Donna Leon | Appel Salon | March 10, 2020

I don't think we choose our moral principles I think we're raised with them hmm they they they sink in as do our prejudices they sink in when we're kids and we don't know what they're talking about but gradually we we we work it out that that it's the things are like this and I think that it would be difficult in and it's also a cultural thing Italians have a different a different view of basic ethics from what anglo-saxons have and it's much more malleable it's much more flexible than is that of the anglo-saxons the harvest excursion [Music] I mean given the fact that the current events are so dramatic right now I feel like we do have to start with what's happening in Venice are your friends alright what's happening I feel you know email I'm an email contact with with my friends in Venice one man that I know has died he's not a friend but he's someone I've known for 30 35 years healthy tall active fit go figure most of my friends in Venice write and say how wonderful it is because because no people are there no no no no I don't see it it's funny because I understand them and I would probably if I were there I'd probably be saying the same thing except they're out with very few people walking around so there's little danger of contagion but what I hear of the situation and the rest of Italy is is pretty desperate that the country is not prepared for something this extensive but neither is the United States and I think that that will be shown in the next couple of days or the next couple of weeks who knows how long this is going on I will confess that I went back and forth yes-no yes-no about coming on the trip because I've been I've been in America for nine days I think 9 or 10 days and then came to Montreal two days ago and and now here and tomorrow I go back to Zurich and I wanted to be able to be home when and if it happened that was my major concern that I not be stuck in a foreign country and be a problem to somebody else's health system I just wanted to go home and see what happened but I think this is a kind of natural instinct an animal would feel like this I want to be in my nest when when and if it happens your latest books are very eco minded yeah yeah feel like the earth is mad at us I've heard some people's theory that they you know Nate nature's just happy to bump off that Lovelock guy who said who has the the Gaia theory that the that the planet is in reality a being or a unit and when there's time to when it's time to to clean to clean it off it does yeah I think ultimately the cause is ecological if if what I've read that it is the result of one Chinese person killing a bat and eating the bat then yeah the proper causes environmental because the bat is living in a place where people previously did not go or the bat would have moved so the bat was taken by surprised killed and eaten and the man who should not been in the habitat who should not have been there in the habitat of the bat caused all of this mm-hmm this is but this is what's going I think because I'm a catastrophist where the environment is is concerned this is what's going to be happening with with greater and greater frequency so in a way I think it's linked to the fires in California the fires in Australia we have messed it up and we as as a as a species we seem not to be in the least bit interested in doing what we know has to be done because nobody wants to give up their washing machine or their their dryer I was just in visiting my brother in America who lives in a kind of old person's ghetto it's it's a it's a section of three hundred and thirty houses all very very pretty and very nice with the lawn mowed and they they all have dryers and I said why don't you just hang your stuff outside and my sister-in-law said it's forbidden by the rules of the community you cannot hang your wash outside I said why and she's oh I don't know I said it's because you have to use your dryer so here are 330 people who are constrained to use their dryer all the time doesn't anybody think that maybe the age of the dryer is behind us or should be behind us but I'm a screaming crazy loony about the environment and about waste fair enough um just out of curiosity a little show of hands here who in the crowd has read more than two brunette E's okay we're gonna win oh you know who in the crowd has read more than ten ten okay that's pretty good and here we are at number 29 and there is a very strong environmental component yeah I don't want to give away the plot but it's it's a lot about complicity and what people know and and the crime isn't so much the crime is it I mean the crime is much more the ignoring of the potential disaster but I would like to remind those of you who have read the earlier books I think the the environmental interest is manifest in one of the early books were when brunettes he's taking a shower and he hears boom boom boom boom boom on the door it's the kids and he's on water police and the kids are nagging him because he he has five minutes to take a shower and that's it and then he gets banged on the door that was put in as a joke ten books later signorina Elettra brings in the separated garbage at the questura and it's still sort of a joke but it's not a joke anymore earthly remains about what was a book about what has been done to the Lagoona and continues to be done to the Lagoona because it's all leaking out and this book too deals with the environment I I have Richard powers as an old friend of mine I met him in in Zurich last November and I told him Richard I start a book and and and it gets kidnapped and it wants to be an echo logical book or an environmental book what am I gonna do this is the guy who won the Pulitzer for his environmental book and he said well is there a better topic or there is there a more important topic to write about and I said my god he's right so I'm gonna be the old lady the old crazy old lady in the corner writing the environmental bookshop burn your dryers so how much do you know about a book when you begin do you start with an image or an idea or I know nothing I get an idea about something that might have happened so I have this thing happen and then I see where that leads in this book trace elements I stood I started a book that was going to be about something else and I wrote fifty pages in which someone is killed maybe it's an accident maybe it's not an accident I didn't know but I wrote fifty pages talking about how brunetti gets sucked into helping someone making a promise to help someone and after 50 50 pages I said I don't want to write about that the guy worked at the water but for the first month or two of writing this book it was going somewhere else and so if you were surprised by things happen in the book you are you were in my company because very often I just don't I don't know do you ditch those first 50 pages then or do you just be like okay now that dunno I was lucky in that there were 50 pages in which someone died in suspicious circumstances mm-hmm the cause of which I did not when I wrote those pages no but I thought it was going to be this but then I thought no no it could be that and I didn't have to change any of the fifty pages because the guy still got killed so you so you really don't know where it's going you find out have you ever dried up like have you ever run into something you couldn't write your way out of no that's just don't you love the way she says it like us anyone could do that I mean your output to me who you know pretends to be a writer from time to time is so humbling have you ever not had your next idea no no incredible no this is because every day I read lanois Venecia and eel Gazette II know the local papers so every day also just to to soothe your conscience a manuscript of one of these books has 365 pages does that number sound familiar you really write a page today no no no I don't write a page a day but that's that's my obligation huh at the end of the time that I'm writing a book I have produced 365 pages give or take 10 or 20 pages to produce a book that means if I wanted to if I were disciplined enough I could write a page a day you know that would be the end of it I write in spurts maybe I don't write for a month and then I just get the desire to get on with it to try to find out what's happening and then I just don't do anything except work for 10 days or two weeks and I might produce 30 or 40 pages of manuscript and then I then I go on holiday I can go and play some more have you heard tell of these writers who then have to go back and start again and rewrite that's not you no no Wow and when you are thinking this through do you start with the case the crime or do you start with the theme and the and a sort of overriding subject that you're really talking about I just think about the beginning of the story there was one a long long long time ago where I I was thinking about something and I thought about I had not a vision but I had imagined a truck going off a slippery snowy road and going down the hill and slamming into a tree and then having the back door open and bodies fall out I don't know where that came from but that started the book but when I started the book I had no idea where the book was going but that's the way it works and luckily it has worked that way for me for a long time for 30 Brahmas with every book do you ever just not feel like writing I I have a real I write the books but I have a real serious involvement with with a an orchestra so I am really the books are dependent upon the orchestra because I go to their rehearsals I go to their performances I go to the rehearsals for discs last last year I spent the first three weeks of January in Dobie Jaco in northern Italy for the recording of a Latina with Joyce DiDonato and those of you who are if your opera crazies you know that Joyce's Joyce is the leader of the pack at the moment and then I went on tour with the orchestra and with Joyce to see four of the concert version so I just wrote off January because I was going to be a camp follower for the orchestra and this this um this trip my publisher wants me to come every year and I fight that off because I don't want to do that but this time I said okay I'll make a deal with you I will make a deal you can have me for ten days but I want to I want two days with my brother in New Jersey before the before the tour I want to go to Montreal so I can see my friend Judith Flanders in Montreal but the big thing is I want on March seventh to be in New York so I can go to the Opera and see Joyce sing de pinna and they know I'm crazy so they said okay well do all right so the rest of the trip like the rest of my life is sort of peripheral to the music thing hmm and you were actually finishing a book right now maybe fifty pages to fifty pages ago and okay I'm gonna stop belaboring this point in a minute I just have to really ask until I can ask no more like do you ever sort of I have to go take a walk now because it's just not flowing like is there something that you do when you encounter even the slightest resistance or is it really just coming all the time no no no sometimes I don't know where it's because I don't have I don't have an outline so sometimes I just can't figure out where what should happen next then I go out for a coffee or I I go for a walk and when I come back usually unconsciously because I really don't spend a lot of time thinking about them and strangely enough I almost never talk about them Wow huh and so if you're at page 360 and you're not wrapped up yet do you like hasten cuz cuz I that means that I don't know I don't know yet what it is what it is so I have to I have to just let some time pass and the ideas will come I am certain that somewhere in my head I'm going forward with the books and and working things out but it's at some unconscious level that I choose not to I don't want to mess with it because it works yes I would not mess with it if I were you I want to switch gears just a little bit and and talk about you were you always a calm person were you always a a steady person who had faith in yourself what kind of kid were you I was blessed by the fact that I came today in the age of confessional books about how miserably people suffered for ages I have to confess that I had a happy upbringing I liked I liked and loved my parents I'd like to love my brother I'd like to love the dog we were just the standard American family I didn't know until high school that people hated their parents and it was too late and I know and I was lucky that I was raised absolutely without ambition hmm I'm sure I'm sure my parents didn't sleep nights because I I just wanted to go to university and read a lot of books and and write about books and talk about books so you were always a reader you were always yeah I was I was reading I did my parents were readers my brother was a reader and I I never I never in my life ever had a real job I had / I had temporary jobs as teaching assistants at University while I was working on my PhD I had a one-year job that wasn't wasn't continued teaching at a small American college I went to Iran to teach hella teach English to helicopter pilots and that was blown away by I sort of had a job but I wasn't going to stay there that was blown away by the revolution I went to China for a year but it was a one-year contract I went to Saudi Arabia for nine months and then I came back and I get a job I came back went back to Italy and settled in in Venice and I got a job with the University of Maryland teaching English but my contract was renewed every eight weeks so I never ever in my life had a real job where I knew I could have that job the next year if I wanted it or if they wanted me and that that didn't seem peculiar to me because I didn't want to become the boss hmm that never seemed to make any sense to me I just wanted to have a job I liked and have a lot of fun and I have hmm so you let's just back up for a second you were in grad school and I ran is that right no I was teaching in a room you were teaching in or I was teaching Howard I was teaching basic I was teaching basic English to helicopter pilots but I realized early on that I didn't that wasn't a whole lot of fun so I got myself transferred a friend of mine got me transferred to a department that didn't do anything so for three that for three and a half years I played tennis I really did in fact I won in 1970 something I won the part of e the Shah was his family name was part of me I won the path of a cup in Esfahan Iran for women's singles Wow but when we were evacuated I left the puzzle teacup behind so who knows where it is now and after that he went to New York and briefly wrote advertising copy yeah I didn't know but I did that's I don't remember when I did that huh but then I went to China okay because I I didn't want to I didn't want to go back to graduate school hmm and how quickly after going to Italy the first time did you move to Italy I didn't move to Italy until about 15 years after that but I went back every year once or twice okay but ever long periods and what made you start your life in crime novels what was the second I was in the dressing room at La Fenice a speaking to a conductor friend of mine and we started he and his wife and I started talking about another conductor and there was an escalation or I'll I'll give you the Italian word escalation [Laughter] we're thinking about how we could be killed in the dressing room and I thought what a great idea that would be for a murder mystery I wonder if I could and then you just went and sat down and just wrote it had you been a fan of crime novels yeah I was when I was in graduate school because I was I was both a student and a teaching assistant so I was busy all the time during the day either teaching literature or being taught literature and reading a lot so when I went back to my apartment I didn't want it I didn't want to have to think about what I read so I read murder mysteries because there's just that that line they were all pretty much on this they all follow the same track mm-hmm so I just imposed upon what I was writing what I had interior interiorized during years and years of reading them well I like the Ross Macdonald Ruth Rendell right so how many pages into your first one did you think I'm doing this thing like this is for real it became fun and so I I didn't I didn't think of it as a as a chore because I had a whole lot of fun writing it but after I finished it I put it in a drawer because I wanted to write it and I was happy because I had written it and then I was nagged into sending it to a competition in Japan which it won Wow and that's why the book was published well I'm just gonna keep saying that I'm really not I don't have any ambition yeah I just want to have fun and that's what keeps you doing it like just and your next idea occurs and you're just thinking okay well as long as I have that idea just going and when it's not fun I'll stop okay let's talk about your characters because I mean obviously we you have created some really fantastic characters I mean do we have to say Senor Electra is our favorite character in the world everybody wants to be her right is there anything she can't or won't do have you ever drawn a line for her no I needed her I forget what book it was one of the early books brunette she was was having trouble with something and I was having trouble with the book so I went out and had a coffee and a walk and when I came back before I left someone knocked on the door of brunette tees office and I went out and had a walk but then did you just sort of start embroidering like what if she could do anything what if she can find her way into any computer I am I am a Neanderthal with a computer I can write texts mm-hm and answer and send emails and that's it mm-hmm so I needed someone who could do all of the things that I knew were possible if you knew about computers hmm so the narrator tells what she did but not how she did it right but I know enough of the computer jargon to to make it sound as though I know what I'm talking about but I don't and so of course we never have to worry about how she does it because but she's staying selectra she can do whatever she wants it is yours now I also love Paola the wife do we all love her I love that the tone of their marriage isn't sentimental they're very Paola especially he's very dry with him you know what I mean they love each other but she's never gonna be sort of gushy about all that how did you how did you settle on that as the proper tone for their relationship because I think that after long cohabitation people don't gush a whole lot hmm anymore they speak to one another and I think they try to score points with one another with with amusing amusing the person mm-hmm and so we do it with our friends and I think that in a long 30 year marriage or some sort of intimate duo you you run out of the gooey stuff hmm and the person has become as much friend as lover and so their shared amusement and it seemed a natural way for her to talk to him I also love the way you know when she's saying her funniest things it's her flattest and she's obviously not making eye contact I have a whole vision of their relationship and I feel like we all do right and yet you barely describe I'm not sure you ever really describe what Brunetti looks like you never was that a conscious choice yeah I suppose I'm very bad at physical description of people mm-hmm but there you describe other people people they need an enormous detail because I know that's not something I do well hmm do you have a picture in your mind of him do you know what he looks like to you yeah I do except I will see people on the street I will see men on the street and Dennis and say yeah he could be put on Nancy but then I'll see someone who looks nothing like him and he could be butternut yes as well so you don't have like a is there an American movie star who you could is the George Clooney is brunette no huh I went did he's in your mind did he always read the classics and do you match do you take care to match the classic to the plot where does that Park I'm in one of the great things about the classics is that if you particularly the plays I think if you know them well you can you can take a line to suit almost any circumstance in a crime novel open up the Trojan women and you'll find lots of misery open up Agamemnon and you'll find lots of suffering and lots of rage and lots of duplicity and so I think the truth is that Brunetti in every book is reading what I'm reading because I have gone I have chosen at this point in my life to go back to the classics I read them in translation I read them in English because I think that there's a reason they've been around for 2,000 years mm-hmm because they say things that make you say yeah and so in one of them one of the recent books he was reading reading the Trojan women and I was overwhelmed by it because the same thing is happening today in these war zones that the women are just sort of gathered up and sold to the highest bidder and discarded when when what's his nose gets tired of her it's all on the charge in women the Greeks did the same thing 2,000 years ago mm-hmm or 2500 years ago mm-hmm it's I also love the way you sort of calibrate brunette ease own moral code he's a policeman but he is not a policeman the way we would see it in an American cop show or anything I thought he is not macho he's not he's not out there sure that he's smarter than all the criminals in this book you even mentioned that he was deprived of a deep understanding of people and that more cases to show him that he understands nothing he doesn't pretend to be wised up why did you make him that way because I think that that people of a certain seriousness and a certain spirit is spiritual if I can use that word and mental kind realize that they don't know everything hmm and I think much of the trouble in this world is caused by people who know they know everything hmm I'm far I'm far enough from the border to be able to say that he's also innocent you know in this book there's a a rom girl who is pregnant and he's shocked that she's a minor you know and then he catches himself for being so innocent and and he's rattled by death you know when when someone dies near him he is very shook up by this so you've retained his humanity he's and yet he's also sort of struggled with a breakdown how do you calibrate like how vulnerable to let him be and how how strong and yet how how sort of still impacted by the things that he sees I think that must be terribly difficult for policemen to deal with violent death on a day to day basis in then a certainly that's not the case there have been in the last 29 years there have been more murders in my books than there have been in Dennis many many many more the Venetian cops are really pretty good I know some of them I go to the quest daughter because I know a couple of people there but I just go to chat and see to check on things and big because they they talk openly about what they do because they've known me for a long time and I I think that the cost to them is is vast and profound to deal with human their business always involves themselves involves them in the worst of human behavior and that Wow but think of the other jobs working in a you know in a home where there are lots of demented people that too must have a psychic cost on people and brunetti luckily has the counterweight the counterbalance of his family and of the the unity that he feels with so many people in the questura and and i think he needs that ballast to to be able to get up every morning and go into the questura and see what fresh hell is this mm-hmm it's also very interesting when you talk about his own sort of moral code because there are a couple of times in the books where there's money to be had and he'll be like I just let them have it or give it back or you know he'll open a bag even though he knows he's not doing it and there were there proper rules of evidence and he lives in a place where the corruption is almost unapologetic right that everyone knows everyone's corrupt and so we're so so is he a metaphor for the world like is yeah are we all should we all just be like that like except that there's a relativism and that you know there are better and worse ways to be rather than absolute right and absolutely I don't think we choose that I don't think we choose how I don't think we choose our moral principles hmm I think we're raised with them they they they sink in as do our prejudices they sink in when we're kids and we don't know what they're talking about but gradually we we we work it out that that it's the things are like this and I think that it would be difficult in and it's also a cultural thing Italians have a different a different view of basic ethics from what anglo-saxons have and it's much more malleable it's much more flexible than is that of the anglo-saxons let me give you an example years ago I was I met a woman on the street I don't know why we struck up a conversation she was maybe my age but this was easily 30 years ago and we started talking and she was obviously disgruntled about something I said what's the matter Senora and she said just having a problem or in my house what is it she said I live on the third floor of the house that looks at the the rest the the house for the old people at San Lorenzo I said oh yeah I'm long knock - no no no it's that house I said what's your problem which is well you wouldn't believe you wouldn't believe I live in the third floor so I'm on the third floor terrace and they can't see me but I can see them and you should see what they do in a limb friend yeah he fed me a tea the nurses male and female okay not the nurses you think women but in fed me a tea so at least one of them is male I said and she said yeah a couple of times a week and I said Senora let let me clarify this are you saying that these people are out in compromising certain performance but could you tell me why you are so upset about this and I'm thinking she's is this this offense to public morality of public decency she said oh they should be working I didn't make this up and it was like that to me I said that's it that's it I'm stuck with this idea that two people are out on a balcony making love in any way they choose that what is wrong with that is that they're doing it on company time not that they're doing it I thought I'll never be Italian because that that was her instinctive response and my instinctive response and there and brunetti is more someone who would who would think who would think and judge that they should be working they should be working do you feel like you know everything about him have you worked out his whole backstory or does he still come surprise you sometimes know he's always remembering stuff in the last couple of years he's he's thinking more and more about his parents about growing up and having this odd this odd childhood with a father who was a victim of the Second World War and came back shell-shocked and never recovered and his mother who went to I think four years of school but it was wise and patient and loving so he's got this odd parentage to that created him that formed him hmm um I love also and some of you may think I'm crazy that you described the roots that people take on their way to work or on their way to and I'm constantly flipping to the map in the front of the books are you all doing that like where are they invent ass and what bridge is it why is that important to you like why does that ground you in the books I don't know if if I were a more cunning person I was or because it gives verisimilitude no because he walks along and he sees things and he notices things and he meets people and he stops and has a coffee yeah you must be aware of the irony that you write these books and you make us want to go there and these books are about how are going there will ruin it right so are the books now published in Italian they weren't for a long time still not still and the Italians must want them they don't know about them they don't want to know they want them but readers the companies want them but the the Italian Italians don't read a lot and they very very good crime writers who are far more savage in the denunciation of Italy than I am right you said at one point that one of the reasons you didn't want them published in Italian is that you just wanted to live your life there and you didn't want to be famous yeah but if you're not living there anymore is it now not time no because I go down once a month you go down once a month so you just don't want to be I just I just yeah I'm a Democrat with a big D and a small D and I don't I don't like the idea that one gets any special attention or treatment is it the sort of terror of being known like you just don't want to be you just like being anonymous enough or is it know that the truth is and this is the real truth no I've been in the world I've been in the world of opera for more than 20 years and I observe how people treat divas and the divas up here and and the person who worships that person for their singing it's always a false relationship because it's not like that they aren't colleagues and I find when someone is sometimes I am deferred to and since I'm a North American I don't like that because I like an equal playing field oh honey I know plenty of North Americans who like that I know the whole city of Los Angeles like oh well yeah it's but you really just don't you really do I am limiting the discourse to this planet so if you want to talk about but there's no you've never taken advantage of a little bit of Fame you don't sort of get up to the front of the restaurant there's nothing about it that no because before I wrote these books I was in an Italian restaurant when it obvious I was in Italy it was in that restaurant I was in a restaurant one night and a man came in I was waiting for a table we were waiting for a table and a man came in and said I'd like a table for four and the woman said I'm sorry but were full and he said I'd like a table for four and she said I'm sorry but we're full the restaurant is full and he said he really said non satis oh no you don't know who I am and she said no I don't know who you are and I don't care where you are the tip we're full and he's got huffy and walked out and I thought yeah that's what can happen to people don't you know why so yes you've never lost you never lost your kind of every woman quality you haven't been seduced that's nonsense huh cuz I I've seen it happen to singers and it's to some singers and it's nice now I want to ask you a question that I hope that you'll understand my intention are you surprised by your books popularity because they're not typical they're not like galloping galloping you know the crimes are not the main part of the book that crimes are sort of background to the larger social issues that you want to discuss that and the and the texture of Italian life and brunette ease family life and his and their about work relationships and societal structures and all kinds of things that have nothing to do with the crimes themselves so were you surprised that they caught on as much as they did that that people are just crazy that they are because they're there they're not typical bang bang shoot them up murder mysteries mm-hmm but one thing I have observed over the years is that our heard over the years as many people say I don't read murder mysteries but my cousin gave me your books and I like them very much the and one when sometimes when I start talking about books with people who read the books I find that they are widely read people who read real books as well so a reference to Dickens or a reference to Jane Austen is caught by most of the readers of these books so I think that they perhaps appeal to a reader who likes murder mysteries but doesn't like the shoot-'em-up bangbang ones or the the really violent sexist ones that has been my experience with readers across the board across the board and across national barriers the many of the people are university graduates or professionals usually the readers of the books that I have spoken to fall into a different demographic than then the readers of what I'll call pulp fiction mm-hmm and and at one point Paola even says people like novels because the narrator explains why people do what they do which you do not do you sort of deliberately leave it open-ended and and Brunetti is always sort of musing about people he's never making conclusions sometimes people tell him why they did things mm-hmm and either he believes the more they don't or sometimes at the end of the books he's mystified right why someone could do that yes I love that about your endings that you just let them sit it's not it's not this triumphant hooray we've solved the crime and I feel like he's made sad by the crimes he's not he's of all the emotions you know that he could be angry or fed up or whatever I I feel at the end that he's more sad than triumphant do you think the books have gotten a little sadder is it gone along I think they have why do you think that is I'm older and I'm I'm more all right you've seen me for however long fifty I like to joke I like to play I have a sense of humor I love to laugh and I love to make people laugh but that's that's something I can't control that's a thing that comes from the heart in my head I'm a pretty pessimistic person looking at the world simply because I interpret what I read or I am told in a particular way and it doesn't happiness and bliss and I think that that affects brunetti as well as me and so the books do grow more and more somber and the things that happen in them grow know that no they aren't getting worse because really worse pretty bad things happen in in many of the books very seldom are the things very violent but I think that a lot of emotional violence is done in the books and that saddens Brunetti and his response I think that's very an astute observation that he is saddened he's not angered by what he sees occasionally he is mhm but he's more sad right and the endings are not like whew they're all wrapped up and it's all super dry its life that's life and you also seem to me reading them at chronologically to be inserting maybe a little bit more of your own views about you know pollution overcrowding the mosai system yeah um are these a good way for you to get your like once we have gotten to the point now where we choose your book will be successful someone will read it you get to kind of choose what you put out there into the world are you becoming more conscious of what you want to put out into the world as you write these books it's I've seen in the fact that the books become increasingly environmental because it really is is just a disaster environmentally and ecologically I mentioned last night that there exist photos that were taken from airplanes off the coast in the Mediterranean down in Calabria there seemed to be a lot of ships freight ships sunk maybe 18 20 miles off the coast and on those boats there are barrels and in those boats there are barrels one of the things that Italy did for many many years was host the toxic waste of northern Europe and a lot of it ended up they think on those boats certainly a lot of it ended being buried in basilicata in Calabria in the south I've been warned time and time again not to drink the water in and that here don't eat any food from then it up because it's all contaminated don't eat the mozzarella di bufala from Campania because the the water is all poisoned with something but this this doesn't it gets into the newspapers but it gets forgotten and then it just goes on and on there always every week there's some enormous illegal toxic dump discovered somewhere in Italy and goes into the newspapers in the magazines and then the next week there's more discovered I tremble at the thought of what exists underneath the soil of southern Italy and not only not only in the lagoon of venecia there's there's a fair bit of gunk hmm I'm gonna open this up to all of you in just two more questions there's a couple of times in in the course of the books where brunetti makes the comment that the law and justice are not necessarily the same thing have do you feel that we've all just given up on the idea of justice or truth do you think that it's a hopeless thing or do you still have hope that we can move toward it no I can't say anything about it until I get a definition of justice hmm I know what the law is but as to justice I don't know I I really don't I think it's it's a very very complex idea our guts seem to respond to what the concept of justice mmm-hmm and can be outraged but the law is cool and just meant to be dispassionate but but I don't think they're the same you know that yeah and obviously neither does Brunetti then and then I you know again because of the Greeks and the Romans and the classics this idea comes up quite a lot of vengeance versus forgiveness and I feel like your books walk a very interesting access you know axis about you know vengeance can sometimes feel cleaner forgiveness I think you mention the phrase leads to moral chaos do you have a place where you sit on that axis vengeance versus forgiveness again it's it's its guts and and and brain that I think the danger of vigilante justice which I've used shamelessly in some of the books because it's a great way to end a book when when the woman in about face has the gun it feels so good but it's so wrong it's so wrong but vigilante justice is madness let out however tempting it is but I am drawn I am drawn to it as a writer because it's a way that a problem can be solved but I don't like it it really gives me the creeps because then what is happening is that someone who feels offended gets to determine what the punishment will be to the person who offended him or her and I get real nervous at that I wouldn't like to be in a position where I had anyone ever offended me seriously gravely or injured me I wouldn't want to be the one to mete out justice to that person I really would not want that responsibility that's the laws business and what do you think Eames brunetti in it why do you think he keeps plugging along because I think he realizes that somebody has to do it and better he then some tough guy with a pistol who just pushes people around and forces confessions from them and does who knows what and tinkers with the evidence and steals the dope from from the room where all of the confiscated stuff is better he do it because he knows at least his sense of ethics maybe that's what keeps him going well I hope you keep him going for as long as you possibly can yes we're all crazy about him so thank you so much you

Channel: Toronto Public Library

Views: 3,407

Rating: 4.6756759 out of 5

Keywords: donna leon, toronto public library, toronto library, appel salon, bram & bluma appel salon, book talk, author talk, trace elements, brunetti

Id: ny42m-HkGAk

Length: 48min 32sec (2912 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 23 2020