[ Music ] >> Hi. My name is Marie Arana,
and I'm the Literary Director of the Library of Congress. And I'm talking to you here in
the Members Room at the Library of Congress where I happen to
be sitting with, virtually, John Grisham, the wonderful, absolutely marvelously
successful American author. We're so proud of him. John, welcome. >> Happy to be here. >> Now, I have to
start out by saying that you were the first winner
of the Library of Congress prize for American fiction
which at the time went by a different name. I think it was called the
Creative Achievement Award, the Library of Congress's
Creative Achievement Award. But you were the first. And then who followed was
a pretty nice cavalcade of Phillip Roth and Toni
Morrison and E.L. Doctorow and Isabel Allende, Marilynne
Robinson, Louise Erdrich, a whole wonderful line. But you were the original one. You were the first one. So how does it feel to be a
Library of Congress original? >> Well, thank you
for the award. You gave it to me 20 years ago. Happy to receive it. It was very prestigious. And when you mention -- you know, when you
write popular fiction, you don't always
get a lot of awards. You get rewarded elsewhere
but not when it comes to literary awards,
literary merit. And so it was very touching to get the first award
some 20 years ago. >> Well, your writing is more
I think than the popular genre. It is a very crafted, very
wonderful and I would say in every sense of
the word literary. And we're very -- we were
very, very happy, actually, to sort of plant that seed of
John Grisham as being the first. So you don't need an
introduction from me. You have published more
than 40 books for -- in really every genre
for children and adults and all kinds of things. Your books have been
made into movies. You've sold I think more than -- well, hundreds of millions
of books around the world, and they've been published
in more than 50 languages. So from this promontory, John,
from this great promontory of really success in reaching so
many people, how do you reflect on that as somebody who has
actually been such a force in people's lives, that
they have read your work and they have absorbed
your messages? >> Well, Marie, there's
no way to -- you know, looking back,
I didn't plan this. It just happened. I planned -- you know, I
was a lawyer in a small town in Mississippi 30 years ago,
and I wrote a book called Time to Kill that didn't sell. It was a complete flop, and I thought the
career was going nowhere. I promised myself, I vowed
to write one more book and, if the second book didn't
work, I was going to forget that little secret
hobby and just go on and be a full-time
lawyer as I was anyway or maybe a judge or something. But there's no way I could
have then looked forward and predicted all this. It just -- it's overwhelming. Although at the time it's,
you know, it's been 30 years. And I've done a book a year, at least one book a
year for 30 years. And I'll do -- you know, I'll
do probably two books this year and probably two next. It's just it's what I do. But as the books became
more and more popular and the movies really fuel
the early spike in popularity and those movies are still
on TV somewhere tonight and still very popular and
they still sell a lot of books, over the years I've
just tried to use the -- not a platform and not a soapbox
and not a pulpit but a way of raising awareness
about certain issues that really trouble me, especially dealing
with criminal justice and criminal justice reform and
criminal injustice in our system because that's what I
understand because I'm a lawyer. I was a lawyer for a long --
for 10 years in a small town. That's where my interest is,
and I love to read stories about lawyers and trials
and lawsuits and law firms and courts and appeals
and cases. And that's what --
that's where I hang out. And when you -- when
you live there, there's no shortage
of good material. And there's some issues
I care about deeply, and I've written about those. And it's a way of telling
great stories, which is -- which is the ultimate goal
every time I start for write is to tell a great story. But, also, if it works properly,
it can be very suspenseful, very enjoyable and
very informative. It can raise awareness
because of -- can raise awareness
for certain issues. And I think as I have
gotten older or matured, I've been more concerned
about writing about more serious issues. At the same time, I'll get
bored with -- as my wife says, get off your soapbox and
just write a fun book. So I'll write a Marilynn kids
book or I'll write a sports book or I'll write -- as we
call we'll call them around the house, it
becomes small books. These are small books. The big books are
the legal thrillers. I'm just -- I'm still I'm
living a dream that I can wake up each day and think
about what to write next. And, you know, I'm only 65. So if I stay healthy, I
plan to keep doing it. >> Well, you talk about the
books that you care about, and I want to talk
about that some more. We're going to talk
about these two books, John Grisham's The Guardians
and John Grisham's Camino Winds. And I have to tell you I had
a lot of fun reading these. They are absolutely
entertaining but, more than fun, they struck me as
incredibly timely. I mean, you talk in both of them
about race which is something that we're having a national
reckoning about right now at this time in our nation. You talk a lot about
justice and injustice. You talk a lot about -- and
especially in Camino Winds, you talk about a society in
the middle of a catastrophe because there's a hurricane that
blows through, a major hurricane that flows through
Camino Island. And so these are -- even though
we are being entertained, we are, you know, in the
very thick of this time. And I wonder to what extent -- I mean, you could not have
predicted these things. You could not have
predicted the pandemic or this national reckoning that we're having
right now with race. But how do you see it as your
books as being a mirror to these because they really truly are. >> Well, unfortunately, some issues have plagued
our country forever. Slavery is our greatest sin,
and we are still dealing with that today or not dealing
with it, with the issue of race. And you can -- that's
always going to be timely because race is so complicated
in this country, and there are so many -- my first book
was a story about, you know, extreme racial conflict
in the Deep South, and that was 30-some-odd
years ago. And, you know, at times you
look around and you say, well, we've come so far. And then you -- the
next day you say, well, we have -- we have so far to go. What have we really
accomplished? And those stories are --
they almost tell themselves. And when you write about
wrongful convictions -- and I've done that
several times before, even in a non-fiction
book, true story -- you realize how race is a
huge factor at every stage of the criminal justice
system, from profiling to arrest to posting bail to sentencing
to trial, guilt, innocence and especially wrongful
convictions. I'm on the board of the
Innocence Project in New York, have been for 12 years. And we have -- I think our
number is 370 DNA exonerations in the past 25 years. That may sound like
a small number because there are thousands
of innocent people in prison, but these cases are
extremely hard to win. It's -- I've said
before, it's much easier to send an innocent
person to prison than it is to get one out, even
with DNA testing. But when you study these
cases and you realize that black suspects are
simply treated differently than white suspects, right,
from the very beginning and race is a factor in
so many of these cases. And so, you know,
I write about that. In The Guardians, there
were two or three cases. There's one central case and
two or three others that I kind of go into some detail. But that book was
inspired by a real person who for 40 years did what
the hero of the book does. He just travelled the country
taking one case after another, cases in which he was convinced that the his clients
were innocent. And most of them
were not DNA cases. In DNA cases, as difficult
as they are to win, they're still easier because
you have clear biological proof that, you know, you
can hang your hat on. Most cases are not DNA cases. Most deal with no blood,
no -- nothing left behind. And you have to go back
to the scene of the crime and talk to the witnesses. And it's tedious, long
work that takes years. And Jim McCloskey did it for
40 years out of Princeton and his non-profits there,
and he freed 63 people who would be locked up
today if not for him. It's an amazing story. I met him 25 years ago,
and I always wanted to write a book about him. And that's what I did
with The Guardians. >> Well, your hero, Cullen
Post, is a real reflection of that respect that
you have for McCloskey. And I remember seeing as I
started the book the dedication to McCloskey, and I
didn't know who he was. And I read all the way to the
end and found out who he was in your -- in your post
sort of acknowledgements. But I also -- there was also
a case and it's a pending case in Texas that I remember
reading about it. And suddenly I had echoes of it
as I was reading The Guardians, the case of the fellow
in Texas who was accused of killing his wife
and is still in prison. >> Joe Bryan has served for
35 years, and the evidence against him is so -- there's
no fiscal evidence against him because he didn't kill his wife. He was two hours away
in a hotel in Austin when she was murdered
by an intruder. And the case was
botched by the local cops in so many different ways. The prosecutor would
not look at the other -- anyway, Joe served for 35 years
for somebody else's murder. Luckily, luckily,
luckily, Joe was paroled after his 13th request back in
March at the age of almost 80, and he's in bad health. But he was paroled finally
by Texas Board of Parole which is a tough bunch,
and he walked out just in time for a COVID-19. But he's happy to be out. He's -- I talk to
him all the time. He's thrilled to be out. He lives with his
brother in Houston, Texas. And he's got a few
good years left and he's going to enjoy them. But, I mean, think about that. They now have a very good
suspect in the murder that goes back to 1985, but it's
far too late to convict anyone. And it's another wasted life
because of all the factors that lead into wrongful
convictions. And we have not cleaned
that mess up. We could if we had the
political will to do it. We could pass laws that would
almost eliminate wrongful convictions, but
we won't do that. >> Well, it's really
interesting to me because you -- I think your hero, Cullen Post
says something like it's really, really easy to convict somebody,
and it's devilishly hard to exonerate somebody. And, of course, what that
takes and you prove so well in The Guardians is an
incredible amount of sort of investigative -- what
investigative journalists do, what, of course, the
legal profession does. The extreme kind of
logic that needs to go into what you're gathering,
how you're going to prove it, all of that that goes into
play in a case like that. But I would also add
that you, as an author, as a writer of this kind
of thriller fiction, mystery fiction also are
employing a kind of very, very sort of determined and
focused logic as you go forward. You have to keep all the
pieces going in the same way as you would do were
you handling this case. >> Oh, yeah. I mean, when you write a
book, when you write suspense, when you write a thriller
with a complicated plot, you've got several
balls in the air. You've got several plots,
subplots always circulating. And you've got to -- you've
got to pay attention to those. That's why it's so
-- it's so important to carefully plan the book just
from a pure -- a pure work plan, an outline, an idea
for the book. You've got to have it -- I do. Other writers don't, but I do. I have to have it very
carefully laid out from start to finish before I start
because, when you -- when you know where
you're going, it's very hard to get lost. If you don't know the
ending, it's very easy to get lost as a writer. It happens all the time, and
people waste a lot of time in books they can't finish
because they just got in too big of a hurry. It's not unusual to have a
brilliant idea and start writing because you're so inspired. It's just great. But then you write for a year. You've got 50,000 words or more, and suddenly you realize you
don't know what the ending is going to be. And it's total panic,
total fear, total -- you know, it can
really mess with you. And a lot of those
books are not finished. And I -- you know, I learned
that lesson a long time ago. And so -- but you
really have to -- you have to plan the suspense. It's all about pacing. It's all about plotting. It's all about keeping
the pages turning, and that's what I
want the reader to do. I want you to lose sleep at
night and call in late for work and all kind of --
to finish the book. >> So with this logic
and this sense of reason that you're constantly
struggling with because you have to make all these pieces fit,
and there are a million things because you also want
readers not to know where you're going
necessarily; they have to be -- there have to be
false leads as well. And you're planning all of
this so that you're getting to the end that you
want to get to. Do you ever have readers
who say, well, you know, this little bit over here
doesn't really make sense and where you're
called on your logic? You're actually called to the
mat to reason something out? >> It's kind of hard to call
me out because I don't go out. It's kind of hard to -- it's kind of hard to pin me down because I don't
really expose myself to a lot of the readers. What I don't like is
when readers say, oh, I had this thing figured
out halfway through. I knew where this was
going halfway through. And I just don't believe that. Maybe so. The ending
has got to be -- you've got to have a very
captivating opening, the hook. You've got to get the reader
involved, and you've got to have -- you've got to
maintain the narrative tension with subplots and pacing
to lead to an ending that is not predictable. You don't want the reader
to know halfway through or two-thirds through
where it's going. You want it to be a
little bit different. But the ending had better work. It better be plausible
without being predictable, and that's always -- and
every time I write a book, even with all the planning
and outlining that go into it, at some point in the story
usually just beyond the halfway point I get really scared. I get really nervous
about, you know, is this -- is this plausible? Is it workable? Is it -- is it compelling? Is it fun to read? Is it -- is the ending
going to work, you know. So you go through periods of
self-doubt with every book, even -- you know, even
at this level, it's -- there's some terrifying moments when you -- when
you think, okay. I don't think I've written a
really bad book yet, a real dud. I don't think so. Others would say I probably
have, a bunch of them. But I'm terrified it's
going to happen one day. And my wife reads the book first
and my editor reads the book and they're going to say, John,
this thing is not working. You can't -- it's
just a terrible book. I don't know what I'm going
to do when that happens. >> I don't think that's
going to happen, John. I wouldn't worry
about it too much. >> Well, we have -- we have
some safeguards in place. The first safeguard is my wife
who has -- who reads every book, you know, almost like an editor. And that -- before I actually
start writing a book -- and we still do this
after 44 books -- I'll say, I need five minutes. She'll say, okay. Get off the phone,
put the phone down. And I have to pitch this idea. I have to pitch the story, which
is a great exercise because, if you can't pitch your story
in, you know, a few minutes, you're probably in trouble. You can go -- if it's too
complicated, goes on too long -- we still laugh about the time
when I pitched The Firm to her. Many years ago, she was
in the kitchen and I said, I got an idea for the
book, the next book. I was finishing the
Time to Kill. And she said, what is it? And I gave the 30-second
pitch for The Firm. And she just stopped and she
said, do that one more time. Do it again. And I pitched again. She said, that is a huge book. That's how the firm got started. >> And it is. She was right. She was right. It is a huge book. >> It's been a huge
book at 30 years later. >> Right. So did she
play a part in -- did Renee play a
part in Camino Winds? Did she? I mean, this
is a really fun book. It's basically -- and it's so
much fun for me and for lots of people who are
in the book industry or in the reading industry,
the sort of the -- it's all -- it's all a bookseller and
a bookseller's life, right? >> Yeah. It's really -- she
was involved in the Camino, Camino island because we
were driving to Florida about four years ago,
our annual summer trip. We pack up the car and
take off to a place in Florida we always go to. And we were listening to NPR. And we listen to books on tape
and we have the dog and we -- it's our annual pilgrimage,
our vacation. We love to do it. And we take turns
driving and napping. And we had just listened to NPR,
and there was this great story about the theft of some
rare books from some library in Europe and how
they caught the -- how they pulled off the theft. And so we were inspired,
so we started talking about forget legal thrillers. Forget kids' books. How could you fashion a -- just a good old mystery
around the theft of rare books or
rare manuscripts? And so we kept talking, and
kids' we kind of got into it. And so we bounced around
for the whole week. I stayed -- I did research
all week and pulled up stories about the theft of rare
-- it's quite common. It's quite common because
libraries are not known for their strict security,
you know, over the years. They are they're
getting better now. There's been some great thefts from personal collections
and rare books. Can you imagine stealing books? And so that's where the
inspiration came from. And so I pitched the
idea of the story. She loved the idea of the
bookstore, the group of writers who hang out around
this bookstore in a small town in Florida. The bookstore is patterned
after my favorite bookstore in the world, Square Books
in Oxford, Mississippi. So I just took that
bookstore and I put it in Santa Rosa, the
fictional town. So, yeah. Renee was very
much involved with that. And by the time I published
the book three years ago, she and I both were
talking about the next one, the next book in the series. I don't know how long the
series is going to go. I sold two more books
to Doubleday. Camino Winds is the first; there'll be another
one in a couple years. So we're talking now, and we
have some very good ideas. The Camino series is
something we talk about openly. The kids series, Theodore
Boone series has become a family project. There are seven of
those books now. And we're always over dinner, drinks away with the kids
always kicking around an idea for the next Theo book. And so that's what
we kind of lunch on and dine on around our house. >> That's great. I love the image. I want you to know, though,
that we have great security here at the Library of Congress. Nothing's getting out of
here fast, that's for sure. But, you know, I wanted
to ask you because -- well, two things
about Camino Winds because it's not
just book selling. You also get into assisted
living facilities and the sort of rampant negligence
that goes on there. And you sort of get at
it in a very curious way. How did that come
into your head? What was the seed of that? >> Yeah. That's -- that's
pretty much all fiction. I have an aunt who years
ago worked in a sort of a low-end nursing home
in the Alzheimer's wing, and the stories are
pretty horrific. And she would tell us how
they go to great lengths to keep these people
alive, just one more month, drag them to the finish
line one more month so they can bill Medicare for
three or four thousand bucks. And, I mean, you want to keep
the people alive forever, although these people, it brings
up the right to die issue, too, that I have not really explored
but I feel very strongly about because --
and I've seen -- we've all seen some of
these people who are so far gone mentally that they
don't know where they are, and yet they continue to hang
on and hang on and hang on. And so that was sort
of the background. The fictional drug that
helps prolong [inaudible], that's all just, you know, a figment of the
author's imagination. >> Good. I'm glad
that it doesn't exist. It's a pretty scary drug. >> I hope so. I hope it's fictional. >> So -- but one thing that
really is reflected so nicely in this book is friendship
between authors and the friendships that develop
in the whole book writing thing. I mean, but -- writing
is a solitary. I mean, yes, you discuss
ideas over your dinner table and with your kids
and with Renee. But, basically, when push
comes to shove, you're sitting at your desk and
you're writing the thing and it's -- you're alone. And you write alone. And the reader reads alone. I mean, these are -- there
are several things that you do in life that you do alone: get
born, die and read and write. And so what I want
to ask you is, these wonderful relationships
that come out that writers have and booksellers have
with writers and writers with other writers, do you have
these relationships yourself? >> I was influenced by two
things have happened to me so far in the last 30 years. We moved to Oxford in 1990. And we'd gone to
school at Ole Miss. We even got married in Oxford. Went back to our hometown about an hour away just
outside of Memphis. That's where we lived
and I practiced law and we had our kids
and all that. And then once we had the
chance we moved back to Oxford. It's a beautiful
little college town. And we moved there in 1990. The bookstore was up
and running big time. Willie Morris was the writer
in residence Ole Miss. Barry Hannah was
teaching at Ole Miss. Larry Brown had just
broken out and gotten, you know, pretty famous. And Richard Howorth who
owns the bookstore was on the national circuit,
and all the writers came through Oxford, all
the big tours. And we met all --
I met all of them by hanging around the bookstore. And it was not unusual to go
to the bookstore late afternoon for a signing, and the writers
there, all the other writers in town, a bunch of readers
are there, fans are there for these wonderful book
parties that would go on for a long time,
maybe even long dinners. I'll never forget in 1994 when Donna Tartt published her
first novel The Secret History. She's from -- she's
from Mississippi. She went to Ole Miss. And it was a grand
homecoming for her, and the store was packed. And I had read the book. I just loved the book. And we went out for a
long dinner afterwards, and it was just her editor from
New York and her publisher. And, you know, that was -- it
was that environment in 1990. We left and moved
here 25 years ago. And, yeah, it's hard to find -- it's hard to hang out with the
writers because they're a bunch of weirdos, for the most part. Their strains are different. They do work alone. They think alone. And, yeah, it's difficult. However, I have found
some friends here. We have a group of writers
here in Charlottesville because there are a
lot of writers here. And we're hanging out more,
talking more, lunching more, drinking better wines. And when we're together we
-- it's all about, you know, what are you working on? What has your agent done lately? What has your publisher
done lately? What's the gossip? Or what have you read? You know, what good
book have you read? And so we have a number
of those long lunches in the course of the year. >> Speaking of relationships
with authors, is there -- when you were starting out, was
there an author that you admired that you wanted to be like
or that you took ideas from? You -- you know, you were sort
of inventing a genre here. And so I wonder whether there
are ancestors to your books. >> I'm not sure I
can answer that. I'll tell you a story. In 1987, I was trying to
finish A Time to Kill. And I was very disheartened
by it because it is -- at that point, I was a very
busy lawyer in a small town. I wasn't making any money. But I had a lot of clients,
and my clients couldn't pay me. So I had that, but
I stayed busy. And it took a lot of hours. I was also in the state
legislature in Mississippi, had been elected; and I
didn't have a lot of time. My wife was having babies, so
life was fun; life was good. The only time I could
write was, you know, early in the morning,
real early. And I did that for
a number of years. But I -- you know,
I put the book down. And the Time to Kill was the
first thing I'd ever written in my life. I never dreamed of
being a writer. It was not a childhood dream. It was not something
I studied in college. It was just something
that came later in life when I was a lawyer. And I would stop writing the
book and finally, eventually, Renee would say, okay. Where's -- you know,
where's the next chapter? And I would get back
to the table and -- but, anyway, it was -- you know, I was having a hard
time finishing the book. And once I finished, I
didn't know what I was going to do with it. And in 1987, Scott Turow
published Presumed Innocent, and it was a monster book. It was a huge book,
huge bestseller. Scott was all over the place. I read the book. Loved it. I thought,
this guy can write. This guy can tell a story. This is -- this is really -- and all these wonderful
things were happening to Scott because of that. And it was extremely
motivational. It really got me fired up
to finish A Time to Kill and then go into the next book. And so that was one moment in
life where I was really inspired by -- and Scott and I
have become friends. I've told that story many times. And we hang out whenever we can. But he's -- he had
a huge impact on me. >> Yeah. Yeah. And I see -- I see, yeah,
an echo there as well. I want to ask you
because, you know, there are clear heroes
in your books. They -- whether they're
men or women, there are -- there are heroes who stand up
and do the right thing and fight against the odds to
do the right thing. But there are also
lots of bad actors. There are bad cops. There are corrupt lawyers. There are forensic
hacks who, you know, pretend to do the
work but don't. And there's a lot of money
under the table and all of that. You're obviously very passionate
about justice being done in the right ethical way, but
we learn a lot about, you know, the bad ways things
can happen in the law. So I want to ask you
-- because the theme of this festival is
American Ingenuity. And your heroes, of course,
turn out to be not only heroic and doing the right thing but
also ingenious in their way. And so I want to ask
you about your thoughts on what ingenuity is and
how that plays into your -- into your heroes
and your heroines. >> Well, I think when
you talk about ingenuity in the criminal justice system,
I'm not sure we need a lot of ingenuity as much as
we need the political will to fix the problems that
we can clearly identify. We know they're there. We know how to fix them. We could pass eight
different laws in this country that would make wrongful
convictions almost completely go away -- they're never going
to go away all together. It would save zillion,
zillions of dollars. The money savings --
it would save lives. It would save human capital,
and it would put guilty people in prison and keep innocent
people out if we would just -- if we had the will to do it. If we had -- if we had the will to abolish judicial
elections, okay? Judges should not be elected. Politics should be kept out of judicial elections
in the judiciary. Okay? If we did that --
but 35 states elect judges, and it's a bad system. And big money gets
involved in these races. That's something -- that's
one way we can clean it up and have better judges
if we would just do it. But there's a -- I mean, I could
-- I could go on for a long time about the ways, the steps
we could take to clean up. I guess it would take ingenuity. I guess it would take, you know, some creative thinking,
you know. Sure. But we know
what the problems are with criminal justice. We know -- we know what
leads to mass incarceration. We know what -- why we have
sentencing disparities. We know why the death
penalty is unfair. We -- that's all been
studied, not by me but people a lot
smarter than me. I just read what they write. If we -- if we just had
the guts and the will to do what was right, we
could clean up this system. And I guess that can be
considered to be ingenuity. >> Absolutely. Beautifully put, by the way. I don't want to close this
interview without talking about A Time For Mercy, which
is coming out this fall. It's going to be coming
out right at the time when we are launching the
National Book Festival. So I want you to talk to us
a little bit about going back to that -- that place and
that sort of creative spot of Time to Kill and -- >> Talk about good timing. About two hours ago I
finished the final, final, final edits which is
a one-month process. And so I kissed the book
goodbye for the last time. They have to -- they give
me a deadline because I'm -- I would tinker with it forever
if they -- if they let me. And so they finally
have to say, John, tomorrow is the last time you
can change a single comma, okay? So that was today. So I'm done with it, but it's -- I've lived with it
now since January. It's a return to Ford County. It's a return to Jake
Brigance from A Time to Kill. It's pretty much of a
sequel of A Time to Kill, to A Time to Kill with a
lot of the same characters. Jake's back in the courtroom with another highly
controversial murder trial that he is in the middle of. And at first he doesn't
want to be there. He doesn't want to
take the case, but nobody else will take it. And in the course of
representation of this -- this kid who's charged with
murder, the whole town, almost the whole town
turns against Jake. And it's very -- it's
very true in many cases where you have a
very sensational, controversial murder. The guilt of the murderer
rubs off on the lawyer, and the lawyer becomes
a target too. And that happens to Jake
in A Time For Mercy. So it's -- you know what? I started the book in
January because I started -- I started all the
big books in January. And going back to that
county and those people for the third time
or twice since A Time to Kill is always
a pleasure for me because that's where I'm from. And those are the people I know
and the issues I understand, and it's always a
great pleasure. I can't go back there
with every book because no small town
lawyer is going to have so many sensational
murder trials in a career. But I'd love to go back
there and never leave. >> You know, Martin Luther
King famously quoted a Theodore Parker sermon that said, The
arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice. And it's a wonderful quote. And I'm thinking that in
all your books, eventually, it bends toward justice. You bend it toward
justice for us, and you give us hope
in that justice. Do you have that same
hope for justice? Do you think that
that's where -- that it's a reasonable goal
to think of a perfect universe where justice is deployed
in the way it should be? >> Yeah. I believe
it can happen. I'm not sure it will happen. But we as Americans with our
system, we have the ingenuity and the courage to
make it happen. With time -- you talk
about wrongful convictions. We've come so far with DNA
testing and different laws that, you know, we're making
a lot of progress. I'm hoping that -- I'm hoping that the next administration
is more committed to criminal justice reform. We were getting close
a few years ago because the Democrats want
reform for the sake of reform. Many Republicans want reform
because they're tired of paying for two million people
in prison. And so they were
getting toward the middle of some meaningful
criminal justice reform. And then 2016 happened. And then, if we can get
back on the same page, we're going to see
some real progress of criminal justice reform. And I hope I'm there
to write about it. I would not mind being
there to be in the room if I could be of use to anybody. But that's -- yeah. We can get there. We can do a lot to
change some of the laws. Some of the issues you
see now being protested, some of the actions by the
police, that can be corrected. That can all be fixed if we can
just find the will to do it. >> Well, that is a wonderful
hopeful note to end on. And, John, I just want
to say in this 20th year of the National Book Festival
and in this 220th year that we're celebrating here
at the Library of Congress and to be here with you who the
very first winner of the Library of Congress prize for American
Fiction is a real pleasure and a real joy for
me personally. Thank you so much
for joining us. >> Hey. The pleasure is mine. I enjoyed it. See you next time. >> Okay. Thanks.
