a lot of people but some people i had grown up with in 2017 , the ass clown from your Political Science class is now the guy who is dictating United States water board policy. So is this kind of disconnect where youre looking at i remember that kid. I remember he got bs and cs. Theres an off and in the Washington Post about why we should water board. Then you look at Brett Cavanaugh up on stage and hes something exactly what happened back then so it doesnt become too much of a stretch to see how we got there because you saw what the seats were. Its kind of like you saw the reversal in childhood for what would be the performance later in life. Except there actually did apply for. Without a platform you only have so far you can go but i agree, they also show the difference of where yougrew up and one where i grew up. They were going after everybody online, no one was inviting them for and. Allstate, anyway. Im curious if this is something you said to reflect this fact which is youre talking to people who are in the original anne frank or the people you grew up with but what was the experience like for the two of you to read the books you like, on this tour which is frankly as funny as you are we should talk about is a very hard book to read and i thought the second half of your book and i need this in the best way it was very hard to read. We are keeping both of those curves off our book. Thats terrible marketing but also hard toread in a way i couldnt turn away. Im curious what the experience of comingout of it, they are intense books. I want to correct my earlier comments. Hopefully there is an intensity there but like many books you start and it turns out to be something you didnt expect. The thing that happened after i got my very first open as i heard a bunch of young filipino ladies screaming and im watching all these people sell these i realize these young girls think that i am kramer. Not bragging which is bad enough and they want to have sulky taken with me and the fact that people are taking sell these out auschwitz, the judge . Second thing, im in the middle of the greatest crime scene of the century and im thinking about i cant believe i like michael richards. Im not trying to make myself look good but theres this just juxtaposition. We have to have a sign concentration camps saying no pokcmon can be played here. I dont know if its generational, cultural or inevitable blessed there is not, to the slack nothing but gravitas. Asian fence and off, people can drive by from a distance and a lodge because when you get there and theyre snacking and they are taking sell these, what is that message . Did they take a picture with you or where did that story go . If you would like a picture with kramer. Hes been handled long ago. He was canceled and welldeserved but that news in make it to manila. You remind me of my father used to say when my father says are you from new york there really is a argue jewish or not . My grandfather used to say if you ever forget you are a jew, gentile will remind you which is great advice if you are the only guy in your school 800 is a jew and gets routinely be up for telling jesus which i must have. There is a question for both of you which is what responsibility if you do you feel for writing books like these when you are to. Do you feel more responsible to capture thestory you are writing . I dont know how you feel about this. You get as a quote unquote jewish writer you put on panels are supposed to talk about hatred and things like that but it doesnt necessarily you know, when im writing this novel im looking through lines of these characters and thinking about my responsibility of how a jewish person or none jewish person is represented. Im following with my imagination where it goes. Afterwards is a sensitivity says maybe you should put that in there, maybe you should but the Creative Process you have to get away from all l. Get away from this feeling, this sense of. You want to tell the story. You dont want to think about your responsibility to history for this . Group. Thats how i see it. I think thats wonderful, jerry. What is a sensitivity reader . Maybe those kashyk yet. A sensitivity reader is someone hired by a publisher. Its not that lucrative deal but theyre out there and they will take your book, easton ellis would have loved them and someone will read from the perspective of lets say a jewish reader so it will get a jewish reader look at it and say a usually use that swear so this is something publishers in my case was a sensitivity reader found one thing in 330 pages so i said whatever but books actually canceled from publication because sometimes the sensitivity reader notices something so be on work if people want to job pcs and you can do from your own home, is out there. I have been running this heatedly the last couple of years. It represents also the change in our, better understand, better cultures and usages in your case jewish reader looking at the jewish author you do not. They had like i remember who they put through but. It wasnt michael richards. Is not. He is sensitivity reader we hada lot of jokes. Did you have to change anything . K i think one word. Actually whats funny is when i was speaking about like topics like theholocaust , i found interesting is i found myself censoring myself in a couple of instances because of how i play. And i say this because kind of like and theres someone out there from my High School Classmate remember this that there was a running joke in that was cold with jewish students in my high school where people would go a holocaust and that was supposed to be a math line and people would say that and i knew in a 2022 book, that was going to read is a lot more significant seemed at the time so i donot put that in there. But im not being censored, sometimes people say see something and say you dont want to do that. In that case thats self censoring and youre recognizing what the world might look like. I have a coworker, but this is not what i need some comments i guess it was a joke, now i remember he was like his relationship, i out with people that joke about the holocaust and im thinking the world is changing the way to live here. I never had the experience ion east coast out there unless. You dont joke about that. I think thats a given. What you can observe and perhaps render has this very uncomfortable truth, its like the great jewish writer who i used to analyze, Bruce J Friedman said if you write a sentence that makes use or squirm , keep going and i squirms my way throughthis book. But for one service true north i had was that this is real, this happened, this is the massively e inappropriate way in which people seem to be. In the year of our lord, somebodys lord 2016. And i chronicle it. But that in no way, is not disrespect for the events, its almost a kind of home but hopefully not judgmental rendering of how people react as a kind of blue the top of my head off. There was in a akc beautiful Jewish Cemetery and i had to tell him to see his foot off the tombstone because hes trying his red 90 on i forget which rabbi was, some illustrious rabbi from the ninth century and like i know this guy k. And im not the sensitivity not the police but at the same time its like a, is the cemetery and, this is the question. Is not joking about the holocaust, stooping people we are experiencing that experience it. In both your cases there is a lot of humor and i feel like theres several questions in one but first it would be interesting to how you use to her in your writing. Is purposeful or you are, is their choice . In my book i do it both ways. When the jeweler works it comes out of character, is comes out of the situation. When it doesnt work is because im being a wise. [bleep]. What i tried to is humor, naturally on the situation. When im kind of like making side remarks g and thats what i know i haveto pull back. Thats how i as well. When i see me seeking in i also is notthat funny. I dont plan what im going to write. I literally dont know what i think until i start to write. And migrating does tend to come out funny the darker the subject but that isnt to say youremocking the subject. I dont have many rules of journalism but for the kids out there, going to jesus will, always make yourself as castle and youll be okay. Because if you think your re superior, you and your buyer, youre using other peoples as above, my humor comes from a quote massive discomfort certain situations. When i was in one of my first gigs in iowa now, the 80s i covered a new singles retreat weekend in topanga resort in california and all i remember the whole thing is this bof a at the same level of cubic hair gently brushing the chickens out. I was horrified but i put myself in their so see. And it was one of the most grotesque you know, 24 hours of my life is a certain reality and you have to make yourself uncomfortable it for me because if you place a, uyoure not going to get those key moments that the same person when experience bebecause you be there. T on the other hand i need the chickens again. Or walk around noon. Now everything is shot from. Both of you is so easy to say you are is all way of dealing with difficult subjects and im curious. What your opinion on that is using humor as all ball or even only difficult things. Im not judas nonstop is there something especially jewish, i have that wasnt especially the jews were the funniest people and had to be. Ucs asked all ball, naturally curious using as certain larger purpose to tell stories you want. I think its some survival mechanism because of people whether they beamerican , jewish, asian, latino, whatever peoples always have to be funny. And is at some point in history. Of torment and cognitive sour culture. Just somebody is in the barrel sometime in the week to survive is to make jokes at the core of nature of your own situation or you dont survive. User that way andthats i was finding it to. I think there is some truth to using humor as she were to deflect but also a certain kind of life others are in seriousness to because at least in the novel the irs is a lot of characters use humor to minimize what is happening because ofthat , some people like i have a character whose, director who was actually a sexual manager is very clever about using humor to minimize what he is doing. So humor aside from being a defense and also be a weapon to those who are playing it for various means. One thing you do masterfully in the book i would say essentially, he is using humor to disarm people and keep them in balance. Is israel, it is not real but the students are using your explain only think they are incredibly uncomfortable it because they dont know how to talk or think about it, theres a real dance going on. But the humor is in there because its a tool. Jerry, you looked like youare going to make comments. This may be Common Knowledge to a lot of people who read history but hitler wasnt afraid of being assassinated. He was afraid of being laughed at and to a certain extent it is 11 because in certain situations is the only weapon you. Margaret has this line where she says women are scared of being murdered by men that arescared of being laughed at. Somewhere in there are the characters were so weightloss lawsuit but not yet. We wont resist too much i want to see if any questions from its that either or both of our authors and answer, with 1000 more on the case of. Any hands . Please. Sorry. We need to use a microphone. I dont want you to wrap up and give us our hollywood ending but you mentioned both of us in your, and i havent read the book but that you saw the message of hope was the end. I was wondering if you cansay more about. Not to split them too much about it i think you know, the characters in my novel we follow them from keyed to two thousand 16 2017 and it doesnt and hopefully for all of them. But i wanted to end always where there was at least still some possibility and i think kind of people talk about whether a novel is happy or sad, is what you and do you want and it because it is there and then is tragic, some later and then is hopeful. I wanted and almost where there was some hope for at least some of their futures because cayou know, for me writing novels is kind of fun. I enjoyed the experience as a reader, i read the ending i want. I want to look on the shelf that i havent read before and i want to have that experience. And i dont like books where the dog dies. I like books that allow the least to have a moment where i think you, maybe it could work out. Thats a great question. If were going to do this right we should talk about all i did not ignore completely the love as i was listening i was thinking theres humor but also one of the answers for a diesel. If you is a global adv to transcend or find a way around that eight that were facing at adam you talk about that. With both of you to find ways to end up hopeful note. Im curious, i thought your book was hopeful at the end and you are here which is a great sign that were all here on stage talking. An interesting thing with my book is then condemned as being way too bleak and hopeless and also hopeful because the revelation i staggered onto is that holocausts arms the exception. The article. The time between holocausts is the exception they ask is always falling so be grateful that it hasnt fallen yet and for the time you have and whether thats hopeful or absolutely terrifying pretty much depends on you. To adams earlier comments in doesnt depend on when the book andwhere the reader is and how present they are. I know we have a couple minutes, do we have another question . My question is for adam. You dont like old yeller . I remember watching old yeller on the disney show because i knew how and go u,and jerry, im a big movie that, how did you feel . About the movie, yeah. What hes referring to is my first book, a memoir made into a movie. Ben stiller was brilliant. On the other hand i didnt write the movie, because why irene, what do i know my own life or writing, they hired a very nice fellow who had never done drugs so would write things like jerry shoots up and get some munchies so theres for all you professionals in the audience you know im talking so i was a different kind of jerk in the movie that i was in the book. So choose your poison but i thought he acted the hell of it and i was grateful for it. I was wondering, since you are here i had asked. They asked jim carroll county. Basketball diaries, he said great movie, has nothing to do with my book. So theres that. Thats what i thought the most clichcd way possible, what do you guys want you, eight, eight nba anything we did . Someone else asked me what do i want people to leave with after reading one of my books message. In the book i enjoyed into a different world where i can see the world through those characters through their lives. I want the readers have experience once they finish my book and then i want them to go out and buy somebody elses moment and see the world entirely. I bought the new erin book because i think hes brilliant so i and then by one. I know my mind first by allthat force. Theres a race author the borowski who survived the holocaust, rosa look save gas and i said screw my book, the one holocaust writer, below the cost and then killed himself, or else he did to and theres something very disturbing and disturbingly human about surviving maonly to take your own life so with that message of hope, thank you for letting me be here. I dont know if cspan2 would want us to take on dubai their books. Books are both ripping usually written and the vehicle, theyre completely different but there fascinating companion pieces