>> From the Library of
Congress in Washington, D.C. >> My name is Lynn Neary, and I
cover Books and Publishing for NPR. This is the second year
that I have been part of the National Book Festival, and it's an event I'm
really learning to enjoy. Because last year when I came
here, I kept bumping into friends, and colleagues, and neighbors,
and people who, you know, kids went to school with my
kid, and it just made me feel like I was really part of a great
reading, book-loving community here in Washington, D.C., so I
think it's just a great event. It also gives me a chance to bump
into some of my favorite authors, one of whom is sitting
right here next to me. Richard Russo, you all know him. I found when I -- [ Applause ] I found when I told people that I
would be interviewing Richard Russo, everybody had a favorite book. Everybody immediately came up
with a favorite book of his, whether it was "The Risk
Pool," from "The Risk Pool" to "The Straight Man," to
"Bridge of Sighs," and, of course, his latest book, "Everybody's
Fool" is a sequel to the hugely popular
"Nobody's Fool." Of course that was
made into a movie, so a lot of people were
introduced to it through the movie, starring Paul Newman, unforgettable,
of course, as Sully, who was -- is one of the -- is maybe the
most unforgettable character that Richard Russo has created. And then, of course, there is my own
personal favorite, and I think a lot of people's personal favorite, the Pulitzer prize winning
novel, "Empire Falls." [ Applause ] How did I guess that? And again, Paul Newman had
a major role in that movie, so I don't know what
your relationship is -- was with Paul Newman, but he has
turned some of your characters into very unforgettable -- it
was made into an HBO miniseries, actually, into great TV and
film characters, as well. I like to think of
you, Richard Russo, as the bard of the working class. I think you know what it means
to be a working class guy, because you grew up in a town that
prosperity had sort of passed by, as I understand it, Gloversville? Am I saying that right? >> That's right. >> I'm assuming I am because -- >> Yep. >> They made gloves. >> They did, indeed. >> So, and then -- and then no more. So I wonder what it is about
these small towns in America, these sort of -- we pass
through them sometimes on trips, and they're kind of gloomy
and depressing looking, but you're fascinated by them. What keeps bringing you
back to that setting? >> Well, I think that, yeah, I am
fascinated by these towns, and, you know, I've given Gloversville
half a dozen different names during the decades that I've
been writing about it. I've called it Mohawk and
North Bath, and Thomaston, and even Empire Falls,
despite the fact that Empire Falls is
technically in Maine, it's -- you all recognize it, right? And I keep going back there, and
I think it has something to do with the fact that, I
mean, there are all kinds of ways that we learn things. When we're young, I think
the world is deeply wonderful and deeply mysterious,
and the older we get, the less mysterious it becomes, because we see things
happen repeatedly. And repetition causes us to believe that the world is not the miraculous
place that it seems like to a child. As a child growing up in
Gloversville, New York, the things that I was
observing, observing as a child, were things that I didn't
understand and couldn't articulate. Why did my grandfather
have to work so hard? Why, as a result of
the work that he did, did he get sick and die so young? My, I mean, all families
are mysterious, aren't they? My folks split up when
I was young, so I was -- and I was one of those -- I
was the only person I knew, the only kid I knew that was
from a broken family in that way. And yet my family was not broken. My grandparents were
there, my aunts and uncles, and my cousins were there. And so I was, as a kid, you
know, growing up, you know, from being a small
boy to being a 17, 18-year-old when I left Gloversville
to go to the university, during that time, I
was asking myself in a very child-like
way answers to questions that don't have answers, really. And that's part of the mystery
and the wonder of childhood as you ask yourself these, without
even articulating them exactly, you ask yourself these questions
that do not have answers. As I say, later on, you know, you go
to the university, you read books, you become more sophisticated,
and -- and there is all that
repetition, as I said. But the effect of that is to make
you feel like you know something. >> Don't. >> You don't. >> The older you get,
the more you know, right? >> You don't. You don't. And, and so we have more knowledge
as we grow older, but for me anyway, it's always going back, always going
back to those initial questions about my family, about the
way people worked back there in these towns without ever
seeming to prosper very much. The very sense that
you get in a community that nobody really cares
about you, you know? You watch television and
there's nobody like you on there. People are doing the kids of work
that nobody in your community does. And yet, you realize that these
are the people that you love more than anything else in the world. And so it seems to me like the
most natural thing in the world to keep going back, to keep
trying to get some answers to these questions
that baffle a child. >> Have you really
gotten some answers? Have you worked through some answers
for yourself by writing these books? Have you come to some conclusions? >> I have, I have replaced
questions with other questions. Let's put it that way. I always feel like, and this is an
example I use, but often, but -- you look at a writer like
Dickens, and this majestic career that Dickens had, but he has -- I don't want to say he has a
narrow bandwidth, because in terms of subject matter,
his bandwidth is huge. But he keeps coming back to
certain themes of poverty, of child abandonment, all those
Dickens novels so full of orphans. You know, you just want to say,
well, come on, what's with the -- every -- another -- more
-- what's with orphans? And it comes back to the fact that
Dickens, at some point, was -- when his father was about to go to debtor's prison,
got kind of sold off. He became an orphan. He was put in that blacking
factory, where, as a sensitive kid, he felt abandoned there by the
very people should've loved him. And so that sense of him
as a vulnerable child, as an orphan child, remained with
him throughout his entire career. And you trace his writing about
that throughout all of those books, and you find, I think you find a
man answering certain questions, but the answers to those
questions pose other questions, and they tend to be in the
same bandwidth, the same range of concerns that you just never
have -- and you know what? The fact that you can't get those
answers, that's the good news. >> Why is that the good news? >> Because that's where
these books come from. I think that that's where
those of you in the audience who are not writers, I think
when you read books, I suspect, and I've talked with
a lot of readers, I think that you all
suspect that we write books to tell you what we know. And at least, it might
be true for some writers. I write these books not to
tell you what I don't know. I write these books to
explore what I don't know. And so if I ever get to the
point where I have answers to my questions, I'm going to be
shit out of luck, as far as -- and I'd like to think so will you. [ Laughter ] >> You'll be writing
more non-fiction. >> Because, no, I think we write out
of curiosity and I think we write out of ignorance, and out of
a lot of other motivations, but it's not a show-offy thing. Or at least it shouldn't be. It's not, yeah. >> Well, okay, in "Everybody's
Fool," you return to a very specific town. Not only the town based on
the real town you grew up in, but to North Bath, which you
created first for "Nobody's Fool." And I read "Nobody's Fool" right
before I read "Everybody's Fool." I wanted to remind myself of all
the territory and the characters. >> Yeah. I did the
same thing, by the way. >> Well, we'll talk about that. But -- so the expectation coming out
of "Nobody's Fool," for me anyway, and I think a lot of readers, was it
was going to be about Sully again. And Sully is a major character. But at first, I was a little
surprised and disappointed when I realized, well, he's talking
an awful lot about Doug Raymer. >> Right. >> And Doug Raymer was this kind
of bumbling young police officer in the first book, and
now he's the police chief, and he was not a particularly
likeable character. And I thought, at first I
thought, why is he doing that? And then I got to like Doug Raymer. So I wanted to hear that
process for you as a writer. At some point I thought,
how did he do that? How did he get me to like
this character that I kind of didn't like in the last book? >> Yeah. Yeah. I think we all have that
feeling about books, where we're initially resentful
if something doesn't go the way that we had anticipated
that it was going to go. And it can happen sometimes four or
five times within the same novel. You know, you start a novel, you
get caught up with a character, you read the first long chapter,
which is maybe 45 pages or something like that, and you're so
caught up with the character, and there's a space break or a
chapter break, and the first word in the new chapter is
somebody else's name. And you realize, oh, wait a second, we're going to a whole
new character, and maybe a whole new place. And our sense of resentment
when that happens is terrific, because what you're feeling is
no, I was happy where I was. Don't take me somewhere else. I loved it there. I loved Sully. Don't -- you're never
going to make me as happy with Doug Raymer as
I was with Sully. And that's a challenge for a
writer, because you know that you -- >> Yeah. >> This has happened to you,
and so you know it's going to happen with other people, too. And the challenge is, that if you're
going to take me someplace new, or if you're going to focus me
on somebody else when I want to be focused on, well,
boy, you really got to deliver the goods then, because
you're already starting in this -- >> Yeah. >> In this place for the
reader of deep resentment. And from the writer's
standpoint, you have to say, well, whatever I'm giving these folks who are initially disappointed,
it better be good. It better be as -- the place that
I'm going to take you had better be as good as the place you left. And the person that I'm going to
ask you to focus on had better be as worthy of that attention. And Doug Raymer in the earlier
book was just, number one, he was just a pawn on the Board. He was a foil for Sully. >> Right. >> Someone to get angry at. >> Yep. >> And who would've suspected that
such a man even had an inner life? >> Right? Yeah. >> That you would want
to spend time with. So, Lynn, I think what you're
saying is probably what everybody in the audience who's read this book
has felt was why is he betraying us this way? He's teasing us with Sully in
the first Sully chapter saying, you know, Sully's just
been given a diagnosis. This is not a spoiler. It's in the -- early going in
the book if you haven't read it. Sully, now 70 years old, has been
given a not terribly surprising diagnosis, health diagnosis. And so here's a character
that you love, and is being immediately
put in jeopardy. And what does this
dick of an author do? He's going to give us a minor
character from the first novel that we don't care a damn thing
about, and ask us to care. But Doug Raymer, in fact,
did have, and does have -- >> Yeah. >> Does have an inner life. And he's in a horrible position. And he's been told his entire life
that he is a fool by people who care about him, and also
by people who don't. And he is at a point in his life
where he is either going to have to discover that he's not as big
a fool as everybody claims he is, and that he thinks he
is, or his life is over. Everything is at stake for him. And what I discovered
was the longer I spent -- and this happens to me a lot -- but the longer I spend inside
somebody's thoughts and fears and aspirations, the
more I come to care. And what I have to hope when I'm
foolish enough to do something like this, to ask you care about
somebody when you have reasons, good and sufficient reasons not
to, what I have to do is believe that I can convince you that this
person is worth spending time with, and maybe investing some
emotional attachment to. >> I got really emotionally
attached to Doug Raymer. >> Thank you. >> I'll say. >> Thank you. So did I. >> What made you want
to go back to Sully? What is it you wanted to explore
about Sully again as a character? This is, again, for those of
you who haven't read the book, but maybe thinking about it. This is just -- I was thinking,
is irascible the right word? I'm not sure that's the
right word, but I love using that word, so it gives me -- >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. >> The opportunity to do so. But, you know, he's
just a, you know, he's a guy that's just
kind of a laborer, really. A construction worker, and
does all the dirty jobs, and drinks a lot and, you
know, lets people down, and -- but he's a smart guy
and you get to really like him in both of these books. Why did you want to go back? What did you want to
discover about -- and what's changed
about him, do you think? Besides the fact that
he kind of, now, gets along with Doug
Raymer, actually? >> Well, yeah, yeah, well, one of
the obvious reasons for going back and writing this book and
resurrecting Sully is that Sully, like one or two other of my rogue
male characters that you can kind of trace through Dallas
Younger in the first book, and Sam Hall in the second,
and then Sully in the third, all the way through Max Roby,
you know, in Miles' father in "Empire Falls," and now
revisiting Sully again. One of the principle advantages,
one of the principle reasons to do something like that is that
all of those characters were based, to a large extent, on my own
father, who, in real life, I just never got enough of in a way. He and my mom split up when I
was young, and so I spent most of my youth kind of in longing
for a man who wasn't around. And he became more interested
in me around the age of 18, because back then in New
York, you could drink at 18. >> That's right. I grew up in New York, too. >> Yeah. So I became interested -- I
became more interesting to my father when I was old enough to drink. And so during my college
years when I came back and was working road construction
with him, I really got to know him and got to know what made him tick. And we became good friends. In a way, it wasn't, I mean
there was a father-son aspect to our relationship,
but it was a little -- it was more complex than that, because we hadn't been
father and son for so long. And because I -- and it wasn't that
long after that that he became ill. And so I just kind of never
got my fill of the man. And so returning to North Bath
and resurrecting Sully was at one level kind of Psych 101
level, was just a way for me to spend more time with my father. The other interesting
thing, though, about this, was that because the wonderful
Robert Benton movie was made, of that novel, I was not only able
to resurrect Sully, my character, and my father, the real person
whom this book was based on. >> Yeah. >> I also got to resurrect
Paul Newman, who -- Paul, I worked with Paul
on three different movies. He was -- I wouldn't say we had like
an intimate friendship or anything like that, but we both -- We saw the world in the same way. And he was -- he really
liked writers a lot. And I discovered in
resurrecting Sully that because of his incredible portrayal
of my character, I no longer had sole
proprietorship over Sully anymore. Because, you know, in
every scene that I wrote -- when I was writing "Nobody's Fool," in every scene I was
seeing my father. Now I'm seeing -- it
goes back and forth between seeing my father
and seeing Paul Newman. Who, by the way, looked
nothing like my father. You can imagine my mother's surprise when Paul Newman was
cast to play her husband. I mean, it's just --
the mind boggles. So there was this -- and, you
know, the entire book was about -- the whole book takes
place over Memorial Day, and it's a book about memory. >> Yeah. >> And so until I began writing it,
I didn't realize what the upside to this book was going to be. And that it was going to plumb
depths in me and needs in me that I just didn't suspect until
I actually began writing it. >> So this raises another question. I was wondering about this,
exactly what you just brought up, because I had a hard time getting
Paul Newman out of my head. And I don't know that that's who I would've imagined had he
not been there to begin with. >> Yeah, yeah. >> Because I think I
saw the movie first. But Philip Seymour
Hoffman played Doug Raybey. >> Doug Raymer, yeah. >> Doug Raymer, I'm sorry. >> Yeah, yeah. >> And so is he now in your head? >> Oh, God, yes. >> And as you were writing the
book, were you actually seeing him? >> Yes. >> Because he was in
the original movie. >> Yes, yes. >> So what does that do to
you as a writer when you -- ? >> Well, it was interesting, Lynn,
because we got the terrible news about Philip's death, I was probably
250, 300 pages into the book. >> Oh. >> And, of course, that's who I'd
been thinking about, and while, as a writer, as a novelist, I
know better than to cast a novel when I'm writing it, because even
if the actor that I'm thinking about wanted to play the role, the
odds against it are still enormous, because actors of that
caliber, you know, they do two or three movies a year
sometimes, and the chances that Philip Seymour
Hoffman would be available and would have the interest
in playing Raymer in a movie, those are pretty long odds. But he was not only -- he not only
played Raymer, but then he went on after that, of course to play
a major role in "Empire Falls." It was just impossible
not to see him. And it was also impossible not
to, you know, keep it in the back of your mind as far as
you can, but what if? What if he were able
to play this role? >> Yeah. >> Because seeing him
the way I was seeing him, I was also imagining something of
not only my character's inner life, but just how wonderful Philip
Seymour Hoffman always was in his career, in playing
people who had kind of almost paralytic self-doubt. I mean, think of the
great roles that he had. And so many of them were about
people who were in a state of almost paralysis as a result
of insecurity, fear, self-doubt. And so I was -- I mean,
there he was. And then we got the news of
his death, and I thought, all right, now what do you do? It wasn't that -- it wasn't the
obvious that, you know, I mean, now there's no chance, obviously,
the man is dead, he's not going to play Raymer in the movie. It didn't have anything to
do with anything like that. It was, I thought, now what do
I do with what's in my head? What do I do with the fact
that I'm seeing this man? What should I do? Should I start now thinking
in terms of somebody else? And for a while I tried to,
and it was just impossible. And so I thought, you know what? Let him be the muse. >> Yeah. >> Because with these characters,
when I think back on all of my fictional characters, not one
single actor has ever been chosen that I would've chosen had
I been in charge of casting. Ed Harris in "Empire Falls." What a wonderful job that he did. But I had described, what I had
described, the man I had described in "Empire Falls," my
novel of "Empire Falls," a man who had been literally eating
his mistakes for most of his life. Whenever he makes a
mistake at the grill, there's nothing left
to do but eat it. You know? And the man that
I had described, you know, if you had been casting on my
physical descriptions would've been, I don't know, James
Gandolfini, somebody like that. A big guy. Throughout the book he's
referred to as Big Boy. >> Yeah. >> But the first -- and
then they cast Ed Harris. Trim, little, buff Ed Harris. And I thought what in the
world are they thinking? Are they going to make
him wear a fat suit? I just couldn't get it. I couldn't see it. And then we went on the set. My daughters and my wife and I
went on the set and we saw a daily, and one of the dailies was a
shot -- was a scene with him -- it took place in the diner,
and it was a scene with him and his beautiful daughter. And the way he looked at her,
I thought, there's Miles. There's Miles. And so when you write to a
particular kind of actor, what you're seeing is something
physical, but what they're going to bring to the role, if it's a
great actor, is not physical at all. And so, at some point, that
wisdom dawned on me, I guess, that it was just perfectly fine to see Philip Seymour
Hoffman in my mind. Because some great actor is
going to come and find something in that character, and if
he doesn't look like the guy in my head, it doesn't matter. >> All right. I've got one more question
for you before we open it up for questions from the audience. Because this is something
I had talked about with you one other time. I met you this May, in May. I was thinking, as I was
reading your books recently that they span several decades,
and yet over those several decades, in each of these towns, they've
already gone through a period where the industry has left, they're
bereft, people are leaving the town because there's no jobs there. >> Right. >> People are scrounging
for a living. And yet here we are in
this election cycle, 2016, and the issue of jobs
leaving the country, going elsewhere, is still an issue. It's not a new issue. And I was struck by the fact
that this issue has actually been around for not years, decades. And I know you have some
thoughts about your own characters who are working class white guys,
and what they may or may not do, might or might not do in this
election year, and I'm curious if you could just address that. >> Well, here's an opportunity
to alienate half the audience. >> Sorry. It is Washington,
D.C., after all. >> Well, no, I do feel like my
novels, what I've been writing about in my novels since, you
know, for a very long time now, since the early 1980s, I've
been writing the same thing, but because Gloversville, the town
that I grew up in, which lost all of those manufacturing
jobs back in the 60s. I mean, it was all over by
the end of World War II. In a way, Gloversville, New
York, I've come to think of it as the canary in the coal mine. It was happening there then, but
since that time, it has just -- the story of Gloversville, New York
has just expanded exponentially. And I think that now everybody,
suddenly everybody is talking about what I've been talking
about, and it seemed to me that throughout all of these
years, I kind of had this subject, not to myself, but --
let's put it this way. The field was not overly crowded. >> Right. >> And now suddenly, as you
say, with this election cycle, suddenly everybody is
talking about work. Suddenly everybody is talking
about the fact that in America, we don't seem to make
things anymore, that all of these jobs
have been outsourced. Manufacturing jobs, in
particular, have been outsourced. And that all of this
that's now coming home to us as a nation is suddenly front and
center in a political campaign, and the rage that we're
feeling as a result of this is pretty astonishing. And in Upstate New York and
in a lot of the Rust Belt, it was interesting, because
I think we tend to see that, and certainly Donald
Trump did very well in the Rust Belt and
Upstate New York. There was, as it's always
been, there's New York City, and then there's everywhere else. And Donald Trump did very
well throughout that swatch of the Mohawk Valley all the way
through Buffalo, and you know, straight on through into
Ohio and all of that. What's not been reported
quite so widely is that Bernie Sanders did
very well there, too. And the anger, I think,
in both the Trump camp, as a result of these loss
of manufacturing jobs, many of them had been
traditionally white male jobs. The anger in both the Trump camp
and the Bernie Sanders camp, it's both there, it's just
a question of who you blame. The Trump folks blame
one group of people, and the Sanders folks blame
another group of people. And I was asked once, you know,
who would my characters -- now, I'm talking sociologically, but who would my characters
have voted for? And, you know, we won't go through
all of them, but I will say this. Miss Beryl in "Nobody's
Fool," and "Everybody's Fool," she wouldn't have been fooled
by Donald Trump for a second. >> I think she would've been
for Hillary [inaudible]. >> And I think Sully would
have understood the anger, but he was based on my father. My father was a D-Day guy, and he
had done his service all the way from Utah Beach to Germany,
and he knew what service was, and I don't think he
would've been fooled either. >> Okay. I think people
want to ask questions, so if you do, there's
mics right here. >> If it works. >> Maybe. So that's better. Years ago I went to see a movie,
and it had people I liked in it. It was, what was it? Ice? >> "The Ice Harvest." >> "Ice Storm." >> "The Ice Harvest." >> And it had -- >> Yep. >> And it had Billy
Bob Thornton in it. I liked that. And then it had you as the
writer, and I said, wow! This is really going to be good! But it's not particularly
your style. It's more of a film
noir kind of thing. >> Yeah. >> How did you write
differently for that? >> Oh, thank you. Yeah, the question is about a
film called "The Ice Harvest," which, I'm so glad you saw it. I was wondering who the other
person who saw that movie was. [ Laughter ] I loved it. And it had a terrible black
humor to it, based on a novel by Scott Phillips, which I loved,
and so when the assignment came to me, I was thrilled to get it. I think what attracted me to that movie was the darkness
of it, the humor of it. And when I signed on to write it,
one of the principle tasks for me, because the book was so dark, much darker than anything I had
ever written, was to infuse it, because movies are not books, and so
you will, you know, you will find, if you were to look at the
movie and then read the novel and compare the dialogue, you
would find some lines in there that were not in the book. And it would be interesting
for you to compare them and see what you see -- what
is Scott Phillips in the movie and what is Richard Russo? It's probably more effort than
anyone would want to expend. But thank you for that question. I really loved that movie, and I thought John Cusack was
particularly wonderful in it. >> Okay, go ahead. >> Hi. >> And they're very funny. Lower? Is this better? I just -- we're doing this
book in our book club. >> Which one? >> "Everybody's Fool." >> Everybody's? Okay. >> And, but just last month,
we read a book where one of the issues was reinventing
oneself. When I think about these in your
books, nobody seems to be interested in reinventing themselves, really. In fact, they don't
even seem interested in evolving as they get older. So, and it sort of goes with the
question, the political question. I mean, the Rust Belt, there
may have been opportunities to change your life, but most people
stayed in there the way they are. And I'm wondering what
thoughts about that, if you have any thoughts about that. Do you intend to -- I mean, you
clearly like your characters, and we like them when we read them. But on the other hand, they're
sort of stuck in some ways. And I wonder if you could
make a comment about that. >> Well, I tell people,
and I think it's true that I am the poster boy
for the American Dream. I am a product of public
schools, public institutions. Because of the fact that there
were so few opportunities in Upstate New York and the
town where I grew up in general, almost everybody in my
graduating class, both the public and Catholic high school. Wherever I go, I see people from my
home town, because they simply -- the vast majority of them couldn't
-- they had to reinvent themselves. And I spent a long time -- I went
all the way to the University of Arizona, which will give
you an idea of how far I wanted to get away from Upstate New York. And I was there doing various
degrees for about 10 years. And I considered it my
mission, in large part, because it was my mother's mission. She tried most of her adult
life to get out of Gloversville and always ended up right
back where she started. It was her mission for me
to do what she couldn't do, which was to escape this place. Haha. And -- And part of that, in
order to do that, it's not just getting
away geographically, it's reinventing yourself. It's becoming a different person. And with every degree that I
got, I got a BA, an MA, a PhD, and then after a PhD, I actually
went back and got a MFA in writing, in fiction writing, and the
idea was that with every one of those degrees, I would distance
myself even further by reinvention, by becoming a person that no
one would recognize back home. I would reinvent myself
and distance myself. Only to discover, of course,
my one true subject, right? So you reinvent yourself,
and for most of -- for so many of the
people that I write about, reinvention is they
had all they could do to invent themselves the first time. They haven't had the
opportunity for reinvention. Sully, in this book,
in the earlier book, discovers that when he falls off
that ladder and shatters his knee, has the opportunity to go
back to Community College and learn something like
refrigeration repair, and finds himself at age 60 in a
classroom full of 18-year-olds. And he manages about two
classes before he quits. Reinvention for Sully? At age 60? Having done the same
thing all of his life? And that's politically part
of the dilemma with all of those manufacturing jobs
that have left the country, you say that -- educated
people say, well, I mean, look at the writing on the wall. Those jobs are not coming back. Learn to do something else. What do you mean learn
to do something else? At that age when you've done
that work all of your life? And not only have you done it,
you found meaning in doing it. That's the thing that I find
astonishing about Sully. Is not that he's done
the kind of shit jobs that nobody else wants to do. This is a guy who takes pride
in doing those exact jobs. And for somebody to tell him, all
right, well, somebody to come in and say, well, you
should do something else. Really? >> All right. We're going to go to
another question. >> Hi. So I read faster than you
write, and so when I'm done with one of your books, I want another
one as soon as possible. How long do I have to wait, and
what are we thinking about writing? [ Laughter ] >> You need to read slower. [ Laughter ] Well, the good news, I suppose -- thank you, first of all,
for the high compliment. I have a book of short
fiction coming out next year. I've delivered it to
my editor earlier. It will come out in May. I am finishing up a book of
essays about life and art that I will be delivering in
about three or four weeks, and I have in the back of my brain
a little bent gene or something that feels like it could be a novel,
but I'm a couple of months away from being able to begin it. And at any rate, you know, it takes
me a while to write these things. So you've got a couple of books
that are coming that will allow you to pedal, kind of,
in a stationary -- two books that amount to
kind of a stationary bicycle, and I've got sort of an idea. >> Okay. All right, we'll
take this question here. >> Hi. >> Hi. >> "Straight Man" is one of
my all-time favorite books. >> Thank you. >> And it's just beautifully written
and hilarious, and reading it is such an interesting experience,
because the main character is -- He does things as if
for his own humor, and it's kind of like the reader
and him have a special relationship that no one else in
the story seems to get. So I'm just -- could you just
comment on the experience of writing that book, and where it came from? >> Sure. "Straight
Man," of all my novels, was much the easiest
book of mine to write. I had been hitched to the
academic sled for many years, in a variety of institutions,
and when I started writing "Straight Man," it was as
if the flood gates opened. All of my store of
academic insanity stories -- it was just suddenly all right
there, and it just came gushing out. And part of it was
William Henry Devereaux, who was based on a
real colleague of mine, and he was by nature,
I think, an anarchist. He just loved to stir the pot. And he lived life exactly that way, doing things for his own
amusement and entertainment. And the academic shrapnel
from that was amazing to behold and wonderful to behold. And so when I sat down to write
that book, I just remembered him and the way he went about things,
the gleeful way he would turn on his friends and support his
enemies, as Hank does in that book. That material was all prepped. I didn't really have to --
I mean, of all of my novels, that's the one that's the --
there's the most verisimilitude. In some ways, it's the most
outrageous, but I didn't have to invent anything in that book. It was just all there. Pure reportage. Reportage in that book. >> All right. Let's see if we can get one
more question real quickly. >> Thank you, and good afternoon. >> Hi. >> You spend a lot of time
talking about movies, and -- >> I'm sorry, talking about? >> You spend a lot of
time talking about movies. >> Yeah. >> And I was curious, when you write
novels, do you aspire or even expect that they're going to
be made into movies? And if so, how does that affect
the way that you write them? Thank you. >> You know, when I was a
younger writer, I probably thought that one day, maybe a movie
would be made of mine. It didn't affect the way
I thought of my novels, and I certainly didn't want to
make the novel more movie-like in order to attract interest. So I've always kept one in one -- one compartment and the
other in another compartment. Lately, I think, if
you're a story-driven, character-driven literary writer,
you'd be a damn fool to think that a book of yours is likely
to be made into a movie, because the movies have given
themselves over to big budget, you know, action-driven stuff. The real writing these days
is being done on television. So I mean, obviously there
are exceptions to that. There are some character-driven
movies being made in the kind of, you know, two to six to
eight million dollar range, but "Nobody's Fool," all those years
ago, two decades ago, was made, the budget for that movie
was like 21, $22 million. You couldn't get anybody today to spend $22 million making
a movie like "Nobody's Fool." That kind of money just
isn't spent anymore. And so I don't even think about it. And I don't even think
about it as a possibility. Every now -- and whenever
anybody comes to my agent thinking about a book of mine now, it's as
a limited television mini-series. >> On that note, I think we have to
say farewell, and thanks so much. >> Thank you. >> To Richard Russo. >> Thank you. >> This has been a presentation
of The Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov.
