Mrs. Daleoway. nrc c cz3k feeling that formula fiction finally is unsatisfactory, and the way this book has turned out, i think i do break a few rules, and that pleases me. What i was really trying to do is in that setting where people are a little more open than usual, trying to make the case that kindness is not this kind of amorphous, gauzy, optional thing that we add on but is actually annilk essential humanxdzv lan characteristic. In effect,co it should be part n an intellectual life. Its a valid intellectual concept that anybody whos a writer or artist or citizen should take time to think about. I tell you what its like, charlie. Its like watching someone walking towards you out of a mist. You have the faintest outlines, and you serve those outlines with a few sentences. Those few sentences bring that person a little closer. You see the outline of their shoulders, their face and something of their personality begins to emerge. So you write them into existence. One sentence generates another, one thought generates another. And suddenly, when youre lucky, if youre lucky, she has a life of her own, she tells you what to say, as it were. Charlie conversations with authors when we continue. Rose funding for charlie rose has been provided by rose additional funding provided by and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and Information Services worldwide. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. Charlie Margaret Atwood is here. She has written more than 40 books of fiction, poetry and critical essays. Her new book turns to short fiction for the first time in nearly a decade. It is called stone mattress, nine tales. I am pleased to have her back at this table. Welcome. Hello. Charlie why did you return to short stories . I think its just kind of happened, but the first one, i really was on a boat in the arctic and i really did startni< writing a story about how you had murdered somebody on a boat in the arctic and get away with it, and there really were five people called bob on board. Charlie five people called bob . Yeah, you want a number of bobs on board so you can change them around. Charlie you call them tales, though, not short stories. Yeah, i called them s because i didnt want pem to think we were in the land of total social realism, although we kind of are in a way because i dont cheat, i dont think there are any real zombies or anything in the stories, but there are certainly people who are interested in cut off hands that crawl around by themselves and other means of the form. Charlie you would think, dear reader and writer,niq short stories would be easier, but it is not necessarily so. It is not necessarily so. But, on the other hand, some of the problems are similar in that, if you cant get the person reading past the first page, youre doomed, whether its a novel or short story or a book of history, wouldnt you say . Charlie if you dont get them past the first page, youre in trouble. I think probably you should start with stonenr mattress. Charlie inicninrni know. But thats true inni everything. Attention anco send them roc d forward. Sometimes its thenki sometimes its the first paragraph or the second paragraph. But, for instance,gn withco . ; , we start withniq who is telling us a tale of being on ani train ando o everyl this iscov we know something he doesnt know andni what wen tktle of the bookconi isxd drac coming along that he doesnt know about. Charlie so anger, death, feminism, in the farm world you explore, and all these stories. Richard ii iii,co cutofpi stories, where if you lose your vision or just feeling quite isolated, you see little people. Charlie this is an actual disease. An actual syndrome strangely costumed often in green and usually in multiple. So dancing in groups or marching in groups. But they dont interact with you. You can talk to them, but they dont talk back, an its called Charles Benet syndrome because hes the first person who identified it. Charlie how did you find out about this . I found out about it through the author who wrote the man who mistook his wife for a hat. He has a book about hallucinations of various kinds, which is fascinating, and i wish i could remember the title but its probably Something Like hallucinations. Charlie but revenge is the theme, isnt it . Unfortunately it is. Fortunately, it is, because we like reading about it, even though we might never do those things ourselves. I was an early reader of Edgar Allan Poe and a couple of his Famous Stores are about revenge, so i got that idea quite early. And a freend of men, alberto mangel, a writer and collector of stories, was doing a collection called dark waters and black arrows, and said canadians havent written any revenge stories. So i thought, well have to change that. laughter so i wrote a revenge story backd interesting tonrxd write. Charlie due like betterco characters . 4a ] writexd about . Charlie uhhuh. Equally well, but im verynri, fond of gavincoq 4 charlie yes. Incnsr a very articulate, vei4 o his students, one affep the other, and thex to now isconri quite a lotnixdir than he is,r interestingusituation,ni bu l personni in the firstni is a fantasy writer. Im fond of her asnr technical difficulty then they turn on the radio and they hear this has become a fairly widespread phenomenon and in some cases the mob has burned down the retirement homes, and they are younger people who are very annoyed that this generation has sucked up all the money and is spending it on themselves and not creating any jobs for them. So they have a movement going of burning down the nursing homes, and one of my excuse me retirement homes. They do have a wing attached called advanced living. You dont want to end up in that one. So one of my favorite parts, which you would like, is when they have a Panel Discussion about it on radio, and they have this wonderful Panel Discussion in which they talk about why its happening and the social phenomenon and this and that and the other thing and the economic factors, but nobody does anything about it. Sound familiar . Charlie yes. Whats the future Library Project . Thats so interesting. To me, i got a letter about it. And it is connected with the library in oslo, norway, and they teamed up with a conceptual artist called Katy Patterson and she put it together for them. So the future library is a forest is growing in norway, and it will grow for 100 years, and each one of those 100 years, a different author will be asked to submit a manuscript to the future library, and you will put it in a box, you will seal the box. It can contain no images. There shall be only one copy and you cant tell anybody thats in it. All that will be known will be the title and the name. When the 100 years is up just like sleeping beauty, they will open all the boxes and then they will cut down enough trees from the forest to make the pape tore print the 100 books. So its like a time capsule. Charlie yes. And my book will therefore be the oldest one, 100 years old, and the newest one only one year old. During that 100 years, all the people today who are alive unless something radical happens, will no longer be so. The committee will have to renew itsself a couple of times and the youngest authors havent been born yet and their parents havent been and they have no idea who they will be. Charlie isnt darren oske doing some of you work to make it into a Television Production . He is. Charlie youre selling him the rights . About to, yeah. Hes doing the madd adam trilogy, the oryx and crake and the madd adam. Theyve cheese cheesen a write theyve chosen a writer and soon well see the script. Charlie do you have any role in offering an opinion . Well find out, its all a process. Charlie whenever i have you, it reminds me of how delightful you are. But you have this reputation of being tough. I know. Charlie when you tell people that Margaret Atwood is coming, they say, watch out she doesnt suffer fools youve got to be good. Well, youre not a fool. Charlie they do say that. I mean, what is it that makes you why do i have that reputation . Charlie thats a better question. Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, before you were born, charlie, it was that you would have a journalist or something and they would say women cant write, or why should i read your book, or i havent read your bach and im not going to, tell me in 25 words what its about. Like that. Charlie yes. So, in those cases, i would push back a bit. Charlie how . Well, i would be mean. Charlie thats right thats your reputation. But didnt you worry about not being invited back . No. Charlie you didnt care whether you promoted your book or not . Yeah, i did. Charlie you had the luxury to choose wherever you wanted to go. Thats not always true. Thats true now but, once upon a time, you did whatever. I did give my first book signing in the mens Underwear Department of the Hudson Bay Company in edmondton, alberta. Charlie my feeling is when you write a book, you spent five years of your life, you want to sell the hell out of it, dont you . I think you and the publisher are united in the view. Charlie its not about the money, you just spent so much time on this. Well, you want it to be read, of course, which is why people say, well, in the future library, no one will read this book for a hundred years, why would you do that . Books are time capsules anyway, this is just a much longer wan. There have been many phases of book promotions. There is one called mofortfication of publishers and writers and their shame, talking about what happened to them while presented their work in public. It makes you feel better because some of the things are so awful theyll never happen to you, you hope. Charlie what do you think of amazon . What a loaded question. I think were into very complicated conversation here because there is no doubt that publishers quite depend on amazon in many ways to be an efficient distributor of books, so that is the good side. The bad side is that monopolies are bad. I think competition is productive within limits, but i think once it gets to the stage of the monopoly, that does away with the competition and people get lazy and exploitive. Charlie there are so many interesting things you said about writing including this, the older you get, the more you know about the plot before you begin to write because youve lived longer, youve seen more, you know more, and, so, therefore, its readily available for you to pour into the vessel of the soon to be book. Yeah, possibly not the plot. Probably a bit more the characters. Charlie youve seen people you want to model your characters after . I have more data at my disposal. Charlie very good way to express it. Yes, you have data. By my age, youve known more people and read more books. Charlie suppose the Nobel Commission because you up is it a panel, a commission, a board, whoever it is a secret person. Charlie oh, its one person . I dont know who it is. laughter i have no idea. Charlie but theres one person . No, i made that up. Charlie maybe it is. Could be. Could be. Charlie i dont know. The phone rings and somebody says something. Charlie says to you, margaret, can you hear me . Im calling from oslo, or stockholm, or wherever it is. The phone rang in 197 and theres a little voice on the end, im a Film Producer and my name is oscar i said, who is this really . So i would probably say, who is this really . Charlie but is there somebody you think should get the noble prize in literature next year . There are a bunch of them, there are a lot of excellent writers around the world. Charlie who havent been recognized with the highest accolade . Well, theres only one a year, of course. There are more good writers than nobel prizes. So charlie you know youre observe the list. Everybody thinks youre on their list. Its rumored but no ones ever actually seen the list. Its a phantom list. Charlie its like the great mentioner. Let me put it to you this way, Charlie Charlie please. The devil comes to you and says, charlie, you can either keep on doing your show or you can win this big prize charlie id keep on doing my show. Exactly. Thank you. Charlie ive won enough prizes and youve won enough prizes. The book is called stone mattress. You must love it because you do it so well. I do. Charlie thank you. Thank you. Charlie e. L. Doctorow is here. His newest novel called andrew brain. This is what the book of the New York Times says. Ive always responded. He has no choice, though, responding to the history of ones times is the sworn duty of a character in a novel by e. L. Doctorow, who has in his halfcentury of writing fiction, placed a remarkable number of people, both real and imagined, in their history, just to watch them respond. Thats interesting. Charlie do you agree with that . Not entirely. Charlie what do you disagree with . I dont want to be ungracious. The label of historical novelist is not only welcome. Charlie whats wrong wit other than its accuracy . All novels are set in the past, if you think about it. Charlie yes. Even h. G. Wells Science Fiction is very victorian. Some novels have a wider focus and include public figures and major historical events. Some have a narrower focus about family, about personal relationships and so on, but theyre all about the past. Theres no entological difference in the two. My novels are set in different parts to have the countries the dakotas, georgia, north carolina, the adirondacks, new york city so you might as well call me a geographical novelist as well as historical novelist. I like the word novelist without modifications. Charlie responding to the history of ones times is sworn duty of a character by e. L. Doctorow. Im looking for the word historical novelist but i dont see it. Maybe i overanticipated. Charlie maybe later. laughter so what you do say in the book, that the book judges the reader somehow. Yeah, i think this is not formulated fiction. After you do this kind of work for a while charlie this kind of work is writing novels . Well, yeah. What you want to do is find new ways to do it. And thats equivalent to i mean, writers have been doing that for a long time. Jane joyce is a beautiful writer, a realistic sense of fiction, and then he went off and did ulysses and ended up with finnigans wake. Charlie did all right, didnt he . Virginia wolf decided she wanted to write a novel without a plot, to forgo that device, that convention, and she did a couple of times. The one i like best is mrs. Daleoway. So writers have always had this feeling that formulating fiction finally is unsatisfactory. And the way this book has turned out, i think i do break a few rules, and that pleases me. Charlie who is andrew . Andrew came to me as a figure standing in the snow and holding an infant, swaddled infant in his arms in front of a door with the snow coming down on his yankee ball cap, and thats the image that came to me, and it was some urgency to it as he was waiting for this door to open. I found myself writing that, and then i had to figure out what was going on, and thats how the book developed. Charlie he is a neuroscientist . Hes a cognitive scientist. In his own opinion, no great distinction. He also suffers from the fact that all his life hes been what i call an inadvertent agent of disaster, an earlier infant he, it turns out that he administered medicine to and it was the wrong medicine and the infant died. He was responsible for a car crash that killed a driver and so on and so forth. So all his life, hes had this trail of awful things that have happened. So he imagines that he is now unable to feel anything, which, of course, is a selfdelusion, because hes very feeling. Charlie but you make no distinction between real and imagined. Thats correct. Thats oneo the rules ive happily broken. You dont know when hes imagining what hes seeing or whether hes reporting on what actually happened. Theres the convention of the unreliable narrator, of course, but this really takes it to extremes. So in that way, the book does test the reader, does judge the reader. I just think that fiction can be too comfortable. You know, it is the most conservative of the arts. I think whats happened historically in music, like in 1900, stra stravinskis rights f spring, in art, the picassos and abstract expressionism and conceptual art, there were always these enormous changes. Charlie revolutionary and evolutionary. Right, fiction hasnt moved that much. Of course, weve gone through a period of postmodern writing, but thats rather timid in terms of finding a new way to charlie but arent you partly responsible for that . Well, not i came along a little later than the first postmoderns. Charlie but you are a novelist and, as i said, one of our great living novelists. I appreciate that, yes. Charlie so, therefore, arent you responsible for the quality of novels in our life . Certainly for the ones ive written. Charlie but have you been experimental enough, revolutionary enough . Have you tried to bring some molds . Its a matter of personal dissatisfaction. You always want to top what youve done in the past, and thats the prime motivation. Once somethings done you cant do anything about it anymore, youve got to move forward. Charlie were you in search to have a conversation about neuroscience and philosophers of the mind and show their conflict . Well, i come at this from the point of view of philosophy. Its a fascinating subject, an area of philosophical concern. Its the subject is mysterious. What has happened historically is the materialist conception of thinking has taken over from the old cartesian dua dualism. So modern science, there is no soul, the soul is just fiction, there is just a brain. But the problem that creates is to figure out how the brain creates feeling, thought, wishing, longing, falling in love and all of the subjective states of mind that we think of as consciousness, how does that happen . Nobody knows. And theres all sorts of immense amount of activity going on to map brains and figure out these charlie exactly. Theres a huge story about it in the New York Times. Yeah, so i have a separate thought about that. Its wonderful work, and if it can do things about figure out what to do about parkinsons or alzheimers, thats terrific charlie thats primary what the motivation is. I understand, and its noble and necessary, but ive just projected in this book to the point where an do you suggests, supposing we do figure out how the brain works, if that happens, then we can build a computer that has consciousness. Now, this sounds like movie stuff, but there are actually some serious people in this field who believe that, theoretically, thats possible. Well, if that ever happened, and it wont for a long, long time, if that ever happened, all the stories we have been living by are finished. The bible, all those bronzeage, mythological senses we have of ourselves as human beings are gone, finished. That could be as disastrous as an astroid hitting the planet. Charlie you know, ive dealt with this scientifically at this table with brain scientists and neuroscientists talking about consciousness and Artificial Intelligence and all of that. Well, now im giving you andrews read on this. Charlie oh, i know, that he worries about what happens. Yeah, hes a bit of an his hysteric. Charlie you also have politics in here, dont you . I dont see it that way. Its a very interesting book. Things lock into other things. For instance, andrews first wife, whom hes bringing the baby charlie thats the opening scene, right . Hes bringing charlie the door of his exwife the door of his exwife, the baby hes made with his late lit deceased young second wife charlie right. And his exwifes husband is an opera singer who has performed in boris gutenof. Charlie right. At one point he calls andrew a protender because in the history of boris, boris was terrified of someone come along pretending to be the rightful czar, and since he has killed children in order to take the crown, he has some sort of posttraumatic stress disorder. So andrew is the prince, and andrew becomes the other character in the great russian opera, the holy fool, the holy fool. In that open remarks boris in that opera, boris begs the holy fool and the holy fool stands for russia russia and walks awa. When the holy fool gets to the white house charlie is george bush that character there . Oh, im sorry you said that. But the point is, if someone reads this book 25 or 50 years from now, it wont matter who the model for this character is, it will just be a pore trait of moral inadequacy attached to power. Charlie see, thats remarkable you do that, i mean, thinking about something that is on the cutting edge of the frontier of the future. Well, what happened is, for some reason, i assigned him this profession right at the beginning of the book, so i had to deliver on that. Charlie do you know go ahead. Deliver on that and . He has grave misgivings in the sense of feeling that the brain is his enemy or his jailor, and he says at one point, how can i think about my brain if its my brain doing the thinking . You see, there is the immediate selfalienation in a remark like that. And thats because he cannot accept the romance and the comfort of the idea of the soul. Charlie i mean, can you pinpoint a moment when this bach began . When this book began . Not the moment of it, the idea. Even though you might not have recognized it at the time . You have these ideas. Sometimes you carry them around for years and every once in a while ever one of them comes toe fore and its the only thing you can do. What happened is i remembered a man i knew who had this kind of terrible history i give to andrew that he, in fact, inadvertently murdered his infant child by feeding it the wrong medicine, and hes a good, kind, decent man, but turned out he had this whole trail of disaster. So i wondered about that, how someone whos not evil and not violent and not nasty and not mean and generally negative, but disposed kindly toward the world and amiable in nature, and how could he achieve this awful record in his life . And thats the thought that got me started on this book. Charlie how long ago was that . Just before i wrote the first line. Charlie thank you. Thank you for coming. Pleasure to have you here. My pleasure. Charlie as always. Thank you. Charlie George Saunders is here. Last year he gave the convocation address at syracuse university. His message was both simple and powerful. Try to be kind to others. Three months later the New York Times placed a transcript of the speech online. Within days it had been shared more than 1 million times. That speech is now the book. Congratulations, by the way. Some thoughts on kindness. I am pleased to have George Saunders back at this table. Welcome. Thank you, charlie. Charlie so just what am i having in here thats different than reading the speech or hearing the speech . Originally, i had written a 20minute speech, thinking thats the length. About two days before i was to give it, i called and they said, no, its eight. Eight minutes. Charlie on behalf of the students, its eight. Exactly right. So as a short story writer, im pretty good at cutting it back, so i put in some of the cuts, basically very similar to the speech itself. Because the speech was kind of surprising. I didnt expect it to go beyond that day. So when it did, i felt like maybe i did something right without knowing what it was. Charlie what do you think that was . I think it was partly the eightminute length minute that you had to be urgent and there wasnt a lot of time for supporting data. So i think and also the fact i was giving it at syracuse where i teach, it kind of loosened me up and made me think im just going to speak from the heart, dont worry about being incredly literary or rhetorically sophisticated, but at the end of the day what do i really think. I had give an version of the speech in 2004 to our daughters middle school graduation, and more there was our daughter and friends. I thought simple, one urgent thing i really believe, whether i can support it or not, im going to say it. Charlie can you sum it up by saying its about kindness . I think so. In that setting where people are a little more open than usual, its a big day, trying to make the case that kindness is not this kind of amorphous, gauzy, optional thing that we add on, but its an essential human characteristic. In fact, it should be part of an intellectual life, its a valid intellectual concept, anybody whos a writer or artist or citizen should take time to think about it. So i was trying to, in the setting, validate for those kids. I often think that courage and efficiency are proper virtues and other once, sympathy, compassion, kindness, patience, are nice but optional. I was trying to say, no, these are all part of being a powerful human being. Charlie some of the people ive interviewed who have acted courageously, which is different than human kindness, which is always like i had no choice. What else would i have done. Right. Charlie i didnt do it. It was the thing the do. One of the scary things is maybe it depends on the day. Charlie yeah. So i was thinking, you know, in a sense of say you had somebody say im going to run a marathon today, i just have to, and they had never run before, its not going to be successful, im thinking since this kindness comes and goes, it makes sense to start early. You know, start to try to train a little bit. Charlie you need to work on kindness. And in the speech i lightly alluded to that. Obviously, thats what religion is, an authentic religion. So that was kind of one of the messages was, you know, if you will take my advice, maybe turn your mind to those things. Charlie is there some danger in the Digital Culture we have that we dont think about interpersonal relationships the way we should . I think in terms of the idea of anonymity, seems to me, license to kill. People bailiff badly when their name isnt attached to it. I think thats a problem. I think at syracuse, i have never met kinder more mindful kids. I think more so than i dont know but when i was a kid in the 70s, i dont remember us being nearly as kind. Charlie how is it expressed. Now . Charlie yeah, the kindness. We teach these really highlevel writers in a workshop format and theyre wonderful at being specific in their comments but not ever harsh. Not sort of trying to put somebody down. Its a real kind of sympotical feeling. I remember our generation as being a little bit cynical, so afraid of sentimentality that youd rather Say Something harsh. These guys are comfortable with positive emotion and expressing it. Charlie was there a Pivotal Moment where absurdism was actually realism . Oh, yeah, so many. I think, you know, i went through a period in my 20s or 30s after we had our kids where i just somehow, working these corporate jobs, you know, and just sort of not having a lot of success, you know. In that sense, it was really you could see that absurdism is really just realism seen from close to the bottom. You know, your efforts dont amount to anything and you sort of people mistake you for someone less capable than you are, you know. Charlie when people talk about your work as being postmodern or dark, does that ring true to you . You think of what you write as dark . Yeah, i mean, i think its dark. But my feeling is art is a purposeful exaggeration. Its not really supposed to be a perfect mirror to life. Its kind of a puppet show we do to touch on certain essences of life. For example, if youve ever been in a situation where you were struggling to properly represent that, you might have to take things off into the dark side. For example, if you wanted to talk in a story about kindness, i dont imagine i could do it with a bunch of wellfed happy people at a beautiful restaurant. You have to put an earthquake in there to get it going. I think the darkness is a way of luring out the light. You know, an untested virtue isnt virtue. Charlie an untested virtue is not a virtue . Yes. So in the stricter realm, if you want to talk about lovely, in an engineering test, youve got to put it under heat and stress it and see what humans do in those conditions. Charlie you think arthouse a moral function . Yes, but my sense is that the moral elements of a story will come out but you cant lube directly at them. You have to concentrate on the aesthetics and like wild animals they will come out quietly if you let them, but to be didactic is not a good thing. But its about people and you want to see people in their full glory which is by definition moral. You look at a human being and say, at your essence, what are you made of . And that, by definition, is moral. Charlie many people when they look at writing and say you can get at truth through fikdz better than through reality, i mean, ive never been quite convinced of that, that real stories cant be as powerful as the mind you know, im not sure. I think maybe the mistake is what the intention is. I dont think really think fiction is necessarily trying to show you life. I think its trying to put you through a very beautiful, exaggerated experience thats not life at all. I imagine its like a black box. You go in, something happens, not random, and you come out of it sort of alive. Youre sort of shaken and youre almost like after a rollercoaster. After a roller coster youre not inclined to discuss it, youre just thrilled. For a creative artist, i think just thrill somebody and the rest follows. Charlie when will you give another commencement speech . I dont think i will, actually. That one went pretty well. Charlie pretty well, yeah. I had an experience about ten years ago, i was on a plane coming from chicago, and one of the engines went out and it was panic, black smoke coming out, people screaming, and that was an amazingly clarifying experience. Charlie what did it clarify . First of all, i was incapable of thinking. All i could think of was the word no repetteddively. But when things calmed down and we landed, it was amazing. I didnt think, oh, ill never write another book. It was absolute denial. Then a space of about two or three days where it was clear hat the goal here is to open yourself up and dont be afraid and try to be in proper relation to other people, you know, to love other people. Then, of course, as those things do, it kind of closed down again and i thought, sure, ill get to that. But i think thats really it. You know, as you im noticing as i get older i become quietly more sure of that and a little frustrated that i didnt realize it earlier. These things, you can get better at it but its hard going to work against your ego is a really big job and a work of a lifetime. Charlie thank you for coming. My pleasure. Charlie always glad to have you. Great to be here. Charlie ian mccueen is here. Tells of a High Court Judge presiding over the case of a 17yearold jehovahs witness who refuses a blood strains fusion called the childrens act, im pleased of ian back at the table. Thank you. Thank you. Charlie sir alan ward is a friend of yours. Yes. Charlie you have a conversation. He tells you a story. He gave me dinner once and there were several judges at the dinner table. They were all seemed to know each others judgments well. Charlie was the purpose of the dinner to inform you about judicial proceedings . No, nobody thought i was a novelist an onthejob novelist. But sooner than later i had his judgments in hand, a bound volume, and i started thinking this is a form of fiction. This is a subgenre that needs examination, especially the Family Division. Its in the heart of fiction, the novels concerns. I wasnt thinking of a novel. I put it in the back of my mind. Three years later, he did tell me the story of a jehovahs witness case. He was halfway through the story and i knew i was going to write a novel. Charlie youd found home. Yeah. Charlie what did you say a few minutes ago . I think the Family Division has pitched its tent in fictions terrain. Its love and the end of love, especially the end of love, the contested destinies of children, medical and legal ethics, all kinds of issues that dont involve crimes with guns and knives and rapes and so on, but ordinary dilemmas that people face certainly once or twice in their lifetime. Charlie obviously, depression all those things. Charlie you set out to write it. What did you do then . I read more judgments. The great thing about internet, you can pull them down. I became impressed by the best of them. There were some terrible judgments, by the way. But the best of them, great prose, huge historical, philosophical sweep. Love of irony. Touch of wit. Great compassion and fairness, but the other thing that struck me, these are all secular judgments. They do not refer their moral systems to any intervening supernatural entity yet they are constantly dealing with religious matters. So kind of a rift opens up here, and i thought this is what i would like to explore. Charlie where was religion in your life . Oh, church of england, which is a kind of atheism in my background, it was polite and conventional. I used to carry the flag in the Garrison Church because my dad was an army officer. I sometimes even read a lesson from corinthians once. But i lost all religion in my early teens. Charlie you said at once about writing a new novel it begins with a set of feelings that are so vague that you cant even write them down because you might ruin them. Yes, sometimes wrapping words around a thought is a way to suffocate it. So charlie you just let it swim. Yeah. Hesitation, i think, is a very important creative element. Dont rush into things. Have a good idea, but sit on it a while. Because if its a good idea two months later, you know its a good idea. Charlie just let it mold like a cheese. Charlie how do you know youre ready . When you can no longer stop yourself writing paragraphs, perhaps at the middle, perhaps at the beginning, testing it, tasting it seems to be important. Charlie this case has the stark confrontation between the law courts. Yeah. It happens a lot, and the more i looked into this in fact, in the signing line of it, the 92nd y last night, three judges, all at one point or another, had forced against his wishes a young jehovahs witness or parents to have a blood transfusion. Charlie what if parents dont give a blood transfusion and the child dies . Do they say it must be gods will . Theres a certain degree of fatalism. Ive had them say this to me, we dont see death as something as final as you do. Its a beginning. The courts, i think, generally take a very robust approach to this. If you wish to make yourself a martyr to your religion, thats fine if you are an adult, but you cannot inflict such martyr martyrdom on a child. So generally the courts will give the hospital permission to transfuse beyond the parents wishes. But the closer the child gets to 18, to his or her majority, thee more of what the law calls the anxious question it becomes, and the more the courts wants to hear from the young teenager himself. So its not just a rubber stamping moment. The courts take this seriously because its a matter of criminal assault to treat someone against their wishes in a hospital. Charlie so when you create fiona may, how did you create her . What was the first thing i did . Charlie shes a judge, 59 years old. Shes a judge, 59 years old, childless. Well, its, again, this vague process of i tell you what its like, charlie. Its like watching someone walking towards you out of a mist. You have the faintest outlines and you serve those outlines with a few sentences. Those few sentences by that person a little closer. You see the outline of their shoulders, their face and something of their personality begins to emerge. So you write them into existups. One sentence generates another, one thought generates another, and suddenly, when youre lucky, if youre lucky, she has a life of her own, she tells you what to say, as it were. Charlie does that happen . You get enough into the character so they tell you what they think and say and how they say it . What they do is exclude all the impossibility. No, she wouldnt say that, do that, this is how she is. And this lady was somewhat against the grain. Rather selfcontained, highly rational, but emotionally rather inarticulate. Rather against the grain of women who are known to be so much more articulate in their emotions that be men. I thought, no, lets not go the standard route. Lets have her wonderful in her work, takes her private life for granted, its always been fairly smooth and efficient, now its facing a crisis. Shes not so good at dealing with her own problems. Shes much better on the treeless heap of other peoples. Charlie i love the name fiona. Do you . Charlie if i had three daughters, one would be fiona. Another would be margaret. My mother was margaret. Pick and choose after that. But i just love it because its always, to me, meant, you know, somebody who had their own they knew their own mind and they were strong. Now that you say this, i did know something just occurred to me, a justice of the peace called fiona, who sat in a magistrates course who was incredibly striking. Charlie theyre all tall. She was tall, freckled and highly competent, a very warm person, too. Charlie and quick of wit and mind, for me, fiona is. Im sure we could find some facts on fionas. Charlie she meets adam. So the case is before her, sitting in an emergency basis in the high court in london, in the courts of justice, and she does a slightly irregular thing, though its not impossible. She suspends the court proceedings, crosses london in a cab and goes and sits at this boys bedside. Hes 17 years old, highly intelligent, determined to die. She sees right through him in many ways, but, at the same time, he stirs her. This is a child perhaps that she might have had. Charlie and then yates down by the Sally Gardens. Paradoxically, for a boy thinking about death, hes teaching himself the violin, hes won a few tunes and he wants to play her an irish lament. She recognizes it immediately down by the Sally Gardens and she sings it as he plays it and tells him its by the poet yates. And yates is one of the elements of this new life that comes flooding into him with fiona, the life of poetry and music. So shes sort of a messenger from another world outside his sect. Suddenly, she is the reason why he wants to go on living. Charlie exactly. What criticisms of your writing do you find the most off target . What is it that makes you recoil in anger or frustration. There are some things i think all writers have this, im not special in this, but there are certain kinds of things people always say about you. Charlie no matter what you write. You never get away from it. So i always have unbelievably extraordinary thrilling or or exploitive events that change everyones life. I think there was one on a beach, one in atonement doesnt make any difference, theyre only thinking of the opening chapter of enduring love where theres a ballooning exit. But someone says this is what i do and i can never push peoples attention away frhm this. The opening of the first 100 pages or 200 pages of atonement is one, slow note of expanding circumstances. Theres nothing particularly dramatic. So that does usually when its in public on stage, in an earnest interview, this page has just come off the internet, not based on his or her experience, and im too weary of rejecting the question. Sometimes i want the next question. Charlie just get on with it. Yeah. Charlie after you write a book, are you anxious the get to the next one or just a period in which you need to im quite good at in the writing. I like hesitation. Theres a lovely phrase, i often quote it, when pritchet was criticizing ford who was a partygoer and pritchet said he lacked what great writers had, the capacity for determined stupor. I thought, well, i disagree with the remark. I thought ford was a remarkable writer. But i love the phrase determined stupor, and thats what i like to enter into, a relaxed mode of receptivity, relaxing, reading, seeing friends and thinking. Charlie where do you write . Im lucky. I have a big old converted stone barn out in the country attached to a main house by a set of double doors so i cant hear anything going on in there. All my books are around the walls. Charlie do you start in the morning . Start in the morning. Charlie early . No. Sort of 9ish, 10ish. Charlie after breakfast . I dont eat breakfast. One slice of toast, and i carry the second cup of coffee in there and think, this is delicious, i now have three or four hours charlie of just me and my work. Yeah. Its midnight. Everyone is in bed and you plunge through the night into the dawn. Charlie the children act, you know he is the muchpraised english novelist. Thank you. Thank you, charlie. Charlie thank you for joining us. See you next time. For more about this program and earlier episodes visit us online at pbs. Org and charlierose. Com. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications captioned by Media Access Group at wgbh access. Wgbh. Org explore new worlds and new ideas through programs like this. Made available for everyone through contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you