something that if you make it up nobody would believe. i love what mark twain once said that fiction must be possible truth needn t be. so i look for an impossible truth, something that actually happened, and then my question is, how much can we know? because if you can know everything about that and possible truth from the past, then it s not a job for a novelist. it s a job for a narrative historian. so i m for an impossible truth about which we can know interesting things but we can t know everything because the historical record has fallen silent, or the voices of the protagonist at the time of voices that were not recorded, the unheard voices from the past. and then i know it s a job for me. host: how many levels does it take to get to one of your books? how many levels of imagination, research? guest: it starts with overhearing something or a notation on the map or an artifact, a civil war belt buckle dug up on the porch of my house. they can be anything that gives
i was 18 when i first read this and my younger brother john had just died a short three weeks after being diagnosed with acute leukemia. for me then he had it right. and this fictional encounter had more influence on my life than all the condolences and families of port in the world. i loved reading it and i quickly found myself a king for help in everything i read. i like ron scanned anna karenina for his devil may care attitude towards paying bills. he throws them all in a drawer and he sits down to pay them three times a year. i learned that the telephone company did not appreciate his point of view. still, with or without the bill paid brodsky s life is more vivid than mine and more vivid than the lives of my friends. and he seemed as real as any character in a biography. and so it was with the book. i fell in love with small boats and sailing through swallows and amazons. my friends and i learned cool from holden caulfield and the catcher in the rye and of course there i
that she is maybe one of the best political people in washington. her father was the publisher of time magazine in its heyday and ambassador to austria. henry married louise gruenwald and is one of the last so just when you think you know everybody in new york, you don t she is it. mandy ran all the media for his elizabeth warren and tammy baldwin. the first-time presidential so you need to understand she is amazing. incredible, fabulous. it s a nice small room. hey, undersecretary. well done. congratulations. are you enjoying at? it s fun, yeah. it s hard. is the work hard? no. i mean technically it s okay but everyone is super smart so i d have to do my problems and then work on the board. i get it. i get it. at the same time i m trying to represent everybody s equity. actually that was good training. i m just saying that s the best it was so personal and when everyone is a democrat and you agree on everything except with little gradations it s all process
said i think he s telling me to trust myself. um, and, you know, follow the gleam of light in your own mind from within, etc., etc., etc. it seems to me that cuts through a lot of this stuff we ve been talking about and hearing about this weekend in the sense that, you know, when all else fails, we can take these writers straight. it s an extreme remedy, but it is possible, yeah. [laughter] they do talk to you. thank you. one more? [applause] one more. this is the most moving lecture i ve heard. for some reason it just pushed the right button. i m one and i ve read all the books that you suggested, but i read them as a teenager as you did, certainly am going to go read them again. do you have any other wonderful suggestions of books we should read? [laughter] well, if you haven t read them all again, read my wife s books again, annie dillard. american childhood [applause] [inaudible] nice. thank you. [applause] visit booktv.org to watch any of the programs