WEBVTT - Steve Erickson Saw Trumpism Coming 0:00:02.880 --> 0:00:06.040 This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the thing. 0:00:08.240 --> 0:00:10.639 People who know me well know that I keep a 0:00:10.680 --> 0:00:14.000 folder of writing that has changed my life in some way. 0:00:15.240 --> 0:00:21.520 Among these personal gospels is Eisenhower's farewell address Vacillation by Yates, 0:00:22.000 --> 0:00:28.160 and essay called American Weimar by novelist Steve Ericsson. Reading 0:00:28.240 --> 0:00:30.840 it for the first time twenty one years ago was 0:00:30.880 --> 0:00:34.800 a bolt of lucid fear, fear for this country and 0:00:34.880 --> 0:00:39.120 fear for the values at its foundation. The piece is 0:00:39.159 --> 0:00:43.520 an indictment not of America but of modern Americans, people 0:00:43.600 --> 0:00:48.040 in denial of our past, still exhausted and divided by Vietnam, 0:00:48.120 --> 0:00:51.320 and too angry at each other to harness any goodwill. 0:00:52.040 --> 0:00:57.280 America wearies of democracy, it begins, and the result is 0:00:57.360 --> 0:01:01.400 a hysteria of which we're barely conscious, a hysteria in 0:01:01.440 --> 0:01:05.520 which democracy appears as a spectacle of impotence and corruption. 0:01:07.560 --> 0:01:11.240 Since writing these words, Ericsson has become one of America's 0:01:11.280 --> 0:01:15.440 foremost novelists. He's got ten books, countless awards, and a 0:01:15.480 --> 0:01:20.520 Guggenheim Fellowship to prove it. But in all I knew 0:01:20.959 --> 0:01:23.600 was that someone had finally put his finger on what 0:01:23.760 --> 0:01:27.600 felt sick about this country. The nation gets meaner and 0:01:27.720 --> 0:01:31.480 more petty, he writes, until rage is the only national 0:01:31.560 --> 0:01:35.960 passion left. Twenty one years later, the national sickness Steve 0:01:36.000 --> 0:01:41.959 Erickson diagnosed has only progressed. The rage has evolved beyond 0:01:42.120 --> 0:01:48.160 what I even anticipated. Then. I've become more aware over 0:01:48.200 --> 0:01:53.040 the years that have passed of this profound division in 0:01:53.120 --> 0:01:57.880 the country that I realized now has always been there. Um. 0:01:58.000 --> 0:02:00.120 You know, if people ask how did we get to 0:02:00.160 --> 0:02:03.680 where we are now, my answer would be, We've actually 0:02:03.720 --> 0:02:08.320 always been here. We've always been these twin Americas, the 0:02:08.320 --> 0:02:12.440 one that made a promise and the one that broke 0:02:12.680 --> 0:02:16.160 the promise the moment it was made. And we've never 0:02:17.120 --> 0:02:20.200 we've never really reconciled the two. And I think it's 0:02:20.240 --> 0:02:22.920 going to be difficult to reconcile the two. I'm not 0:02:23.040 --> 0:02:27.000 sure that the America that elected the first African American 0:02:27.120 --> 0:02:30.880 president can be reconciled with an America that voted for 0:02:30.919 --> 0:02:35.400 the first president and modern memory to be openly endorsed 0:02:35.440 --> 0:02:38.280 by the ku Klux Klan. You reference something here. I'm 0:02:38.280 --> 0:02:42.840 gonna read this um as one historical phenomenon after another 0:02:42.840 --> 0:02:46.360 from the assassination of John F. Kennedy, to the Vietnam War, 0:02:46.520 --> 0:02:49.400 to Watergate, to O. J. Simpson hurtling down the L 0:02:49.440 --> 0:02:52.240 A Freeways is offered as a moment when the country 0:02:52.320 --> 0:02:55.840 lost its innocence. We have not grown up enough to 0:02:55.919 --> 0:02:59.079 accept that America has never been innocent at all. That's 0:02:59.080 --> 0:03:02.440 such an idealist, romantic country was created out of such 0:03:02.520 --> 0:03:08.480 profound transgressions. Is a more complicated paradox than we can entertain. Now. 0:03:09.160 --> 0:03:11.720 I want you to articulate for our when they can 0:03:11.760 --> 0:03:14.320 read other things for written by you. You know what 0:03:14.960 --> 0:03:18.240 happened to us in the wake of Vietnam, You know, 0:03:18.280 --> 0:03:22.600 I think we we had to reconcile ourselves with what 0:03:23.280 --> 0:03:27.480 could not be reconciled with, which was fifty thousand Americans, 0:03:27.560 --> 0:03:31.840 not to mention the countless hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese, 0:03:31.960 --> 0:03:36.400 of Vietnamese who died for what exactly I mean, we 0:03:36.600 --> 0:03:39.520 we don't have an answer to that, and nobody believed 0:03:39.560 --> 0:03:43.640 anymore at that point that national interests that right, the 0:03:43.720 --> 0:03:49.200 collapse of Southeast Asia will somehow to us meant meant 0:03:49.200 --> 0:03:52.800 anything to the national interests, in the same way that 0:03:52.880 --> 0:03:55.520 a hundred years later, we still don't know what World 0:03:55.560 --> 0:03:58.320 War one was really about you were old enough to 0:03:58.360 --> 0:04:01.360 go to Vietnam? Did you go? No? I um was 0:04:01.440 --> 0:04:05.960 in Nixon's lottery, which matched you up with your birthday, 0:04:06.000 --> 0:04:08.600 and you've got a number, and if your number was 0:04:08.680 --> 0:04:13.200 below two hundred, you were probably gonna go. I got 0:04:13.320 --> 0:04:19.520 number three. Your life was hanging in the balance depending 0:04:19.560 --> 0:04:23.800 on this random chance of this lottery. And I think 0:04:23.839 --> 0:04:29.479 that when that can't be reconciled a national people have 0:04:29.680 --> 0:04:35.360 to create some psychic rationalization for it. It's it's because 0:04:35.400 --> 0:04:42.120 the meaninglessness is too overwhelming to live with someone like 0:04:42.320 --> 0:04:47.480 Cruise who say that Vietnam wasn't the problem, the countercultural 0:04:47.560 --> 0:04:49.839 reaction to it and the lawlessness of what happened to it, 0:04:50.400 --> 0:04:54.720 nothing infuriates me more than that. You can take the 0:04:54.760 --> 0:04:59.320 excesses of the drugs, the silliness, the ephemera of the 0:04:59.520 --> 0:05:02.320 represent tations of the countercultural movement in our society and 0:05:02.360 --> 0:05:05.480 stripped those away and say this was when people cared. 0:05:06.360 --> 0:05:13.440 And people who belittle and blame the countercultural protests of 0:05:13.480 --> 0:05:15.799 that period. I don't know why it is that nothing 0:05:15.839 --> 0:05:18.240 infuriates me more than that when I read that, well, 0:05:18.279 --> 0:05:20.760 because they're blaming the wrong thing. But I will make 0:05:21.120 --> 0:05:24.800 this distinction. The first time somebody burned an American flag, 0:05:25.440 --> 0:05:28.200 I think we lost the next fifty years. There were 0:05:28.320 --> 0:05:31.839 bad tactics in the service of good causes that the 0:05:31.960 --> 0:05:36.400 right was then able to But to go back even further, 0:05:36.560 --> 0:05:40.520 you know, talking about what we've choked down and the 0:05:40.560 --> 0:05:44.080 loss of American innocence. A hundred and fifty years after 0:05:44.120 --> 0:05:46.680 the fact, there are still millions of white people who 0:05:46.760 --> 0:05:50.840 will not admit the Civil War was about slavery. That 0:05:51.000 --> 0:05:55.600 is the American version of Holocaust denial. It keeps us 0:05:55.680 --> 0:05:59.520 from becoming what we want to become. It's a lack 0:05:59.560 --> 0:06:03.960 of a knowledgement that keeps us from fulfilling the American idea. 0:06:04.880 --> 0:06:10.200 I think Americans, whether they're trying to rationalize the meaninglessness 0:06:10.240 --> 0:06:15.039 of Vietnam or two and fifty years of slavery, it 0:06:15.240 --> 0:06:20.880 maybe in the American DNA too, always think that everything 0:06:20.960 --> 0:06:25.080 is year zero. It might be in the American DNA 0:06:25.279 --> 0:06:29.680 to have cut ourselves loose from history and therefore not 0:06:29.800 --> 0:06:33.120 ever have to answer for it or to it. Trump 0:06:33.200 --> 0:06:37.359 is not something that happened to America. America happened to America, 0:06:37.720 --> 0:06:40.800 and Trump is the result of that. Trump is um 0:06:41.000 --> 0:06:45.520 was born out of claims, in the face of all evidence, 0:06:46.000 --> 0:06:48.960 that the first African American president was not a real 0:06:49.000 --> 0:06:52.360 American and not a real president, to which the Republican 0:06:52.400 --> 0:06:57.120 Party at the time said almost nothing. And the Republican 0:06:57.160 --> 0:07:00.600 Party deserved what it got. Unfortunately we got it too. 0:07:01.520 --> 0:07:05.359 What is your political process and what's your political rearing 0:07:05.400 --> 0:07:08.960 with your parents when you were young group in southern California, 0:07:09.000 --> 0:07:12.760 your whole life, that's correct, And um, I was raised 0:07:12.760 --> 0:07:17.480 a conservative Republican by my my parents who were you know, 0:07:17.560 --> 0:07:21.000 my were artists, who were artists and who had started 0:07:21.000 --> 0:07:24.440 out when they were very young as FDR Democrats. But 0:07:24.600 --> 0:07:27.200 like a lot of people at that point, we're starting 0:07:27.240 --> 0:07:32.400 to drift right. Word well, I think that Cold War 0:07:32.840 --> 0:07:37.040 Cold War um, and then later on in the sixties 0:07:37.720 --> 0:07:42.000 reaction to the counterculture um, which I you know, I 0:07:42.040 --> 0:07:45.720 think has has defined our politics over half a century 0:07:45.800 --> 0:07:48.800 more than we know. I think a lot of the reason, 0:07:49.240 --> 0:07:53.520 for instance, that working class people are persuaded to not 0:07:53.720 --> 0:07:58.240 vote their economic interest is because of these values that 0:07:58.640 --> 0:08:02.560 came out of this county linked between the culture or 0:08:02.560 --> 0:08:08.560 the mainstream and the states exactly. And and so you know, 0:08:08.680 --> 0:08:14.160 I I was raised a m a Republican conservative, And 0:08:14.200 --> 0:08:17.360 to make a long story short, and number of things happened. 0:08:17.440 --> 0:08:20.000 First of all, by the time I came of age, 0:08:20.080 --> 0:08:23.600 or was seventeen or eighteen, I realized that on the 0:08:23.720 --> 0:08:28.800 great domestic crucible of the day, which was civil rights 0:08:28.800 --> 0:08:32.640 and racial justice, conservatives were on the wrong side morally 0:08:32.679 --> 0:08:38.360 and historically. Um That in turn undercut a basic tenet 0:08:38.480 --> 0:08:43.040 of conservatism, which says that the more that power devolves 0:08:43.160 --> 0:08:45.760 away from the federal government, down to the state, down 0:08:45.840 --> 0:08:50.520 to the locality, the greater individual freedom grows. The problem 0:08:50.559 --> 0:08:53.560 with that is that is contradicted by history. On any 0:08:53.640 --> 0:08:57.880 number of occasions, it's taken the federal government intervening against 0:08:57.960 --> 0:09:03.600 the states to secure the a vidual freedoms of African Americans, women, 0:09:04.040 --> 0:09:09.200 gay people, and and then as my um ideas about 0:09:09.720 --> 0:09:13.920 the role of government in life changed, as I accepted 0:09:13.960 --> 0:09:17.080 that sometimes it takes the federal government to preserve the 0:09:17.120 --> 0:09:22.200 social contract, uh conservatism changed. It became when I was 0:09:22.280 --> 0:09:25.880 identifying as a conservative as a teenager, it was closer 0:09:25.920 --> 0:09:29.320 to what we now think of as libertarianism, and in 0:09:29.360 --> 0:09:31.920 the late seventies and early eighties it starts to become 0:09:31.960 --> 0:09:34.880 On the one hand, more corporate and on the other hand, 0:09:34.880 --> 0:09:38.680 more theocratic. And it felt like, you know that that 0:09:38.800 --> 0:09:44.000 for all the lips service that conservatives give individual freedom, 0:09:44.000 --> 0:09:47.960 what they really cared about was order. And the only 0:09:48.040 --> 0:09:52.120 individual freedoms that I've ever heard conservatives get exercised about 0:09:52.280 --> 0:09:55.200 where the freedom to make a profit and the freedom 0:09:55.240 --> 0:10:01.760 to own a gun. And so generally my polity picks shifted, 0:10:01.880 --> 0:10:07.000 while I think arguably the center of gravity shifted, because 0:10:07.040 --> 0:10:09.199 if you go back and look at, for instance, Barry 0:10:09.280 --> 0:10:14.840 Goldwaters views. Now, I mean, Goldwater was an environmentalist, he 0:10:15.000 --> 0:10:19.680 was pro gay rights, he was pro choice, he was 0:10:20.200 --> 0:10:26.959 he supported the Voting Rights Act. Goldwater rightly identified as 0:10:27.000 --> 0:10:33.080 the most extreme nominee of a party in the twentieth century. 0:10:32.280 --> 0:10:36.719 Is well, I mean, his vote against the sixty four 0:10:36.840 --> 0:10:41.360 Civil Rights Act was a bad vote. Nonetheless, I think 0:10:41.400 --> 0:10:45.160 that his views, which were so extreme in nineteen sixty four, 0:10:45.200 --> 0:10:49.640 are now significantly to the left of the current Republican Party. 0:10:49.760 --> 0:10:54.240 So I shifted one way, the center of our country's 0:10:54.440 --> 0:10:59.520 political gravity shifted another way, and that's why I wound 0:10:59.600 --> 0:11:02.920 up where I'm wound up to me. At the same time, philosophically, 0:11:02.960 --> 0:11:08.000 it's been this fiction between capitalism and democracy, right, like 0:11:08.080 --> 0:11:10.880 how much we're on a boat and which which containers 0:11:10.920 --> 0:11:12.400 to be throw over the side of the boat to 0:11:12.440 --> 0:11:15.040 keep the boat from from capsizing. Yeah, And I think 0:11:15.040 --> 0:11:18.160 the last ten to twenty years have just have just 0:11:18.280 --> 0:11:23.720 confirmed that or or validated unfettered capitalism nearly drove this 0:11:23.840 --> 0:11:27.440 country over a cliff ten years. And you know, I 0:11:27.600 --> 0:11:31.120 think that there's a lot to the argument, the current 0:11:31.240 --> 0:11:34.600 argument that we're pretty close to an oligarchy at this 0:11:34.679 --> 0:11:39.439 point where we're there. It's very demoralizing, it's very depressing. 0:11:39.840 --> 0:11:42.960 Fifty years ago you could use the word capitalism and 0:11:43.000 --> 0:11:47.199 the expression free enterprise in the same sentence. Now it's 0:11:47.360 --> 0:11:51.280 laughable to to think that capitalism is free enterprise. And 0:11:51.320 --> 0:11:57.240 the conservatives, who, um, you know, who are distressed by 0:11:57.400 --> 0:12:02.719 centralized state power, never seemed to feel the same distress 0:12:02.760 --> 0:12:06.720 over centralized corporate power. What was writing in your life? 0:12:06.720 --> 0:12:08.240 I mean, I'm not just saying that you were such 0:12:08.280 --> 0:12:11.720 an amazing writer and you've been reviewed with some of 0:12:11.720 --> 0:12:15.000 the most I mean just glowing. I mean that's a cliche. 0:12:15.480 --> 0:12:18.480 And what was the writing process for you as a 0:12:18.600 --> 0:12:21.440 child and when when did you realize this is what 0:12:21.480 --> 0:12:24.440 I would do? I realized that pretty early. I was 0:12:26.640 --> 0:12:29.960 when I was young, let's say five years old, I 0:12:30.080 --> 0:12:33.959 stuttered very badly, and to the point the teachers I 0:12:34.040 --> 0:12:37.600 thought I couldn't read. And this is actually fairly typical 0:12:37.760 --> 0:12:41.040 of writers. You know, you have a verbal facility, but 0:12:41.120 --> 0:12:45.960 it's being obstructed, shuttered, shuttered in your speech, so you 0:12:46.160 --> 0:12:51.080 retreat inside your head. Uh, the verbal facility manifests itself 0:12:51.480 --> 0:12:56.600 in written words. You're living inside your imagination. It doesn't 0:12:56.640 --> 0:13:00.440 make you more sociable. But um, I the time I 0:13:00.480 --> 0:13:04.280 got to college, I liked college a lot. I went 0:13:04.320 --> 0:13:07.320 to u C. L A. And I was why and 0:13:07.360 --> 0:13:09.960 why so for someone who's open minded, is you? Is 0:13:10.080 --> 0:13:12.600 why so California centric? Was there any thoughts of you, 0:13:12.640 --> 0:13:13.800 I want to go to Berlin, I want to go 0:13:13.880 --> 0:13:16.520 to London. I want to go Yes, but but it 0:13:16.520 --> 0:13:19.480 was far enough and it was and I remember a 0:13:19.640 --> 0:13:21.960 sense of liberation the time where you wining the valley 0:13:22.000 --> 0:13:25.560 again Granada Hill. So for those who don't know Los Angeles, 0:13:25.840 --> 0:13:29.199 he's he's right. The gap between Granada Hills and Westwood 0:13:29.520 --> 0:13:33.480 Westwood really is like Paris. It was absolutely it was 0:13:33.520 --> 0:13:37.200 another world, you know, And I thought Westwood was the 0:13:37.280 --> 0:13:42.400 big city, you know it was, and uh and and 0:13:42.440 --> 0:13:47.040 after that, I um, I actually did go to europe 0:13:47.160 --> 0:13:50.200 Um and I lived there often over a while. So 0:13:51.160 --> 0:13:56.760 U c l A was that step away. Steve Ericson 0:13:57.240 --> 0:13:59.640 is one of our leading thinkers on the legacy of 0:13:59.640 --> 0:14:02.560 the Sick Days and seventies, But a few people had 0:14:02.600 --> 0:14:05.720 more of an impact on how Americans saw that era 0:14:06.040 --> 0:14:09.960 in real time than Dan Rather. When President Nixon was 0:14:09.960 --> 0:14:13.440 elected in Night, I'm frankly vought at the time, here's 0:14:13.480 --> 0:14:16.679 a new breath of air. But I quickly learned that 0:14:16.720 --> 0:14:20.680 the Unixon people, including President Nixon, they had such a 0:14:20.760 --> 0:14:24.040 deep and abiding hatred for the Prince. It revealed to 0:14:24.080 --> 0:14:27.440 me the first time we have a problem here an 0:14:27.480 --> 0:14:32.160 important reminder that America has come through this before. Rather 0:14:32.240 --> 0:14:36.400 his new book What Unites Us answers Ericson's question, can 0:14:36.440 --> 0:14:41.120 the many Americas be reconciled with a resounding yes. Here 0:14:41.160 --> 0:14:44.480 my whole conversation with Dan Rather at Here's the Thing, 0:14:44.680 --> 0:15:00.800 Dot Org, this is Alec Baldwin, and you were listening 0:15:00.840 --> 0:15:04.800 to Here's the Thing. Steve Ericsson's most recent book is 0:15:04.880 --> 0:15:10.240 Shadow Bad, a funny, heartbreaking road trip through our divided country. 0:15:10.400 --> 0:15:15.040 The writing is intensely visual, which reflects Ericson's own alternate 0:15:15.120 --> 0:15:20.440 life path. I majored in film. Well, I started out 0:15:20.480 --> 0:15:23.600 a political science major UM, and I was taking a 0:15:23.600 --> 0:15:27.080 lot of literature courses, and I wanted to take some 0:15:27.120 --> 0:15:31.360 film courses. But the bureaucracy at the time and may 0:15:31.360 --> 0:15:35.400 still be the case, was such that, UM, I could 0:15:35.480 --> 0:15:38.640 still take the political courses and the literature courses if 0:15:38.680 --> 0:15:41.240 I was a film major, but I couldn't take the 0:15:41.240 --> 0:15:44.880 film courses if I was a policy major. So it 0:15:44.960 --> 0:15:48.520 was a completely tactical choice, you know. Um it was 0:15:48.880 --> 0:15:50.600 a way of since since I knew I wanted to 0:15:50.600 --> 0:15:53.440 be a writer, and since what I majored and really 0:15:53.480 --> 0:15:58.280 didn't matter much to me, it was a matter it 0:15:58.320 --> 0:16:01.240 doesn't doesn't matter what you're majoring, right, because I was 0:16:01.280 --> 0:16:03.800 going to go off and do what I was gonna do. 0:16:04.440 --> 0:16:08.240 And so I made the strategic choice that allowed me 0:16:08.320 --> 0:16:12.120 to do all the things. Was film school, top film school. 0:16:13.400 --> 0:16:16.000 It was great, But you didn't pursue that. I didn't 0:16:16.040 --> 0:16:21.720 pursue being a filmmaker. UM, could you have said, do 0:16:21.760 --> 0:16:25.360 you think you were capable? The guy, the stuttering boy 0:16:25.400 --> 0:16:29.280 from Granada Hills who goes inward with that was he 0:16:29.360 --> 0:16:31.120 was he able to express what he wanted to in 0:16:31.200 --> 0:16:34.120 film as well as as writing. I think you nailed 0:16:34.160 --> 0:16:37.440 it with the question. I mean I I realized at 0:16:37.480 --> 0:16:41.200 some point that I probably shouldn't make a choice. That 0:16:41.240 --> 0:16:43.960 both of these things would be really hard. It would 0:16:44.000 --> 0:16:46.840 be impossible to try to do both. And the thing 0:16:46.960 --> 0:16:50.120 that that you're right on about is that film, as 0:16:50.520 --> 0:16:54.720 you would know better than I, is a more collaborative 0:16:54.960 --> 0:16:59.280 highly so ever as being a writer, you lock yourself 0:16:59.320 --> 0:17:03.239 in a room and you have as little um interaction 0:17:03.400 --> 0:17:07.240 with humanity as you can get away with. And you 0:17:07.280 --> 0:17:11.000 know what that suited me? That that's who I was. Um, 0:17:12.359 --> 0:17:15.080 what's the first time you sold a piece and you 0:17:15.160 --> 0:17:17.480 became a professional writer? I sold a piece actually to 0:17:17.520 --> 0:17:21.439 the Los Angeles Times Calendar. The gist of it was 0:17:21.560 --> 0:17:26.000 that the line between reality and fiction was blurring. This 0:17:26.119 --> 0:17:31.159 was the early seventies. How does that work? Well, you 0:17:31.200 --> 0:17:34.040 know it works the way it still works, which is 0:17:34.280 --> 0:17:36.920 that I knew somebody who knew somebody and who could 0:17:36.960 --> 0:17:40.480 get the piece into the hands of the editor of 0:17:40.520 --> 0:17:43.680 what was then the l A Times Calendar and and 0:17:43.680 --> 0:17:47.119 and give it a real read. Because that's what it takes. 0:17:48.200 --> 0:17:51.479 I teach writing, and as I tell my students without 0:17:51.520 --> 0:17:55.520 trying to depress them unduly. You know, editors look for 0:17:55.560 --> 0:17:58.080 a reason to say no. They're not looking for a 0:17:58.119 --> 0:18:00.639 reason to say yes. So you have to be sure 0:18:00.680 --> 0:18:03.800 you don't give them any reasons to say Now, how 0:18:03.800 --> 0:18:07.640 do you do that? When I submit a novel, for instance, 0:18:08.840 --> 0:18:12.120 it's it's pristine, it's so clean you can eat off 0:18:12.160 --> 0:18:16.880 the thing, and um it, it's laid out to look 0:18:17.040 --> 0:18:19.800 the way the book is gonna look, so they can 0:18:19.920 --> 0:18:24.880 visualize how how it's gonna look, you know. And when 0:18:24.880 --> 0:18:27.600 I get papers from students where there are typos and 0:18:27.680 --> 0:18:30.040 that that kind of thing, I just explained to them 0:18:30.080 --> 0:18:32.760 you can't do that, I mean everything can you expect 0:18:32.800 --> 0:18:35.119 people to care if you don't care exactly? And every 0:18:35.440 --> 0:18:40.240 little flaw becomes cumulative, it builds up and it it 0:18:40.400 --> 0:18:45.920 reinforces this, uh, this impulse to turn the thing down. 0:18:46.600 --> 0:18:49.879 So you wrote this piece that did you have books 0:18:49.920 --> 0:18:52.959 you've written, you know, in your pocket. I was writing 0:18:53.000 --> 0:18:56.040 novels all the time. I was writing, since I had 0:18:56.240 --> 0:18:59.720 I was in high school. I mean, I wrote five 0:19:00.040 --> 0:19:03.400 levels before I published one. Your first book that's published 0:19:03.400 --> 0:19:07.600 as what the first book is published in ve That's 0:19:07.680 --> 0:19:11.080 twelve years after I had published the first piece. And 0:19:11.119 --> 0:19:12.760 if you had told me at that time it was 0:19:12.800 --> 0:19:15.040 going to be I'm glad there was nobody to tell 0:19:15.080 --> 0:19:18.320 me it was going to be another twelve years, because 0:19:18.359 --> 0:19:21.440 they they felt like twelve years in the wilderness. And 0:19:21.880 --> 0:19:24.159 by the time I sold the book, I remember the 0:19:24.240 --> 0:19:28.800 feeling was more relief than anything else, because it just 0:19:28.840 --> 0:19:33.640 seemed like it was it was never going to happen. 0:19:33.840 --> 0:19:37.000 And that is the same thing somebody who knows somebody. 0:19:37.240 --> 0:19:40.399 The thing that was instrumental was finding the right agent 0:19:41.000 --> 0:19:43.359 during that twelve years. How do you support yourself? You 0:19:43.400 --> 0:19:45.720 were doing the teaching thing then, were you know? I wasn't. 0:19:45.760 --> 0:19:48.840 I was what does the writer do? Those was right. 0:19:48.960 --> 0:19:53.960 I was working for the PR department of the Auto Club. 0:19:54.760 --> 0:19:57.520 I had a job. I had a job job. I 0:19:57.560 --> 0:20:04.280 was also writing freelance pieces for the l A Times, 0:20:04.359 --> 0:20:07.760 the l A Weekly, which just had just launched in 0:20:07.800 --> 0:20:13.760 the late seventies. The Los Angeles Reader was another so um. 0:20:13.800 --> 0:20:18.000 I was cobbling together a living. But it was always 0:20:18.000 --> 0:20:22.640 clear in my mind that, you know, success for me 0:20:22.640 --> 0:20:25.520 meant becoming a published novelist. And when you got the 0:20:25.520 --> 0:20:30.560 book published because you got a literary agent. And are 0:20:30.600 --> 0:20:33.040 you still with that literary Yes, you are, I am. 0:20:33.080 --> 0:20:36.320 And I had had several agents before her, none of 0:20:36.359 --> 0:20:40.600 them could sell my work. Um, I had gone to 0:20:40.920 --> 0:20:47.000 New York, uh to find an agent. I've interviewed with 0:20:47.240 --> 0:20:50.080 four agents. They had all read this, this novel what 0:20:50.160 --> 0:20:53.320 wound up being my first published novel. They all said, 0:20:53.440 --> 0:20:55.840 you know, it's a really interesting book, but I don't 0:20:55.880 --> 0:20:58.480 think I can sell it. And then I finally found 0:20:58.520 --> 0:21:00.560 somebody who said, I don't know if I and sell it, 0:21:00.640 --> 0:21:04.239 but it's a really interesting book. And she wound up 0:21:04.280 --> 0:21:06.120 selling it to somebody who had turned it down. What's 0:21:06.119 --> 0:21:08.960 her name? Melanie Jackson? Who she? What company is she with? 0:21:09.000 --> 0:21:11.760 Her own? Why have you stayed with her all this time? 0:21:11.800 --> 0:21:14.080 What does she do for you? So here's a quick 0:21:14.119 --> 0:21:18.080 story that revolves around that first novel and how the 0:21:18.119 --> 0:21:21.600 first novel sold. Um. She had submitted it to somebody 0:21:21.640 --> 0:21:23.560 as Simon, and she was who had turned it down, 0:21:24.520 --> 0:21:26.760 And a couple of months passed by and it's gone 0:21:26.800 --> 0:21:29.680 to some other people, and then one afternoon she gets 0:21:29.680 --> 0:21:32.119 a phone call from this editor as Simon, and she 0:21:32.200 --> 0:21:34.800 was through who had turned the book down, and the 0:21:34.960 --> 0:21:39.879 editor was bemoaning the fact that another book that she 0:21:39.920 --> 0:21:43.199 had turned down had gone on to be published and 0:21:43.280 --> 0:21:47.040 had gotten attention and was doing well, and she was thinking, 0:21:47.080 --> 0:21:50.880 I shouldn't have turned that down in my age, and said, yeah, 0:21:50.880 --> 0:21:53.720 and you're gonna feel the same way when somebody publishes 0:21:53.880 --> 0:21:58.080 Ericsson And the next day, the next day Simon and 0:21:58.119 --> 0:22:00.560 Schuster bought the book. That's what a good agent does. 0:22:01.760 --> 0:22:04.879 You're pretty tough on Bill Clinton, and some of your writing, 0:22:06.040 --> 0:22:08.840 it goes to you. On the simplest level, he let 0:22:08.920 --> 0:22:11.760 you down. Yeah. I wound up voting for him twice. 0:22:12.400 --> 0:22:16.480 I still believe that, um uh, he might have done 0:22:16.480 --> 0:22:20.760 the country a favor if he had resigned during Monica. 0:22:21.359 --> 0:22:24.920 It would have put Al Gore in, who probably would 0:22:24.920 --> 0:22:29.520 have won in two thousand. You know, once the issue 0:22:29.640 --> 0:22:33.600 became less about you know, he has a fair and 0:22:33.640 --> 0:22:38.400 became more about impeachment, I switched. I did not think 0:22:38.480 --> 0:22:42.800 what he had done was a constitutionally impeachable offense, and 0:22:43.840 --> 0:22:47.280 it was clear to me that that the Constitution was 0:22:47.359 --> 0:22:51.800 being molested by Republicans. Ken Starr has more conscience for 0:22:51.840 --> 0:22:53.760 what he did to this country. But you know, Bill 0:22:53.800 --> 0:22:58.280 Clinton sure helped them out keep giving them a target. 0:22:58.359 --> 0:23:01.119 As my friends said to me, he's he said to me, 0:23:01.640 --> 0:23:03.840 I had this horrible incident. I'll mention this because I 0:23:03.880 --> 0:23:05.800 throw my own thing on the table. I had this 0:23:05.880 --> 0:23:09.159 horrible incident where I left this blistering voicemail from my 0:23:09.240 --> 0:23:11.480 daughter that my then ex wife put on the internet. 0:23:12.080 --> 0:23:14.600 She released it to a tabloid organization that played it 0:23:14.640 --> 0:23:17.199 on the internet. And as my therapist said back then, 0:23:17.240 --> 0:23:19.320 he said, well, you know that was wrong, and that 0:23:19.440 --> 0:23:21.600 made things worse, and that was terrible. But none of 0:23:21.600 --> 0:23:23.960 this would have happened if you hadn't left the voicemail. 0:23:26.640 --> 0:23:28.360 None of this would have happened if he hadn't done 0:23:28.400 --> 0:23:30.680 what he did. In the time we have left, I 0:23:30.760 --> 0:23:33.280 want to talk to about your books. How does that 0:23:33.320 --> 0:23:35.960 process for? Again, for our six listeners who are writers 0:23:36.000 --> 0:23:41.240 out there? The must be a rabid reader. I used 0:23:41.280 --> 0:23:43.439 to be a rabid reader. I don't always have the 0:23:43.520 --> 0:23:46.119 time to read, and when I'm working on a novel, 0:23:46.200 --> 0:23:50.040 I don't read other fiction. I'll read history, or I 0:23:50.080 --> 0:23:53.280 may read poetry even but I don't I don't want 0:23:53.280 --> 0:23:56.399 to go into somebody else's world. Who are right? Was 0:23:56.440 --> 0:24:06.959 that you admire Pension, Marquez, Faulkner, Henry Miller, the Brontes, um. 0:24:07.160 --> 0:24:10.680 Those those were writers who influenced me in some way. 0:24:10.720 --> 0:24:12.560 Do you have a reading list you give to your 0:24:12.600 --> 0:24:15.960 students in the I do send it to me, Okay, 0:24:16.000 --> 0:24:18.159 I want that if I get one thing out of this. 0:24:18.320 --> 0:24:22.480 I mean they tend to, uh, they tend to form 0:24:22.760 --> 0:24:25.719 object lessons. So you know you want to if I 0:24:25.760 --> 0:24:29.800 want to, for instance, show the students how landscape can 0:24:29.880 --> 0:24:34.399 be a character in um in a story The Sheltering 0:24:34.480 --> 0:24:39.760 sky By by Paul Bulls, or how voice is can 0:24:40.520 --> 0:24:46.040 drive a narrative Miller's Tropic of Cancer. Um. But and 0:24:46.480 --> 0:24:49.680 so that that's the function of the The reading list 0:24:49.760 --> 0:24:52.520 tends to Are you still teaching now? And you teach 0:24:52.560 --> 0:24:56.280 at I teach that you see riverside, and you see riverside, 0:24:57.280 --> 0:25:00.159 and so that's uh, how far off a dry is 0:25:00.160 --> 0:25:04.439 that for you? From? Oh my god? I know? And 0:25:04.480 --> 0:25:07.160 you teach how the class meets how often once a week, 0:25:07.359 --> 0:25:10.080 once a week for three four hours, right? And if 0:25:10.119 --> 0:25:14.200 I have two classes that quarter, um, I'll put them 0:25:14.200 --> 0:25:17.080 both on the same day and I'll have one monster day. 0:25:17.240 --> 0:25:20.280 So just getting it out there, getting it out there 0:25:20.480 --> 0:25:24.000 and and then the class is entitled what well there are? 0:25:24.960 --> 0:25:28.120 I have the luxury of creating my own classes. Sometimes 0:25:28.359 --> 0:25:34.200 I'm teaching workshops, so we're critiquing the work of the students. 0:25:34.359 --> 0:25:37.520 This coming quarter, this would probably be interesting to you. 0:25:37.600 --> 0:25:43.280 I'm teaching UM a course of fiction into film. That is, 0:25:43.359 --> 0:25:45.920 I give them a list of novels and then we 0:25:45.960 --> 0:25:53.280 watch the adaptation that this coming quarter September, October November. 0:25:53.359 --> 0:25:56.120 This this airs said, I'm not going to be out here. 0:25:56.160 --> 0:25:59.840 I can con visit your class again. Come sit on 0:26:00.000 --> 0:26:02.240 it fast. They would be thrilled if you were just 0:26:02.240 --> 0:26:04.639 sitting in the room and listen to you talk. And 0:26:04.760 --> 0:26:06.840 so you do that, and you and how many years 0:26:06.840 --> 0:26:08.639