America and three the. I would like to thank everyone especially my friend and my poet and everyone else that is here for giving me the pleasure and privilege of sharing what it means to me. And i thought of that before beginning to share with those thoughts and ideas i want to honor two groups. Yesterday i was in such a hurry to actually listen to others. This is the kind of place everybody asks me what is the public of imagination. And i tell them this is the republic of imagination. You have people come communities, publishers. The publishers, leaders, booksellers all of us gathered together and the most important thing is with acts of that acts of imagination and ideas you transcend, you transcend the boundaries that reality is in front of you and you transcend the boundaries of the nationality, religion, language, race and gender. And one of the things about books, book sales and libraries is how central they are. I sometimes feel like a naughty child going to a bookstore and feeling the books. Each cover has its own story. And one of the most intimate and public acts is of writing and reading and i always say i hate to use this word that is used by every celebrity, and i dont even know what celebrity means, but i feel blessed the fact that through the love of books i connect with strangers have become mad at the intimate strangers. You are so worried about than you then you think my god whats going to happen. Especially now can i pay for the education. While there be any Public Schools by the time database of china comes to. Am i taking enough vitamins and things like that and then there is so much sorrow and anxiety and a joy and ecstasy and the child comes into the world. And the amazing thing about children is not how you take them to places but how they take you into the amazing strangers they bring to your house. So, i feel so at home here and i want to thank you. I thought i would begin in honor of two groups. I didnt get the chance because of the clashes to listen to my favorite authors and poets but i did get the chance to listen to one of my most favorite of all in this country. I remember the poets and so i wanted to read something in appreciation of them and to respond to those people that think poetry is irrelevant. This is by a guy that you might know. His first name is simon. [laughter] to people that tell us about our air relevant, what do they do . If they are irrelevant like you want if they are irrelevant in the democracy why do you ban them . There must be something relevant that certain people and mindsets cannot tolerate. So a book that is a sort of representative of what it means to be an american has been banned since its birth. So to name the unnamed other way and point at fraud, to take site and start arguments and shape the world and stop it from going to sleep and i think that should be our homage to the poet. The next is to the readers. And i think thats one writer that used to say they are born free and they ought to remain free because we can talk about the writers and the censorship but i constantly think of different leaders. They are like hothouse flowers. Books need to be given new names by their theaters readers in different parts of the world and different perspectives in order for them to thrive. So i decided to read a quote from the writers who understand the dangers of writing and reading and whose voice i discovered yesterday at the panel she has just a gorgeous voice as well. talking about you i love embarrassing people like you. I am going to read from what she says about writing and reading and the influence. Create dangerously for people who read dangerously knowing in part that dont matter how trivial your words may seem, someday, somewhere someone may risk their life. The actor of the writers and poets has nothing to do with danger and as we were reminded yesterday again nothing is more dangerous than ideas and imagination. Any readers i think of as alice in wonderland that has the alternative imagination and sees the white rabbit and runs after the white rabbit without asking a question imposing their theories and ideologies on the book im on the text, taking their life out of it because the book life is like experience is something completely new and it should be experienced. That connection is very personal. And so, the fact is like alice, they have to jump down the whole because alice is very polite and i know if she was an american she would have jumped on the whole. I dont know what kind of song, but its alice. Shes a very politely be in as she goes down and shes putting the pots on the shelf not letting anything drop the whole point i am trying to make is we are told today in society that everything has become so ideological and nobody really express themselves and the whole idea of the literature and of ideas and of the university and knowledge reminds us and let me remind you about that sea of knowledge he is very much against and just like with jb challenger who keeps them protected from the world talk of innocence as a crime because not to know when not to bite the apple would not make you human. At first act of becoming human is biting from the tree of knowledge that is now some of our leaders so cavalierly are dismissed. Why do we need imaginative knowledge for heavens sake its not something you have today and tomorrow you discard because you have an iphone. You cannot have an iphone as the wonderful Walter Isaacson constantly reminds us you cannot have an iphone without imagination and without a Democratic Society who is telling users you is want to go into your garage and experiment some of us are behind you. Go and do it. The whole idea of education in the society like this is based on the fact that every individual has the right to life and liberty and pursuit of happiness. Therefore as those founders who certain groups and policymakers have sort of confiscated what needs to be a founder and what it means to be the constitution and apparently all the revolution against the war and the civil rights is that we would hold sacred the Second Amendment about that is a different story and im in the state of florida so i better watch it. And the governor that i quote in this book for his amazing savings on education. But to make this long story short i always say in my talks youve are a democrat until you get this podium. [laughter] okay now, i want to go to part of my talk thats important to me because the story behind the book was enough in years as my editor keeps reminding me i was thinking of this book and at the end of that book one of the questions is that he was very worried not just about the brutality in the European Countries but what would happen to the democracies and the question that he posed was that those that would survive the ideal of the holocaust, how would they survive the ordeal of fear. But what he is very obvious. Those societies, you know where you stand. And they are not very imaginative, you know. And so, that is why they are so scared of the poet because they want to reinvent the citizens in their own image and impose their voice on every one. They reimagine everyone and give back the voice to everyone and that is challenging. Its most interest to the tyrants come as in the Islamic Republic it was targeting begindoublequote and human rights at the first distance between the women, minorities and culture. The first attack on the universitys wasnt because the engineers were against the state. Those engineers that were in jail for the ones that were politically against the state. The first thing they did is attack the humanities. And the first thing that they are still living is attach humanities that our great leaders. You know, life. That is what is at stake, freedom of choice. The same way that Harriet Beecher stowe and harriet tub tubman and sojourner truth, the same way they were fighting, they were saying the same thing about slavery. So that is what the fight is all about. Not about a religion. It is the abuse of a religion and taking it and turning it into an instrument of the state where the religion loses, actually, its spiritual power. We see it here. People try to do it, to do the same thing here in this country. Okay. So what im trying to say then is that the poets and the writer s and the artists and the journalists balm the first became the first targets. Some of them went to jail and were being killed. Some of them are still being killed. The point is that in iran we know that books are objects for which people kill and are killed. So everything is sort of very, you know, very obviously drawn, the lines. But in america and that was a question, and that is what i start this new book with, the question that a young man at the elliot may book elliot bay bookstores in seattle, he was in the queue for autocalf, autograph, and he was from iran. He said it is all useless. These people, meaning the american people, theyre not like us who would xerox hundreds of pages of madame bovary. These people dont care about such things. And that question stayed in my mind. And it stayed in my mind because some of my american, you know, you go on book tours, and americans would ask you the same question. Cant you guys didnt you guys or people in Eastern Europe need literature because of the fact that, you know, it was banned, it was a repressive country . As if because we have access to literature, because we can just go around the corner and buy it, we shouldnt buy it. What good is a book if youre free to buy it . [laughter] i mean, dont be bloody ridiculous, honestly. [laughter] okay. You guys want to go to jail . To love books . That can be arranged. [laughter] but, you know . But anyway, the point that i was trying to make is that the question, the question that came to committee and the question that i wanted to pose to you, i feel that this is not the time for i mean, reading is an act. But i think that we readers and writers should get together and create communities in our communities in order to defend our turf. So im not just saying this to promote this book. And i always say you cannot dont buy the book, but buy the covers no, no, not buy the covers, steal the covers. Peter [inaudible] another amazing man. Buy his books, actually, even better. I dont know if you have him in the festival, hes an amazing man. Okay. So going back to what i wanted to say was the question was can a democracy exist without a Democratic Education . Without a democratic imagination . This was the question. That i had to put to myself. And the reason for it was partly with what i was seeing in this country the way the education is being standardized, now, we all want our students to be disciplined and read and take things seriously. But the most difficult thing is, in fact, reading philosophy and poetry and the obstacles that they put in front of your eyes, it is not the information that google provides you with. It is what you do when you [inaudible] the poem comes, then you have to use your mind, you know . And if our students in colleges and universities are free to use their minds, if education becomes private so that only a few people can afford to send their children to stuyvesant or the school our president s children go to, if we co if we do that, then how do we have citizens who are responsible . Because, you know, they say that it is not relevant that, you know, these people live in ivory towers. The Congress Might live in the identifily tower, not those ivory tower, not those people who have to pay 40,000 a year in order for their child to go to school. Not those of universities that now get big money from corporations, have president s like ceos and get money from saudi arabia. That is not what these founders wanted. I had to read American History in order to understand american reality. And i discovered that even that soldier, the first president , who along with Benjamin Franklin said that we as Public Servants should not be paid because money corrupts, also wanted to have a National University at the capitol, and he along with madison, with adams, with jefferson wanted to have pluck schools, public Public Schools, public education. And what he said was that the basis of public happiness is an education founded on literature and science. Now we have s. T. E. M. Again, read walter isakson. Why isaacson. Some of the greatest scientists, he talks about einstein, and then he talks about steve jobs. Some of the greatest scientists, they were musicians, they were philosophers, they knew literature. Einstein talks about the fact that knowledge meaning scientific knowledge is limited, but imagination encircles the world. Steve jobs, when he gives up university, this was no paypal perp to pay him, you know, to drop college, you know . But he then goes and audits in calligraphy, the most useless of all [laughter] even more useless than literature today. [laughter] and he said that out of calligraphy he got the logo for apple. Dont think that this country will produce steve jobs or bill gates who should have just kept, you know, to health and not entered which he doesnt know anything about, which is humanities, you know . The whole point is you wont produce these people. If you do not have an allrounded education. And you wont produce good citizens, because what does it mean to be a responsible individual . The first thing is to make choices and be responsible for your choice. How can you be responsible for your choice if as the state of new york now, the regents have decided that American History and global history is not necessary. Instead the students can take tech, a tech course. How could you not know what america is and its history and its principles and its values and go and talk with these bloody iranians about nukes . How could you know what to say to iranians or to the syrians or the all these people that you are constantly talking about and having drinks with in, you know, hidden never mind. [laughter] anyway, the whole point about it is how can you do that if you dont know where these cultures come from . Students come to me during my talks, and they tell me that we are encouraged to go and learn arabic and persian because the state department would hire us for translation. I tell them, dont you ever learn any language, any language just to be hired. You go and learn arabic and persian because you are in love with another civilization, for hens sake. Heavens sake. Because you want to know. Because youre dying to know about this amazing, epic poet who lived a thousand years ago in iran, and the women in those epic poems were far more five minutes . You see, tom, you are being very generous. She is the real boss, back there. [laughter] okay. Ill wrap up soon. Ill wrap up in ten minutes instead of five. [laughter] im not looking at you. [laughter] i finish soon, im sorry. Its not my fault really, i was sitting here for half an hour. Okay. Now, the whole point that i want to make, and i will make it quickly is that what i decided to do then was there were two things happened to me that i decided to do something about it. One was that in december 2008 i became an american, and when you become [applause] thank you. Well see. You might want to kick me out. [laughter] and the reason i became an american was that when you love a place, when you want to call it home, you dont just praise it and say how great we are, you start complaining. [laughter] because you want your home to be best. If you only are passing by miami, you dont care. Its either the greatest city in the world, or its not. You pass by. But if you live in miami, youre concerned. Every little detail, youre concerned. I was complaining so so much i thought this is the time to become an american, or maybe im already an american and dont know it. [laughter] i had to learn what america was, and the only case i could go, like in the case with iran, was many literature. So i will end by giving you an outline of what i felt about it and, hopefully, well talk about it later. The point about it was that i went back to my childhood. Situation i was since i was a small child, my father would read me stories, and he was very democratic in reading stories. He would start with the great heroes and her heroines, and the next day we would go to italy by knocke owe pinocchio, the next day we come to america with the wizard of oz. Actually, that was the first book that i learned from my tutors, my english tutors. And the other thing about america that i learned, that imaginary map of the world i realized that i could stay in this small room of mine in the middle of tehran, and the world would come to me. And the world would come to me through these books. And then about america, he would also take me to movies every weekend, the end of the week. And we would see egyptian movies, turkish movies, french movies, american movies, and with the american movies the thing i remembered were the musicals. Because people are politely sitting and eating, and in the middle of eating they all of a sudden get up and sing. [laughter] you know, sing and dance and go up the poles and do weird things and then come back and sit and eat. [laughter] and soon enough americans and persians and others were doing the same thing. So anyway, it was that world, that america that i turned to. And i want to end by saying that it was very hard to choose these books, because i had, you know, we are all promiscuous when it comes to art. We have so many lovers, you know . And we are allowed to. And so what happened was that i had 24 books. I couldnt do it, i had to condense it to books that would express my feelings. And the books that i chose were i realized how the american novel, the American Fiction goes exactly against that class materialism of american dream. There are two sides to this dream, two contradictory sides to this dream. And the fact that most of the influential american heroes are outcasts and strangers, not just in huck finn, but even in the mystery tales in that magnificent writer named raymond chandler. They are, quoteunquote, little people, ordinary people who do not want material success. They are, in henry james words, perfectly equipped failures. And i wanted to talk about them beginning with huck finn because i think huck finn is americas literary declaration of independence. And i felt that at the end of huck finn that people started moving out and going to other landscapes of america. So babbitt becomes the antihuck which is the standardization of thought. That is what is really threatening us today, indifference, sleeping consciousness which is all the things that is talked about. Okay. And then carson [inaudible] and then, of course, the great, the incomparable James Baldwin who was not just a writer, not just an africanamerican writer, not just a gay africanamerican writer, not just an american writer, but a writer. Who speaks to all of us