Meet the Writers - Sara Gruen

right before I went on tour for Water for Elephants my mother sent me an email with a link to the Great Ape Trust and about the work they were doing there and it's it's about language acquisition and cognition in great apes and I have been a lifelong fan of koko the gorilla and Washoe the chimpanzee and really very interested in the the possibility of having trans-species communications in with within a language and so I was doubly fascinated because first of all I had this this fascination and second of all I'd never heard about bonobo apes and so I spent a couple of days looking around their site and really came out of it just knowing that that's where what I had to do next the Great Ape Trust studies cognition and language abilities in great apes and I obviously became connected with them because I saw that initial email and got interested and then I needed their help in order to research this book and then I became personal friends with these six great apes there are orangutangs there as well but I didn't get to know them as you know as well as I did the bonobos but it's really it's really pretty incredible knowing that you have six great apes as personal friends and that who remember you and you know we communicate and back and forth even when we're not in person so yes I mean you know the Great Ape Trust is is the is the inspiration behind the great ape language lab in my book and the bonobos the bonobo family there is in fact the inspiration for the bonobo family in my book the first thing I needed to do was get access to the Great Ape trust I really really wanted in to meet the bonobos apparently a whole lot of people want to get in to meet the bonobos and so they assign you with a lot of homework to kind of we doubt who's serious and who's not and that research included doing reading many many books and also going to York University in Toronto and doing a crash course on linguistics there with some of the scientists who are working with the gradate trust and when I finally did that I got an invitation to the trust but that did not necessarily mean that I was going to get to visit the Apes because the Apes at the trust are entirely in control so I got there I wanted to I wanted to stack my odds as much as possible and so I bought all of their favorite gifts I researched them online about their favorite gifts their favorite foods their you know I've got mr. potato heads bouncy balls fleecy blankets M&Ms peanuts you know all the things everything I thought that an ape might find fascinating or fun and I gave them each backpacks and so I sent a note to the scientists ahead of time saying I'm coming with surprises can you please tell the Apes and so after my orientation yes yes I've done your homework yes I've read this yes I read this yes I did that I said can but will the Apes see me and they went off and consulted with the Apes and said oh yes not only will they see you they're insisting on seeing you and so I got to spend the afternoon with them that was the first visit and it was really you know I don't know if I could have done this book without it because you it's it's really interesting to read about Apes who are using human language and it's an entirely other thing to experience it and actually have a two-way conversation with a grade eight and so I stayed there all afternoon basically until the scientists had to go home for dinner and they had to drag me out and and the bonobos were you know no no he's to come out to the play yard meet her mother and it was really if by then we'd just we'd broken all the ice and it was just a really open conversation and the day after I laughed panbanisha one of the she's actually one of the shire Apes there but she and I really clicked she said to the scientists where's Sarah build her nest when's she coming back and so obviously I had to send them a fruit of the Month Club so they remember me and still want me to come back and so I've been visiting regularly and I've got two more visits coming up in the in the near future so I can go back and see them but it's it's speaking with a great ape in your own language is just amazing I just don't have any other word for the bonobos at the grade 8 trust used a series of LexA grams which are pictorial representations of words they use them both on a computer if they're using a computer then the computer has a synthesized human voice that says the word but they also carry around laminated lexigram boards and so if you're actually fluent in the LexA grams you can go out in the forest and have a conversation with them it's a very complicated LexA Graham board it's available at the grade 8 trusts website and I tried to learn it I tried really hard to learn it before my first visit but it was funny it was after my second visit when it's kind of like French immersion classes that when you're actually there and on the spot do you you kind of figure out where they are and you just that was that's I think that's how you learn it but yes they used they use lots of Graham boards I had bought the fruit of the Month Club so they I was not a stranger at that point so they were looking forward to my visit they knew I was bringing them presents and and it was a huge deal for them they'd been talking about it for a week and it was you know so panbanisha knew that the book is dedicated to her and so she was getting sort of star treatment and when she heard I was getting my makeup done before the photoshoot she wanted her makeup done and so she got you know lipstick and powder and got her makeup done and then she invited me out to a tea party in the forest and she spread out the blanket she set up the cookies she made the tea she has her own kitchen at the great ape trust she chose blackberry for her and her grey for me and we sat out there in the forest drinking tea as she you know she said would you like milk with your tea and I said yes please and then I gave it back to her into it lug this is crazy sort of human ape thing you know and then she told me which cookies eat first and which ones I should dip in the tea and then she said are you finished with your cookies and I handed her my plate she went and so she was it's apparently Tuesday's our diet days and I was there on a Tuesday so she was just taking advantage I think the most surprising thing was just how competent these apes are in language I was not expecting them to use tenses I was not expecting them to use fully grammatical sentences and they do they have a complete concept of time and space my entire world is filled with animals and it's it's you know people ask me Oh have you always been this way and that's like asking me why is my hair brown I don't know and I didn't actually realize I was any particular way until people started asking me but yes I just I my world is filled with animals and and so my fiction is to I write at least eight hours a day and it just makes sense to me that if I'm going to have animals around me all the time in my in my own world why would I not choose to have them around me in in that other world I try to make all my books different so I hope that my readers are always surprised but I don't think that they'll find any of the themes here particularly disturbing or really off base from anything else I've done but there are there are surprises there are there are things I look at that I haven't looked at in other books and they have to read to find out more I found out that it hit number one when I got a speakerphone I got a phone call from my publisher and everybody was on and just one and and and so then Bob and I my husband Bob and I we got some champagne and then I I remembered the very night I was drinking champagne and folding laundry you and I thought well this is just sort of a perfect perfect look at my life having champagne and folding underwear I don't think I actually believed that it was real until probably a year in because it has sort of a slow burn my editor at the at the time thought was going to be a small book and it didn't it didn't burst out of the gates it just it kind of ignited and so I was always tapping myself on the back and knocking wood and and so on and I really it was a long time before I believed it because it yeah writing is a really hard road it's the if I had known the chances of making it or the chances of not making it I probably would not have tried it so in this case ignorance was bliss but but no I took a very long time for me to believe that it actually was happening I hope that people who read a passive come away from it thinking about how we treat our closest cousins and also about how we treat each other and also I want them to have had a rollicking good ride in the end I still believe that fiction is about transporting that person and and providing a good story

Channel: BNStudio

Views: 11,003

Keywords: BN, B&N, BN.com, Barnes & Noble, Meet the Writers, books, book reviews, book recommendations, reading, video, interview, Sara Gruen, Water for Elephants, Ape House

Id: 2yDpBMgXihM

Length: 10min 11sec (611 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 30 2010