Hello this afternoon, hi. Thank you for coming. Good to see you all. I think we need no introduction or at least robert caro who i hope you have read all of his books and as enamored of them as i am. We are here because we are enamored to talk about writing. Not so much the subject matter per se but why writing matters. And we both feel, as im sure you do, that writing matters quite a bit. How it matters, is really a task for the writer to come to terms with. How are you going to get people to read, to turn the page, to be as enthralled with your subject as you are. And you know mr. Robert caro is working on he has a master of the enthralled. We thought we are talking a little bit about that. Recently and hope you saw this, there was recently a interview with bob and one of the things i thought was so wonderful about this was bob talking about certain working methods. And one of the things he said reminded me of walt whitman. And that, if you read whitman, one of the things you know about that exuberant poet is that he uses lists. Once william atalked about that too. Very different kind of writer than bob or whitman. And he said something to the effect of, if i go to the store and buy fruit athat is pretty boring. But if i go to the store and buy bananas and apples and cherries and plums and mangoes and ai am running out of fruit. But you get the hint. Then that is something. One of the things that bob so eloquently talks about in that review, the use of lists. Yes, what i was trying to. Everyone tell me no one will read a book about robert moses. I was hearing that year after year. I was feeling that i really wanted people to read this book. Because i felt he did something, my understanding is under career because he was never elected to anything. We live in a democracy where our supposedly comes from the ballot box from being elected. He was never elected yet he had more power than anyone he was elected. More than any governor, more than any mayor, more than any governor and mayor combined. And he shaped the metropolitan area in the lives of everyone who lives in it. I was thinking how do i get people to read this book, you have to do it in introduction. And in the introduction you have to show the immensity of what he did. You cannot just say he built 627 miles of expressways and parkways. And then i remembered ahe does it with lists. He lists all of the tribes and nations and they came to sack troy. And there is a real power in that. So i said maybe i can lift the parkways, list the expressways. And if i can do it right and get a real ato it maybe will make people understand that so you can say, he built the van wyck expressway. The major deegan expressway, the sheridan expressway and the governor expressway. He built the long island expressway. This. Net i went expressway, the cross bronx expressway, the brooklyn queens expressway etc. And then the same for the parkways. And of course, that only would work i felt if i had a ribbon to it was somehow the repetition of the words expressways for parkway, that is what i was trying to do. . I think we all go you succeeded. What is interesting is the subtitle of the talk here, rhythm matters. And that is what youre talking about. It is almost poetic really. And really awhitman is a poet so that means you are a poet two. Thank you. But to go into a different aspect of this, one of the things were talking before. Any talk about this a lot. One thing is that both of us feel very strongly that his story. You really need to tell. And it is not when it tells about robert moses or Lyndon Johnson or saint emily dickinson. When youre telling stories, there are certain kinds of devices that you use. One of them that i think is very important as the whole sense of the kind of narrative. With the following writing workshops the through line. I dont really know what that means. [laughter] but it sounds good. And it is a sense that you as writers always know what you will be doing. And i think you talk about that quite a bit. Well i tried. Because my books are so long to go in different directions. I tried before i start to boil down in my head to a few sentences. One or two paragraphs. What is this book about . So that if you go off on a digression, you remember how to get back to the main one. Right, when we talk about that i dont know how he feels about being wearing a necklace but i said this is almost like beads on a string. With a string of the narrative and we put beads on it. In the different breeds argus i digressions. And if you know of bob and you say, will give them examples i think of the Richard Russell chapter . That is a good example of that. So Lyndon Johnson for those of you who were here on overnight, his great achievement, greatest achievement was passing Civil Rights Act of 1964. And to do that he had to overcome you know today they say congress has never been fractured or divided as it is now. Its really not true. In the 1950s, the 30s, 40s and 50s it was not divided among a party line. It was the southern democrats, conservatives, racists, midwestern republicans amany of whom are also against civil rights and we southerners controlled congress. And as ai think of this in the 64th, i was going to look this up. Of the 16 great Standing Committees in the senate, nine were controlled, the chairman of nine were republicans and three others were republican allies. She could not get anything through there. Franklin roosevelt passed a wages in our ait was a last piece of social welfare that pass when jack kennedy was assassinated. Roosevelt did not pass a single piece of legislation in the last seven years of his presidency. Truman could not pass any. Eisenhower did not want to pass annie. Kennedys bills were basically all stopped. So i said well, i have got to show two things. I have got to show the power of the senate and congress. I also have to show the depth of their hatred of africanamericans. The depth of how they hated them and how determined they were to keep black americans in their place. And they use congress to do it. Someone wrote, the senate gave the revenge of gettysburg. And i said i can either do it by writing a couple of more chapters. There are so many books on race hatred in the south. I can do that again or i can take one senator, the had of the seven block. So his immense power and show at the same time, how he hated truly hated blacks. And so i did that by showing the biography. By doing a biography of russell. Showing these things. And it was easier for me to come back to the main theme because i knew the main theme had been laid out in my mind before. Right enough to find the narrative line. But i happen to the members one of my favorites, it begins terrifically. Because it really is this mini biography and it begins with Richard Russell as a little boy. Playing wargames which gives you an insight right away. But he is playing wargames. And as a little boy he is having that kind of fantasy. You know right from the very beginning you have a sense. And then we just get kind of, as i recall, straight narrative you know very well written. He did this and this. And then we come back to the kinds of legislation that he did not, you know the legislation he passed and i think that he did not see in his own community. So we get a sense of the depth of his complex relationships. The place in which he lives and wants to be like his father. But he really wants to say we litigate areanimate the civil war. You know, if you are a person from new york city like i am as you can probably tell my accent ayou really, saying that you understand the feelings of southerners is inadequate. I went down to Richard Russells town. In georgia, it was a little town. His father, something happened ai saw something that helped me understand the depth of this whole jim crow picture. More than anything else. So his father was a very powerful man in georgia. He was the chief judge of the supreme court. He lives in a big white house on a hill. And at the bottom of that long hill was a Railroad Line to atlanta. And he was so powerful that the railroad wanted to make a stop right as his house since he would have time to have another cup of coffee in the morning and it did not have to go into catch the train. So they made a station there. And the station is a little, like a subway. Like a bus stop. No wider than what we are sitting in here now. No more than two people could ever get in. Down in the middle is a aone side is as white and the other side says colored. And another thing about writing is a sense of play. He talked about that in terms of actually two places im thinking of. One which you might very elephant about is the hill country of texas. If you want to talk about can you came to understand it. Yes well, so we went up to texas when i started these johnson books. I think there were already seven johnson biographies that had been written. And they all talked about his boyhood. So i thought that story had been told. I did not think it had been told in enough detail. So what i would do was athe Lyndon Johnson library where i was working on the papers during the day, my wife who does the research for the bus along with me and myself. Every day at 5 oclock the library would close. I will drive up to the hill country, Lyndon Johnson died when he was only 64 years old. He would have been only 66 years old when i started the books. Therefore, almost all of the people who went to high school with him or college with him were still there. His best friend was truman for set and he lived on the side of the vacant lot next to the johnson city courthouse. He was still there. And his first girlfriend was kitty clyde ross. She was living in a different house was still in the same town. And i came back and i said, you know i am not understanding these people. And i am not really understanding Lyndon Johnson. Anna came to ai come to realize that a lot of it had to do with this hill country. Which from new york it is simply incredible. They had not parted to build austin. And for hundred and 60 miles, the hill country rolled on. It was called the land of endless horizons. Because every time settlers would cross one line of hills, there will be another line of hills. So there were very few People Living in that area. I think the population is Something Like 1. 3 persons per square mile. So i said, i know who loves france, will have to look to the hill country in two or three years to understand this please. And she said, can you write a biography of napoleon . [laughter] and you know all my life i said i wonder what it is like . [laughter] johnson said he was 43 miles out from austin. In which they were basically he was growing up, nothing. And the Johnson Ranch where he lived was not even in johnson city. It was 18 miles deeper in the hills. So his brother Sam Houston Johnson used to tell me how he and linda would be so lonely that one corner of that ranch down the heavy Austin Fredericksburg highway, which is really just a graded road. He said that he and linda used to go down to this corner and sit there for hours in hopes that one new person would come by, one new person for them to talk to. I had no idea what loneliness like that was like. And i knew i wasnt ever going to find out. But to get some sense of it i say well i wonder what it is like to spend all day by yourself and go to bed and get up and know that youre going to spend the next day by yourself. So i took a sleeping bag, not on the Johnson Ranch with the adjoining ranch. The johnsons were not too fond of me at the time. And i did that. I slept out and it really gives you a different sense of things. To know that the next day you are going to be alone again. I mean its like, if you were there with your father, given older domineering father for example, as Lyndon Johnson did athis figure will be the father because there is nothing to soften, there he is. Great figure. All of these things are more dramatic than they would be in the city. Right, no and it is such an interesting thing to think about the way which place shapes our lives. And so once you think about that it really changes the way you create a narrative. Exactly. We can explain it or lecture about it. But to actually create the sense of place, and also the way in which wanting to leave place aleave place behind. Create sense of character, creates character creates ambition creates the psychology. Of character. And i think you see that in johnson from very early on coming to the hill country. That is exactly right. You understand his desperation to get out of there. Right. I mean he has a real desperation. I mean i have a passage ill try to read aforgive me father for i dont do it but this is from the past to power. This is about the hill country and it gives you an example i think of what we are talking about. This might say better than i do. Inevitably drought came. The land burned beneath the blazing hill country son. What was left of its nutrient forged alooking away. Was left in the roof was shriveling. Wind, blew the soil away and blew it. As one big hill Country Farmer put it into the next country the next region the next day. And when henry henry ranch time they watch the soil away down the steeple side and along the cotton fields which the farmers all too often cut up and down the slopes. Instead across it. Into the creeks and rivers cutting gullies in the ground. The next rain would make even deeper. So that the rain would move down that land even faster. Water poured down the hillside and into the creeks in a torrent and flash floods roared down the stone beds. Sweeping away fertile land on their banks. That would be the only truly fertile land in the hill country. The waters rose and when they receded sucked more of the fertile soil back down with them to run down to the colorado. Down the colorado to the golf. And all the time and the places to stay for mules to plow, men remembering the trails and pouches of gold persisted in grazing cattle. Eating down the grass as fast as it could grow and faster, leaving soil in those places to to blow intellectually. It has taken centuries to create the richness of the hill country and two decades or three after man came into it. The richness was gone. In the early 1870s the first few years of Cotton Planting there, they produce a valid or more kind. By 1890 it took more than three acres to produce that failed. By 1900 it took 11 acres. The hill country had been a beautiful trap. You know in getting to the point where it is a trap. [applause] thank you. [laughter] didnt she read that wonderful . I did not practice. I would like to add that. How did i find out about the soil . Because Lyndon Johnson, wendy Lyndon Johnson is in the center, they never let him news ayou cant ever miscount for votes. Johnson would say to his aides, find out how the senators are going to vote. The aide came back and said i think hes going to go with us, johnson would say, how awhat do i care about what he thinks . I need to know. And i realize because of really something that ties into that paragraph, why johnson did not want ayou know when he was in the senate, he was majority leader for six years. He never lost a single vote. And this was a divided congress. Because i felt he had learned course of the state. His father thought the land of the Johnson Ranch was covered with grass and look beautiful. The father thought it was always going to be abut he found out in the first rain came that were very little soil there. And he would abasically he could not raise enough capital there and they lost the ranch. For the rest of his boyhood, they lived in a house in johnson city where they were afraid each month that the bank was going to take it away. There is often no food in the house, neighbors had to bring them dishes. So Lyndon Johnson had a sister aexcuse me, Lyndon Johnson had a cousin whose favorite ahis favorite cousin ava. Have a sort of took it on herself to try and teach me about the hill country. And she would say to me, you are a city boy. You do not understand the land. And without understanding the land, you will never understand Lyndon Johnson. Well, i dont know what that sounded to you but to me it sounds like a great western. Yes. [laughter] one day she took me in a car out to the Johnson Ranch. Which is beautiful. And she said not get out of the car. I got out of the car. There was a field of grass there. She said now, stick your fingers into the ground. And i set my fingers in and there was so little soil on top of the rocks that you could not even get the length of my fingers into the ground. And you knew, it was going to wash away again. And i always felt ajohnsons incredible b his refusal to take anything for granted, his knowledge of what one state could do something ain fact do with the land. That is so interesting, it really is. Because it is what creates character, ambition, anxiety. All of the stands. You know . Thank you for reading so beautifully. Under know about that. Thank you. [laughter] the other thing, talk about before, place creates mood also. Talking a little about the mood. Not just johnsons mood or our mood but the mood that you want to create. In other words, johnson is feeling something or i am what you are feeling something or whoever. Lets say he is feeling, i think we talked about desperation. How do you create that . Its like saying i went to the store and bought fruit. Okay. You know, and aif you say johnson felt decimated the same kind of thing. How do you go about that . [laughter] that is really hard to say. You asked some good questions. Desperation, i will tell you about a couple of months. Not your desperation. [laughter] no. Well, ai thought i wasnt doing that but johnson is running for the senate. This is the election that he finally wins stealing those at the end. This is his last chance. His money from the senate is a popular governor of texas. He is far behind and as the Campaign Starts to get a kidney stone which requires an operation. So he is going to be unable to campaign. And having to recuperate for six weeks. He gets out and he is so far behind he seems to have no chance in the polls at all. He thinks because this is a political genius, he thinks of something that might get audiences out to see him in all of the small town. And that is the camping and helicopter. It is 1948. One of texas has ever seen a helicopter. It is a machine that stands still in the air. Kathy helicopter and for the rest of the campaign he goes around the helicopter. He makes great speeches. So that is the political side of it. But that is not the whole story. This is a story, if i want to do truthfully, this is a story about desperation. About a terribly ambitious man, desperately ambitious man who is seeing his last chance disappear. And he has just a few weeks left to do it. When i was writing a chapter about the helicopter. The chapter is called the flying window. Thats what they called it in little town. I scotch tape lamp on my desk. I said, is there desperation on this page . And verse i dont say i succeeded in doing but i am not even sure how i would explain how i tried to do it. I tried to infuse that tractor with that feeling as well the political genius that he was. Also is just the pain of knowing that he is ill. You know he has kidney stones peers is really incredible that you continue on. And that itself creates a sense of death. You know i talked to his chauffeur. The guy who drove her around. He talked about how johnson would lie in the back. You know a kidney stone is one of the sharpest pains known to medical science. And johnson had it. And if you campaign with all this trouble, he was doing it by far, before the helicopter and before going to the hospital ahe would be in such pain and his temperature would be 103 or 104. We know that because i have the doctors records. He would lie in the backseat while the chauffeur drove him from one town to another. Sweating so badly that they had a big box of shirts there. He would have to change his shirt as he got into each town. And he would jump out and they say you never know anything was wrong with him. Checking everybodys hand, giving his speech. He would get back in the park and start to drive off and youd hear him groaning. The story was like, desperation is a real part of it. You know it is interesting. We talked about this, desperation awe know what it is but it is also an abstraction. When you actually get down to it, and talk about it. When you actually have the detail, that is what makes the difference i think in a real narrative, it means something, it works, it actually has kind of this ait is palpable, you can feel it. You can feel the sweat or whatever it is. His temperature. And you know what is interesting about nonfiction to me is ait is very difficult but so exciting. To get that information. And one of the things i think you are good at, and it is not always easy in some cases as we know, if you are writing about the 17th, 18th or 19th century, a lot of material is gone. But you have two things. One is the, there was only people that knew him. The other thing is that you have, i think a real gift for interviewing which is really you know, get a lot of material ai was interviewed years ago Virgil Thompson for the book i was writing about ai forget what it was. I think it was about aVirgil Thompson was a composer and a writer. And he was different than i thought. Engineering but i would ask him a question and he would answer the question that he thought i should have asked. [laughter] that is great. Not for me it wasnt. But i was nervous anyway. Talk about desperation. And i am going sort of the road on the left and i realized he is on the road on the right and i have to kind of turn myself around. By the time i figured out what he thought i should have asked, we are onto the next subject. So interviewing is, it is an act of desperation. Not so quiet for me. But for you, i mean two things, how do you get that information . I mean you are tireless and do not mind people saying i think, you already asked me that. Yes, people are always saying to me, you already asked me that. [laughter] does not come from being a reporter . Part of it is something that you do very well. We want to make people see a scene. So you need a lot of details. If youre writing about a scene in the oval office and youre talking to Lyndon Johnsons press secretary, who standing against the wall while johnson is in his rocking shell and the governor of alabama is on the sofa and you say, aand really says president johnson was burning to call in the National Guard and he was doing this and that and i would say to him, well that is great. And what are we seeing that . And he was i dont know. President johnson is in the rocking chair, George Wallace is on the sofa. I would say well, if i was standing next to you george, what would i see . And finally awhat would i be seeing . Finally he said one of the things was that one of the things Lyndon Johnson did was he took what he became when it came awhen he became president he took the stuffing out of the cushions on couches. So that the rocking chair was still the same level. But when he sat on the couch he sunk down. So he was towering over you. Now that took a lot of getting mr. Reedy angry at me. You asked me already you know. If you keep saying, what did you see . I will tell you another example. What do you think . [laughter] what did you hear . This is not the campaign i told you about before. It was johnsons First Campaign for congress. His chauffeur was a guy named carol and he was sorted. atexan. He really had never agreed to be interviewed. He lived in a little town 280 miles from where we were living. And i had to drive down there about three times to get him to let me, to say okay you can come in. Finally i got to the point where he was you know, i sent you were in the front seat. Was lyndon sitting beside you wait and he said no he was in the backseat. And i said what was he doing in the backseat . And he said sitting in the backseat. And i said is that all he was doing . Did you ever do anything else . An answer a lot of questions like that he said you know, he would always be talking. I said well, what do you mean talking to and he said just talking. And i said finally, i asked that person what do you mean . And he said well its like he was practicing. And i said, what do you mean practicing weight he said it was like youd be saying, what do i do wrong in the last town . And he would say you really made a fool of yourself there. You lost that whole town. You were supposed to be nice to the judge and you were not. He says now in the next town, whatever judge is, so the judge wants to hear that you really are not the result. To remember that. And you say this is a guy who would be sitting and talking to himself. Practicing, critiquing himself. And it only came about from asking him over and over again. Right, right. It is kind of a ayou have to be intrepid in a certain way. To do that kind of thing. Just as a slight anecdote because ive already suggested that i am not, this is the kind of interview i would do years ago when i was working on this book. My husband is wonderful and is a composer. We were in italy and of course Gertrude Stein and her brother had been dead for many years, and i was amy husband would throw together lunch. I said to him one day, why dont you go and dance is a timeless affluent. Why dont you go and follow the oldest person you can find and see if they knew leo stein. And he actually did that. He followed the oldest person. It came back and said he thought he was going to get arrested as a stalker. [laughter] but he actually found them in a new leo stein and were able to interview. But it was very hard to get interviews it seems to me. To get people to really talk and that, as i said almost in granular kind of way. You know which really creates that narrative we were talking about before that is so very important. But i want to just kind of, unless you want to talk more about interviewing, just go to Something Else. Because i am thinking also about narrative and place. Because from our point of view, talking a lot about the senate. And the way you create what it is like to be in the senate and one of the passages i like is where that i recall the book begins. Its almost cinematic. Before you see johnson, you have ayou have a panoramic view of . That is really ai was trying to create, to write about and create on the page the world of the senate. They did not think when it started that book, i did not know there was anything particularly interesting about that i knew i would have to explain it that he would be the great majority leader but i was not getting, i felt well ai was the guy who was the nut in the gallery. I would go to the senate in the morning, i had a passion i would sit in the balcony. They were groups of tours that would come in and leave and another group determinedly. I would still be sitting there. He would see the senate is looking at me dubiously. And i really think i was, they thought that i was the nut. I was not getting the feeling of what i wanted to do with the senate. Part of what i wanted to do is, when you get into the senate you realize it was really great once. In the days of calhoun, this is where the center of the country. These were the great debates. What had happened to the senate . I wanted to show when it happened, i had to show what it was before. And i cannot think of a way to do that. So the history of the senate was a wonderful friend of mine. One day he said to me, have you ever been down in the well of the senate . I said no. He said well they are not in session i wanted to come down there. And i remember, we walked into the door on the side and we walked down into the well. I turned around and i knew then exactly how i was going to try to do it. Because you do not see it from up above. You do not see it on cspan. But we were not well, the desks of the senate, the 96 desks, they are mahogany and burnished each day to a high shine. And the ayou say this is really majestic. And Daniel Webster stood at one of those desks when he was debating calhoun and soandso. And he said, that was a moment that i knew i wanted to . Almost as if you were there. This is the company in some way. I would like to think it was an epiphany. [laughter] in retrospect it was an epiphany. You are like i think this might work and then it does. Did you revise a lot . I do it all the time. Do you revise a lot . Yes i do. Youll see a lot of sheets, work on a typewriter in longhand. . It is interesting. Another thing sort of, that i am interested in because it has been very hard for me. It has changed over the years. But it is, what i would call, i dont know if this is the language you would use. Writing with your own voice. In other words, making sure that the material, especially when youre dealing with a lot of material. You know interviews, we just talked about. Visits to places, sheets of letters and then in the case of johnson speeches and appearances and so forth. You know you have this tremendous amount of material and you have to do something with it otherwise it just lies there. And that is what i found our voices. You have to somehow create like i said before, it is easier maybe in this language to say have to create a story. You know and to create a story you have to take charge of think of the material. And not feel dwarfed by it. Do you know what i mean in that particular sense . It is amazing not to feel dwarfed by the mining mentality of the deaths in the senate or the mining mentality of the files and folders that one has in ones office. I dont know if you can talk or want to talk about that. But if you dont, i have another passage. [laughter] no, this is what i mean. Because is actually one of my favorite passages and, this is from the most recent of bobs books. This is been passage from ai find it really very useful. This is learning about taking charge of the material. This is a passage im talking about. I will again try to read it with something. In any event, this has takes place just pretty soon after the assassination of kennedy. And bob has told us about the things that need to be done. Left hanging, decisions about railroads, featherbedding, about wage price guidelines, political deadlines like the state of the Union Address and the budgets that needed to be submitted for the next fiscal year. Never mind the election of the next year. And whether or not johnson would receive the Democratic Party nomination. Time was running short. And then bob goes on to say, this passage which i think is really sort of representative and wonderful. We will have him tell us what. Tangles with and complicating factor. In every other factor associated with the transition. Looming over every aspect of johnsons extension to the presidency. One that made that ascension uniquely difficult. A complication that was not out of the new age but seem rather as if it were out of any age long past. A complication that required deployment steps, not abut shakespeare. The president s king was dead, murdered but the king had a brother. A brother hated the new king. The dead kings men, the kennedy man, the camelot men made up shakespeare in terms of action and it was a faction that hadeed out. In elections coming less than a year, convention environments. Due to the faction and the brother of these were not the crucial days. Because of the kings faction, the kings brother decided to contact Lyndon Johnsons right to the nomination. A crucial date would be the primary on march 10. Less than four months off. Unprecedented shock and grief and anxiety. Unprecedented danger to american aunprecedented pressure and problems with staff and cabinet made uniquely difficult by the brother factor. Even tremendous transition problem, was to conclude had been easier than johnsons. Johnsons situation was extreme. And then it goes on in a particular case. But i think the whole use of shakespeare you know, we picked shakespeare, not james reston antenna follow through with the whole kings and the brothers came metaphor purity doing a sense make it like a shakespearean drama. What i think, it is not like he did this and then he did that and so forth. Step back from the narrative. Yes. It almost tells another story. For a way to understand the story. Yes, well ayou pick out i think ayou said it. I set up for myself. Those of you have read the book no Lyndon Johnson and Bobby Kennedy hated each other. When jack kennedy was in the vice presidency the next day Bobby Kennedy came down the stairs and hotel in los angeles three times. She tried to get Lyndon Johnson to drop off the ticket. It was ajohn she said it was the worst day of my life. And i will have them forever. And Bobby Kennedy hated Lyndon Johnson. And im saying you know, this is henry iv. When someone comes to write the history of United States and 500 years, we are rewriting history, this is shakespeare. The president has been murdered. And the president has a brother. And the brother hates the new king. What is going to happen . Of course then you can put a lot of things like two days after the assassination, for those of you have read the book no, those of you have not read it the test is tuesday. [laughter] two days after the assassination argus lessons are convened to dinner with kennedy. The idea is to deny Lyndon Johnson the nomination in 1964 and make Bobby Kennedy the nominee. And for the rest of johnsons presidency Bobby Kennedy is this looming figure 2 men who truly have each other. You hate to use the word like hate because it is so strong. But that word is correct. And you say, so write it that way, dont try to make a generous tip. Try to make it in the basic human terms. The president is, the king is dead but the king has a brother and the brother hates the new king. That is the story. You can then make people lead the political maneuvering and understand maneuvering some of the things that happened. And hopefully draw them into the story. No, i know. I was trying to think aand i know someone in the audience will have this, foster talks about that and ethics is a novel about how to create a story out of the king is dead. And i dont know, the queen went to bed or something. For the, or the ayou know the king is dead and because the king is dead, the queen went to bed. I do know something in that sense to make it causal, a connection. But what is interesting like you just said, you want to get away from the journalistic and into Something Else. What do you mean . You wanted to get with the journalistic into awhat is this Something Else exactly so i am clear . Well, we are talking about the largest things. This is a book about a president who wants to and the great injustice. Racial discrimination. Right. This is also presidency plunges the country into a war. With so many people that die and vietnam athese are huge things. It is not sketching anything to say im going to try to tell the story in those basic terms of those themes. Because that is really what it is about. And that makes you try, i mean you say am i doing this . Is there desperation . Because you never really know. But that is what i think should be done. Right. . How did this man rise from hill country to take over a nation and not in so many ways jaded state . Right, will that us not to my mentality which gets us back to the theme of the power. And as were talking about we start with those bridges. Right . You know and bridges also i want to go metaphor. Because bridges bring things together reasonably in that particular way. I was about whitman. Whitman loved his bridges. You know the Brooklyn Bridge or ait is wonderful because we talked about the bridge and the kind of sense of sort of hope and optimism but also a sense of destruction. At the same time i think we do not want to lose sight, as i said, it is a wonderful passage but it is a person in the center of all of this. It happens to be a person. And i think we talked before. One of the things that writing tries to do, especially when you have a person, is create a sense of empathy. You know and do you feel empathetic with johnson . Or . Yes. Moses abut i threw him in any way. Lets go with johnson. Because it is almost largerthanlife. Sure. Like hamlet who i do not like. Is all the same human being. Here is the thing, i mean the theme of this which ai will sink him for my books, power reveals. We are all taught that power corrupts. Well, is another subject. It is not always correct. Sometimes power can cleanse. But what power always does is revealed. If you get to know your person, like johnson is 20 years old he is very poor, he is going through a poor boys school. In the middle of the hill country, southwest texas state normal school. And between his sophomore and junior years he is a job out for a year so he can continue his education. During that year, when he does is goes and teaches and what he calls a Mexican School near the mexican border. And after you know, you have the recollections of the kids and he taught, and i wrote this. No teacher had ever cared these kids learned or not. This teacher cared. He thought it was really important. I think i said that on opening it. He would get so angry he thought was very important that they would speak english and so that during a recess he heard someone shouting in the playground in spanish, he would run out and spank them. There was a girl that he tongue lashed. He presented this was just Lyndon Johnson doing the best job he could at whatever job he had. Which was in fact a characteristic of Lyndon Johnson. But i felt it was much deeper than he had empathy. He had, because he did not just teach the kids. He taught the janitors. The janitors name was coronado. Johnson wanted him to learn english. So he bought coronado a book and coronados words he said after school every day, he would sit on the steps of the school, johnson would pronounce i will repeat, johnson would spell, i would repeat. So this is the same human being. Now he is president. And his advisors of Saint Dominic the priority under Jack Kennedys civil rights bill. You will never get it through. It is a noble cause but it is a lost cause. The southerners control congress. Dont do it. Dont fight for a noble cause. It is a lost cause. And johnson says, what the hell is a presidency for then . And of course, in his first speech after kennedys assassination he says, our First Priority has to pass the civil rights bill. And one of kennedys aides, goodwin says to him ai forget the words, do you really mean this or is it just politics . And johnson says listen, didnt i tell you once about those kids down in mexico . If i ever have the power i vowed i would help them. And not have the power and i would say something, im going to use it. See if you feel you understand something, it is like to get to know a friend. Right. But you know, i know we are almost out of time. I like my friends very much. [laughter] your johnson is not my friend. Your friend. And i just want to and on something because if it is so important about this issue empathy and how you created. Im old enough to be one of the people for whom the chant hey, hey, ahow many kids did you kill today was very important. And so there is a sense in which i have not johnson in my mind. And yet i have this johnson and i think, this is bob and i want to end with something bob wrote. He has in his mind shortly after the second event before. As was always the case with Lyndon Johnson, in addition to the obstacles before him, there were the obstacles within. The emotions inside him that had been rubbed raw by that terrible youth in hill country, that started so deep that they raised the question of whether they would ever be healed or whether anything can make him feel secure. So with that . [applause] bour coverage of this years key west literary seminar held