>> this year is a special project we are featuring best-selling fiction writers for our monthly program in-depth fiction edition. >> we are alive with best-selling fiction author colson whitehead. mister whitehead's novel the underground railroad was awarded the pulitzer prize and national book award. his other books include the intuition us and stack harder. it is part of our 20 18th special action addition of in-depth .

>> welcome to book tvin-depth program, this is our special year of fiction on in-depth . you see authors such as david baldacci, jody people, walter mosley, last month we had david ignatius, washington post columnist and thriller writer who writes about the cia and such. this month we are pleased to have pulitzer prize winning author colson whitehead as our guest with the most recent book is the underground railroad. mister whitehead, what's the appropriate response when your book are are praised by oprah, president obama, you win the pulitzer and national book award, what's the appropriate response? >> it took the pain away. this book is taking off in a way that is startling and wonderful so mostly i just thank my lucky stars and i sleep a little better, i'm in a better mood generally. and i tried to enjoy it.

it's my best effort. >> why does that put you in a better mood? >> i've been writing for 20 something years, doing fiction for 20 years and you know, sometimes you write a book and people digging and people understand it and then sometimes you write a book and they don't care and it sort of disappears. so you know, i have the pride and i did a good job with the book. and the bonus of other people taking it as well. >> your first book was the intuition us, how do you sell a book like that? >> exactly, with that book i puta two page description and either , i said to my agent either you did the concept of people having groups of elevator inspectors or you don't. so it's your either sort of along for the ride on the

long description or not. when i was writing it, my second attempt at a novel, my first one was terrible and it went to a bunch of publishers and everyone hated it. i had agent, the agent jump dumped me and i wasn't going anywhere so for a year and a half i said to my friends i want to write a book about elevator inspectors. it was stupid and they would make fun of me so eventually after a year and a half in writing, i finally got down to what sounded like an interesting book. my newagents , luckily i gave them double agent as well. >> is there a connection between the intuition is zone one and the underground railroad? >> guest: a couple topics i circle around , in these cities, i'm a new yorker and i love learning about new york and vitality and energy from the city.

pop culture, race, race in america, technology and some of these themes are in some books, not so much in others. my book about new york, it's about a racialized take on new york as it is black new york. mypoker book , the hustle. doesn't have much to say about technology but there's this four or five areas that you kind of circle around. >> how should people read your book, social commentary, autobiographical? >> guest: summer autobiographical, differently sag harbor, it's about growing up in the 80s and does from my childhood. i would say the underground railroad is my least autobiographical book. just because i'm not in there in some sort of coded way and that character which is probably why people like it. but so i think read them from

the first page, from beginning to theend, that's a good way, start to finish . and then some books are funny, some are a little more tragic. i hope that's the experience is worth your time. and sometimes it's social commentary, sometimes they are commentary on whatever weird thing i'm going through that year in "sag harbor" did you benji with a bad haircut? >> guest: benji is a kid growing up in new york in the 80s. as i did. my life wasn't very interesting so i have to exaggerate , the summer of 85 was not that cool or compelling so you have to take a little bit of lessons. when i started the book i wanted to base characters on my friends and unfortunately

none of them appeared on the page, they became less and like my friend david or scott so it started off as autobiographical and i'm definitely in there but the demands of the story always supersede autobiographical or memoirs, trying to make a compelling story which means exaggerating what actually happened. >> host: colson whitehead, what is the process to get to elevator inspectors or zombies or a underground railroad that actually exists? >> guest: i like to mix it up and not do the same thing from book to book because i think if you know how to write a certain kind of book, why do it again? perhaps that's foolish i think writing a book that may be very plot heavy and following up with a book that's not as plot heavy is a way to very it up and not do

the same thing. a book that had a first-person narrator, a book that's funny, not so funny, that's a way to keep it varied for me. so the last couple books on on a diverse kick. i went from "sag harbor", a story about the 80s to zone one, a apocalyptic zombie tail, to noble hospital which is a poker book to this book, "the underground railroad", a historical novel so i am keeping a very different time. i get my ideas from articles . just weird musings i have on my couch. and so sometimes the ideas stay with you and you get an open spot in your schedule. you consider it but you're ready, do you want to do it, sometimes they fall away . they come from a lot of different places. >> host: there seems to be a common theme in a lot of your books about a guy who really

didn't get the rules of life has a certain unease around other people's sure, i was going to say it's autobiographical but i don't want to take my hand to early, we are here for three hours, i want to save the good stuff for the last hour. i think there's something about an outsider and i think whether you are misanthropic like i can be sometimes or where all sort of outsized way, and an outsider makes a good observer, the protagonist, a good storyteller. you're in the action also apart so someone who observes and whose part of the scene but also removed i think is a good vehicle for telling a story and definitely in the apocalypse, in the world of elevator inspectors, it's nice to have a point of view. most of the time elevator inspectors sadly, and so my

outsider characters in addition for the reader to enter the story. >> host: zone one didn't come out until 2011 but i think i read an article that you had written as a young guy in eighth or ninth grade. >>. >> guest: no. i was a big horror fan. i majored a lot in horror fiction and science fiction. and love the zombie genre from going back, no, i wrote terrible stories in college and i really didn't start writing fiction until my mid-20s but the obsession with zombies does go back to my childhood. i had parentswho love movies, we watched horror movies together and i remember seeing night of the living dead at an early age stayed with me , to refresh your memory, it's a story about the eve of the zombie

apocalypse.people are trying to hide, they don't know what's happening and the main protagonist is a black man being pursued by white people want to devour him and eat him which of course is part of the story of america. so that growing up as a horror and science fiction fan, five books and i thought i was ready to spread my influences and trymy hand at a horror story you say you watched horror movies but the impression is that there is session with horror movies . >> sure, i don't know if i want to get all georgie. but yes, >> a real interest. you know, my brother and i, we were born in the vcr boom we go to crazy eddie, an electronics store in new york

and read horror movies, science fiction movies every friday, go to them, return them and start all over again the next week. and you know, it was sort of science fiction, horror and comic books that meeting want to write. i wrote a lot of marvel comics, i was growing up. and stephen king novels, i came into my brothers room and i would read them so fantasy, horror, has always seemed to be a potent storytelling tool. and in zone one, i wrote different ideas about what zombies mean for me. sign my own interpretation and put my own stamp on the genre was fun and important. >> what do zombies mean? >> i think different generations interpret horror genres with their own needs.

like dracula, vampires mean something in the 19th century , in england, they mean something to the twilight generation. zombies mean something different to i think teenagers now. to me they've always been an expression of social anxiety, fear of other people. the zombie story, you go to bed and you wake up in the world has changed. your loved ones, neighbors, teachers, coworkers are zombies out to get you and they stop pretending. they've always been monsters but we put the mask down and now they are out to get you. that's totally my pathology that i interpret zombies that way . you know, the zombie myth always stayed with me and i also found a way to grapple with these various ideas in theback of my head .

>> is social anxiety a common trait in zombie movies? >> i don't know. you know, i'm not sure. i think it helps, i think worrying about your work or doing a good job maybe a good skill for being a novelist. it helps to not post. >> worrying about others what they may think of you? >> are you doing a good job, social anxiety versus worry. i think a healthy amount of worry, that helps you make sure that it's putting everything into this paragraph for that page. making sure it's coming out right even if you don't, you have books under your belt. >> host: in the new yorker in

2012 you were quoted as saying to be a good novelist for you, it's to fully inhabit one'sdelusions and get in to every cookie aspect of one's britishness. it's a handy survival strategy . >> i think what i like about my different books is that they are sort of allow me to express my ideas about the world, about myself. these different theories and i think writing is becoming a way of me to interpret the world formyself . you figure out how i feel about things, how i feel about vital systems, politics, people and so that license is very important for me. not being tied to expectations, following my own inclinations and just because writing about an

elevator inspector sounds like a bad idea, can you make it work? and can you sell it to the reader at the same time you're selling it to yourself? sothe delusion that you have something to say , the delusion that your work is worthy of being read by others i think is useful for being an artist. >> host: where did the germ of the idea for "the intuitionist" come from? were you on an elevator, do you see an inspector? >> guest: in the book that everyone hated, i figured -- >> host: what was that book by the way? >> guest: remember gary coleman, the teenage little black boy? a tv critic at the time and he was writing about black imagery in pop culture so i figured i'll write a novel about a gary coleman child star, grows up and has misadventures.

and it seemed like a great idea to me. in the novel he's on a sitcom called i'm moving in. he was getting adopted by rich white people. [laughter] so i'm moving in, for a bit of realism and throughout the book, everyone hated it. so i think i became a writer then. i was going to get a real job, become a lawyer or something like that but i was writing this book and maybe people will like it, maybe they won't but i'll learn to write by the end of it. but i figured people like plots, maybe i will have a plot driven book . so i wrote a lot of detective novels and a lot of suspense and i thought i was watching 2020 as ioften do in those days, in my 20s .

in the 1990s and there was a piece on the hidden dangers of escalators. apparently if you don't repair escalators they can detach from the sides and lose a tow, it's a terrible thing obviously. and they had an escalator expend inspector that the interview. and i said that's a random job and then growing up in new yorkalways see , there is a law, not necessarily enforced anymore but the elevator inspector's sign a certificate, everything here, everything's fine and they come once a year to your work or your school and suddenly you see that the elevator inspector has been there. wouldn't it be cool if an elevator inspector had to become an inspector , tosolve a criminal case ? ha, funny, postmodern detective story so i went to the library to see what skills and elevator inspector would bring to a criminal case and of course the answer

was none because there elevator inspectors so it became more like a murder mystery but solving the mystery of a fallen elevator and i made up a culture for elevator inspectors, i figured they are conservative and possessive, that became the empiricists who does it the right way, the intuition us who are sort of aggressive and that duality plays out in the book in different ways. the elevator inspectors school, elevator inspector philosophies and really i was trying to teach myself how to write. i haven't had a female protagonist before so i had a female protagonist. i didn't have a book that had a plot for linear momentum so it was trying to do that and then i took it in this weird whimsical idea of an elevator inspectorsolving a criminal case and following through to its execution . so, the captain. >> prior to starting this

interview, you look at your books here on the table and said tory for the clunkers that you had to read. what do you consider to be a clunker? >> i think they're all pretty good but hopefully if you do something for a long time you get better at it. and you know, certain books i'll think about and i wonder why did i use so many asked kids? wasn't there a simpler way of saying that? maybe that book i could lose a page or two here or there but hopefully, you become a better writer and do things in a more efficient way. hopefully you get better and better and then obviously you plateau and start sucking but hopefully i'm still in the getting better face and getting better at my job, taking it out to the next level. >> does i'm moving in still exist? >> guest: the manuscript is there. for a while i thought maybe

i'll strip mine it for similes or something but it's really terrible and the energy would take up, my now very high standards. so it's in my drawer and if my children have a gambling debt, they can sell it for some money 30 years from now. make some quick cash. pawnbroker. >> so twyla may watson is one of your female protagonists. corot is another, what's the reason to write for a woman's point of view? >> i think women exist and i think some of them tell different stories, you should get different points of view so it's part of that. i have this thing about male protagonists for this book so which seemed sort of wise to mix it up.

i think if you know how to do something, why do it? so emma may watson, i couldn't take my hipster new york voice, that was in my firstnovel . i was forced to, i chose a third personnarrator . a female protagonist, which i hadn't done before and by doing it i could hopefully become a better writer. which i had done before. and then before i had a few female narrators in rome,, there's a famous narrative written by harry jacobs called instance in the life of a slave girl, he writes about how when the slave girl becomes a slave woman, they grow into much more terrible form of slavery.

you now praise your masters desires which you didn't before. of course it's about more babies, that means more slaves, more property if you're a master. that predicament with female slaves , you were the other point. sometimes i'm trying to mix it up, sometimes i'm trying to learn something and you know, keep the challenges going. >> what was your favorite ones right? >> guest: i think you know, this book was hard to write because i was broke. this book is hard to write because i was broke and i was depressed . there are different challenges and then when you finish you can look back and say oh, it was pretty terrible but it was a special time in my life so i think with the noble hustle, perhaps that was the audience but bob noble hustle was one of the most fun to write. it's a humor book taking off from a trip i took to the world series of poker.

i just tried to cram as many jokes as i could in their area there's a journalistic framework, so there's linear movement.i really was trying to cram as many weird jokes and bit of myself into it. and it was really fun. i think it started from a journalistic assignment, there was a magnet call grant land which was pop-culture in sports for a couple years and they had some great writing and they called me up to see if i wanted to write about the world series. the world series of poker and i was like i don't want to go to vegas, is really hot but then i said what if we are paying you for the article, we paid your entrance fee and you got to go to the world series? i'll do that. but i do actually know how to play tournament poker so i started cramming. i would drop my daughter off at school . and the other parents would

say what are you up to? i'm going to atlantic city to train or a poker tournament so i got on the bus to atlantic city and gamble and come back. and then i got to the world series and you know, i stayed at home mostly, for the first time i had to get out of my comfort zone and basically provide this area around the account.so get out of the comfort zone, learn how to play poker so i wouldn't embarrass myself, my family and new york at the world series of poker. and then when i was writing it, i was writing an article and when you write a novel, write a joke, you make yourself laugh, you see it before someone else read it and you feel stupid backing your own jokes. but with writing in a serial way or like dickens did back in the bay and those that isd, you get that immediate

response and people like it and i did and it gave me energy to keepgoing so it was a very sort of special writing experience. in terms of the material , in terms of how it came to be so i look upon that six months very fondly. >> host: i'mgoing to paraphrase the first line of that book. i got to wear sunglasses inside. it was good for me because i'm half blood english . >> guest: for years i've been told i have a good poker face and i realized that because i was half dead inside. which people mistake for the by half mask of a good poker player. my national lack ofaspect was for once an asset . in certain situations. you want me to unpack half dead? >> host: i'll post you in our therapy sessions a little bit. you do write about having a mask and you do write about

the fact that you are semi-impressed, hermetic when you are writing and that you are adifferent person . is that important, is that depression important to your writing? >> i think it partly is impartially i think it's good to have a healthy joking relationship with the things you do in life whether it's art or anything else. so not taking myself too seriously, i think is important. i think in terms of sharing how i feel about my work with other people, this design is important. as far as i know, they're just sort of crawling along the pavement trying to write the pages in hand and in so no one gets an arcade and we

can keep doing what we like to do. so a lot of times writing is unpleasant. it must be great when you figure out a new sentence ora character or figure out a problem you've been working on but for me , i'm not taking it too seriously and i think the character of the depressive shot in i think is fun to play and it's partially true and also is also sort of a default setting in my public relations. >> host: what was the easiest book to write? >> guest: they're all pretty hard, i have to say. i'm going to go with the shorter ones. the apex ispretty short, the

book i'm working on now is pretty short . [laughter] so short isn't easy but it tends to not prolong the agony of a 400 pager. >> host: when you won the pulitzer at the national book award, praised by president obama, did that put a lot of pressure on the next book? >> guest: there's always pressure i think, imposed by myself because i wanted to be good, i want to be something different and i want to coast so fortunately when i get good news, and i'm in the middle of something, i can, it will be good and that i start work the next day and it's like this kind of sucks and it's terrible, it's a terrible job so it's always hard, if it wasn't hard it would be worth doing in the pressure is self-imposed but it's always been there whether it's learning how to write a book, or, it better

not be broke, there's always some kind of weird pressure on you. whether it's things are going well or are going well. >> good afternoon and welcome to book tv on c-span2. this is our monthly index program and this entire year we are doing a special action in addition with best-selling action authors. and this month, our author is best-selling author, pulitzer prize winner colson whitehead. here's a list of his books, we've referred to several of them through the first half hour iwant to give you a list , "the intuitionist" is his first book in 1998, johnhenry days, 2001, the colossus of new york, 2003 . apex heights in 2006, "sag harbor" 2009. zone one about the zombies, 2011.

the noble hustle which we talked about a little bit, a nonfiction book in 2014 and of course , his most recent, the underground railroad, which won the pulitzer prize, national book award, etc. we wanted to have your participation this afternoon in our conversation, here's how you can participate. 222-748-8200, if you live in the eastern central time zones, 202, 748-8201. to those of you in the mountain and pacific time zones. we have social media sites that you can also contact colson whitehead if you have a question or a comment we've got facebook, twitter, instagram , at book tv is the handle you need to remember and here is our email address as well. book tv at c-span.org. we will take those calls in just a few minutes. >> what is the first line

that you wrote in underground railroad? what are the first words you put to paper? >> it ended up being i think the opening line of the first time these were approached core about winning north, she said no. >> i will always do an outline before i start working. i had to know the beginning and the end and so the last couple books i've known the last line of the book before i started writing and i'm writing sports. i had that with this book that first line i think came very quickly when i was ruminating and organizing the book and survived a horrible dating process to get into the book. >> what's the vetting process? >> you write something and it's a genius and two days later, that was really rough i don't know why i did it that way. and in this case, the first line was durable and sturdy.

nothing spoke about the koran, not one sentence with me. >> from the underground railroad, about grave robbers. in depth negro became a human being. only then was he the white man's. >> that is from a section that takes place in the early part of the 19th century, as a doctor who's going to medical school and the book, it takes sort of an eccentric route to american history. the main storyline takes place in the 1850s, that was my mental year on the books. that was my cut off or technology. and then there are sort of side stories in the book. that's for supporting cast in that section, doctor stevens meets later in his life is a young medical student in the

19th century, passionate about biology. he gives the cadavers up so there's a healthy trade in brave robbing. people would go and compete to find a fresh cadavers. there were gangs but they ransom each other at the same graveyard so he keeps himself very liberal in his musings and he's talking about prejudice in the 19th century and uses that despite racial prejudice, despite the aspersions upon black folks in america. ironically, when they use for his actions, these folks

become equal. these deadbolts become elevated only in death. to a level of equality, so one of the many humbling moments in the book.>> did you know you are goingto write about that when you started ? >> i mentioned the outline, yes. i had all these states and i didn't know giorgio would be the start, living in florida or south carolina with a white supremacist state, a black utopia state which became indiana. and then i knew i wanted to have the opening be an overture of a slave, cora's grandmother, we followed up for six pages and follow it from the middle passage to the plantations and i figured i would look at typical slaves story and move on to

story life, it seemed so short six-page chapters could be a way to open up a world to see where it can go. so i was writing a book and even though i did have a strong structure, the characters wereauditioning for those short biographical chapters, the doctor stevens , and in medical school. mabel, cora's mother gets hers and after a certain section i would think we should get them, after north carolina we need a husband and wife team who take cora in who's more interesting, martin or ethel. and 's upbringing brings to the book, i give him that sort of age, what can ethel bring to the book, i give her that stage so even though i do have a strong structure, it had to be open for that obviously by the process of where the book takes you and those short sections are very useful. in terms of getting voice to

how the book was evolving. >> can you read the underground railroad as historical fiction? >> i think if you are well-versed in historical fiction and you know that each section didn't actually happen in 1850, i'm moving something from the late 19th century , i had the idea to make the underground railroad into something real, that was the idea i had on my couch. and so from the very inception, this fantastic element, not just for a historical novel. which means i can do a lot of different things in the book . how these different alternative america's, and i think all of the books power and successful conception comes from having a fantastic structure. but no, it was not a

historical novel. i take many liberties and if my motto when i was writing a book was that i wouldn't stick to the facts but i would stickto the truth , the larger american truth. that's not bound by chronology, that actually happened but a different kind of connection, the reckoning that gives the reader my moving effort historical episodes around it. >> colson whitehead, did the rental plantation exists, you talk about. did you visit these places? >> the rental plantation where cora is raised and where she's enslaved is my own creation. in doing the research, i had the latitude to make my own plantation and i take it from pop culture, i think a lot of us have the idea of a vacation is really big, 100 slaves . but you could be one of three slaves and a small family farm. you could be on the big size

plantation, you could be a domestic slave a townhouse in baltimore. so randall is my own creation. and it borrows from plantations and how they work but it serves my artistic needs. in terms of the visiting plantations, two thirds of the way through i figured let's be a real writer and do some research so i put in new orleans with my wife. and went to see two plantation tours. i got on the tour bus, i was the only black person on the tour bus. and we're going north and the tour guide is getting her spiel. and this is our river road that would take all the goods from north louisiana down to new orleans. and it was very complicated. owning a plantation was just

sitting on your porch drinking mixed juleps. it was keeping track of the accounts, keeping track of the workers and once you bring in mixed juleps and the workers, obviously i'm not in a rigorously historically vigorous problem long. i went to two places. the whitney plantation which was a museum of the slave experience. it's great. so as a fiction writer, just feeling the atmosphere on my skin, the sounds of the insects. seeing the implements. and then getting names. they would describe how they had various exhibits to how much slaves were sold, when people came and for me, i'm writing down names and some

of those names i got from whitney plantation are in the book. how much people were sold for, all that grim stuff and to get back on the bus, go to the next plantation, the old galley plantation which you probably seen in movies. beyoncc filmed the video there and sort of that stereotypical plantation. and you know, if you want to do an antebellum themed wedding, you can rent costumes and have a slavery themed wedding. they have hotel rooms and i'm not sure if it's still on the website, it says if you want to break free from hotel chains, you can stay here and so you know, writing a book about slavery and getting people's actual stories comes across early 21st century ironies about race and sort of the way we deal with race though nothing compares to the actual stories of slavery themselves.

so it was a weird adventure and yes, i did go to plantations to research. >> the tour guide, the only african-american novel, the tour guide ignore you or spend too much time talking to you? >> guest: neither. i felt neither under the microscope or ignored. i think it's the same speech, two times a day, 30 times a year. they probably don't even think about it and they probably think this is a lot about how we think about slavery, we don't necessarily think about the state of the conditions for slaves . the complete vast array of dehumanizing apparatus, of slavery. we don't examine or our assumptions about what the cost of in terms of people's families, psychology so the same way you sort of serve i think a speech about

louisiana plantation life. a lot of us sort of necessarily think about slavery in that sort of throwaway, that would give us an understanding of it. >> this fiction is new to us at c-span as well and became almost a month long read for a lot of colleagues to read the underground railroad. we'll read you one from a colleague in davenport who just finished your book and he wants to know about the five ads for slaves in the book. one is cora, are the other ones actual ads from newspapers? >> they are. the university of north carolina, they digitize runaway slave act. have a great digital archive and invited me to speak so i in a couple days i'm going down there and hopefully i

can express my gratitude to their digital archive. so when a slave runs away, what do you do? you place an ad in the newspaper. and as a fiction writer, i like to figure out how people talk but it's competing with the tourists baseline runaway slave ads. they capture so much and so in so little space. the format is usually like $50, my slave bessie who ran away for no reason at all, why? she has a downcast expression . a burn on an arm from an accident, she had an accident last seen in that the city of edmonson farm, a black community so how do you get that burn?

how come there's so many levels of denial in the? i decided to stick them in there. copyright laws being what they are, i just put them in there andalso , when i was doing the research, i was struck at, sort of a banal observation but you'd have to be a farmer or a slave master to open up the system. you can be a journalist working a newspaper, writing classified ads and you are upholding the slave system, the enterprise. you are part of a link in the chain that keeps the system going. you're a blacksmith and you make shackles but also you make the iron ribbons for the wheels or for the cars that are taking cotton to the markets. you're making nails for the houses or propping up these

new slave economy towns so when i was researching, i ended up thinking about how fast the enterprise was and so a blacksmith in the classified ads down there, it brought the idea for broaden our id and the scope of the world of how fast the slave system was. >> host: you have a line here everyone is working foreli whitney . >> guest: the inventor of the cottongin. the slaves of course , ridgway was the antagonist in the book, the slave catcher, these as much a slave of the system as anyone in bondage. everyone is propping it up, everyone is caught in its insidious grip. >> host: did i miss readthis or is there a sympathetic aspect ? >> guest: i think hopefully

recognize his humanity. i think i wanted a well-rounded, compelling antagonist for my formidable protagonists and i think you should see your self in the heroes, in the villains , that's what makes them 3-dimensional and recognizable. it makes them live . but he's a terrible person, had a terrible philosophy. but in the same way that when cora is revealing her flaws, you see her as a human being. when you see ridgway's moment of weakness, you recognize some self-deception in how he sees the world and if you can recognize that quality in your self, that's what makes fiction work. that what makes artwork, that recognition. >> host: when you teach a class, you've got several

universities, what are two things you want your students to know >> guest: we have three months and so people can write three stories . do something different. if you teach a lot of undergrads, if you only write stories about girls in new jersey because you're an 18-year-old girl from new jersey, why not go crazy and write the story about a 22-year-old boy from pennsylvania? if you only write fantasy, try a realistic story and vice versa. you get three months to be some sympathetic or semi-sympathetic to a workshop or audience, try these different stories. if you always avoid the first-person voice, try it. why do you avoid it? maybe it works for you and you have some sort of trepidation about expressing yourself so that's one thing. you have three months to fail and then pick yourself up and try something different and use it. and then i think if you find

an author that you really love, sometimes i'm teaching people who are going to be architects or engineers or bankers and those are the ones that study hard classes, and bring them to people like lori moore or junot diaz or cz packer or people whodon't necessarily read once they get out of school . if there's something you like, read everything by then and figure out why you are attracted to the work, what makes it compelling and then read a lot to find out what kind of writer you want to be and write a lot and find out what kind of writer you actually are, theyare two different things . just the inspiring voices that we encounter as we are finding our own voice. >> host: was it hard for you to write your antagonist as a white southerner? >> a little more, no more than having a elevator

inspector, i don't know anything about elevator inspectors. i write him as a human being and i know people and you're always relying upon your own knowledge of yourself when you see other people. you speculate about how what makes other people operate. sort of a small collection of insights you have about humanity so if you have a big cast like "the underground railroad" does, if you have a small cast like "sag harbor", you are always finding yourself in different characters and finding a place where you are different and hopefully to what you know about yourself and other people, making characters were not like you come to life on thepage . >> host: another colleague at c-span's been reading all your books and tweeting it out, i think you retweeted him a couple times had

questions from several books that i'm going to start with "the intuitionist". he wanted to know who was james?>> james fulton, the first time i think about it is when you write a book and it's not yours anymore and people have questions and i get them questions and so i remember when the book came out, i got invited to a college and someone asked me james fulton, obviously that's based on foucault and i said no, i just looked out the window in brooklyn. and it was the first name i saw. so james fulton is the inventor of the intuition's school of elevator inspection and the intuition is sort of steps into an elevator and divines what's wrong with it. it's like using the force and hopefully the elevator inspectors in your community go the right way but in my

book, the intuition us is sort of a insurgent aggressive force. in the department of delegate elevator inspectors and james fulton is the man. with their philosophy. i grew up in the 80s and went to college in the 80s so that meant wars between the colonists and the multiculturalists. so it seems when i made my elevator inspector school, it would have that conservative and progressive war play out. so these were conservatives in the intuition us are those multiculturalists fighting the establishment. and james fulton comes up with the sacred text of intuition is him. at this point either my book sounds good or bad. so let's go back to your first question. either this book sounds cool at this point or sounds totally stupid. so. [laughter] i'm re-creating my own way, my feelings when i

was writing the book and perhaps my book is not so great. >> host: i literally have no idea what you just said but i'm sure the audience follow you closely. is "sag harbor" a real place? >> guest: that's a real place on the tip of long island. the hamptons is the community for the last couple decades and the town of "sag harbor" is nestled in the more famous hamptons, southhampton and it's an old whaling town mentioned inmoby dick . a lot of people went from that part of long island sound into connecticut and starting in their 30s and 40s there were african-american doctors, lawyers, teachers we started going out there, getting summer places.

they made some money and started a community. it was a safe place to go, bring your kids, heard by word-of-mouth. people inharlem are going in the 30s and 40s, there tell their cousin in new jersey and start coming . so my mom started going out there in the 40s, i spent my summers out there. grew up in the city but we would go out there every summer for college so "sag harbor" the book is based on my adventures in sag harbor the town. >> host: and here you write was there anything worse than a bigot playing keep away with your stuff? a dreary rehearsal for adulthood. >> guest: the main character benji is 15 and you know, he's doing a lot of the identity formation. he's figuring out where he is in his community, where he fits in his identity.

he's a black kid who likes bauhaus and susie and the banshees, is it okay to like run dmc or candy like both? he's figuring out what it's like to be a person and part of that, a lot of that is sort of this weird identity battle, continuing as you get older. kind of psychological warfare that you are engaged in with your community and the world because when you're a teenager, you wake up and you're an individual bougie is an upscale, middle-class pretension. and it means you've made it, sometimes it's anxiety about making it. it's also embracing the fact that you're a little bit posh.

>> host: back to "sag harbor". getting rid of your sad house, that was unforgivable. like sellingyour kids off to the circus .you still have your sag house? >> guest: my mom is living out there since the 90s. she owns it is the bottom line what's lovely about the place is that people have been going out there for generations. my grandparents and their peers bought little plots of land, little houses and the kids grew up in them and their grandkids, they spend their summers in them and of course, at any place in the world the community changes and i wouldn't call it gentrified but a lot of families used to go out there , if you live in michigan you're not going to go to "sag harbor" anymore so you sell your house and people take over the neighborhood. people like this lovely piece

of land, the black part of town and then the 21st century realizes it's nice beachfront property. so it's more integrated now. so it has changed similar to what it was when i was a kid and a part of the book is just this talk about that place and it's really just this moment before it becomes part of the hamptons proper and it sort of is this posh environment. >> host: what was your mom's reaction and was your dad still alive when "sag harbor" came out? >> guest:my dad passed away a short time before, i'm not sure how much he would have liked it my mom it . i'm not sure how much my friends would like it. it came out , and everyone out there seemed to embrace it. i ran into my friend jeff who is a character in the book and he said i'm in your book.

>> host: nick or mp? >> guest: he's somebody. but he's like, i heard i'm in your book? i'm like, yeah. i haven't read it but it's good. can you have me to the audiobook? he kept coming up in my friends that are in the book, like i heard on it . no one's really bothered. most of the people who are in the book haven't bothered or moved to actually pick it up. >> host: if your mom read it, what was her reaction tothis and again, this is fiction . we were a made-for-tv family and when he called action, we get our marks and deliver our lines . the scripts were all the same, we had the formulasdown . >> guest: that didn't have much to do with my family but

it did deal with pop culture and they are talking about the cosby show and when the cosby show came out, a lot of middle-class white people and black people embraced it and said we are finally on tv. there's a brownstone in brooklyn heights, a few parents were professionals and in many ways of course, for the first time we saw ourselves in that particular way on tv. pop culture is very important to the main koelsch character, italian filters the world. so his relationship to the cosby show becomes a way of talking about the lie behind that kind of cosby show fiction. and of course now we know bill cosby, bill: cosby's own life has underscored the separation between the televisual reality and how things are in the world.

so whether he's talking about the cosby show or road warrior, or hip-hop, pop culture becomes a way of filtering out the world and going through the motions and that i guess i had to exaggerate the story to make it interesting, because it's my family which was a proud family of movie watching folks .. it was so rare that the black press would tell you when you would be on tv.

>> host: we have talked for an hour with colson whitehead. we have had a lot of people. >> guest: are you kicking me off? >> host: there kicking me off! more poorly we are getting american involved. we have a phone call from charles in albuquerque, new mexico.thank you for your patience. you are on with author, colson whitehead. >> caller: you do not have to thank me for my patience. i think it has been wonderful. i really enjoyed listening to the show. not only that insightful questions but, colson opening up and letting us have a birds eye view into magnificent creative process. i have had the blessing of being friends with a person who won a national book award for poetry. he always talks to me about having to find the harvest time. sometimes there are days you have to get up in there is drudgery and you are stuck in knowing how this character is developing and doesn't have a life of its own.

and then, colton was talking about also, making sure that you maintain the movement of the book forward and things of that nature. also, the beauty and difficulties in opening yourself up. as well as when you do a historical novel. you need a creative license and what you are doing so that it does help in terms of story development. but still, being true to what the story is trying to convey and my question has to do with, there's been so much that colson talked about that is amazing and interesting. and story development he's talking about you had this idea, the structure and background. and there are certain times that you get bogged down and not know exactly where to go or where he wanted to take something but he persevered. sometimes you have to right this page is down. and my friend said about

persevering and sometimes when you have this daunting task ahead of you and it can be overwhelming. maybe just you know cranking out a few pages a day. >> let's hear what colson whitehead has to say charles, thank you for calling. >> guest: it is work. some days, you are definitely in tune with the project and everything coming together and some days are struggling through one paragraph. sometimes you can only do one paragraph per day. a novel is a marathon. even though that one paragraph is a lot. for my own way of keeping centers and if i can do eight pages per week, i can make a good accumulation. it is a 100 year. that is a novel. and it is a way of thinking about it. then some days you get up. you see a movie, read a book.

maybe those eight pages are tuesday, wednesday, saturday and sunday. sometimes it is tuesday through friday. but it can be one page or three pages each day. it is eight pages, it seems to be keeping me sane. some days i wake up and i do not feel it working or i'm not feeling like it. and of course, that is work. it doesn't take the same part of the brain but you are making progress. toward the end of the book. >> you have a sense of task for characters or have you ever got mad at one of your characters? >> not bad but with the intuition asked there is sort of a scene and i remember writing i was getting very angry. with sag harbor, a little more removed from my previous characters before sag harbor.

and sag harbor is very personal. so i thought i felt raw writing that. and about slavery, my new book which often deals with racism and more horrific aspects of america, i do get angry when i researched and concede that what i'm actually writing it it is very separate. it is an act of creation and not an act of grievance. it is not an essay. so when i put things together -- >> you have homer, a little black boy, he checked what you know i think i waited until i was sort of ready to write this. i had written the book 10 years

ago that i would have over explained homer's psychology. but my thing was that he is going to homer. he will do what he wants. he is the black assistant to a white slave catcher. he was a slave, he had been set free and that he keeps hanging out with ridgeway. he worked with him. i was really trying to eliminate the weird corners of the master and slave relationship. there were slaves who upon being freed at the end of the civil war, stayed with their master. they knew nothing else. and we can't really concede with that kind of psychology and what happened. he was raised by a house slave names bessie. and they'll say i love her she

raised me. but of course, her family or children are abused and there is the denial of that psychotic denial of a slave master. and so ridgeway and homer make a weird duo. hopefully in a different episode, they illuminate for us the kind of very odd dynamic master and slave. >> good afternoon, you are on with colson whitehead. >> caller: good afternoon mr. whitehead. quick question. have you conceded writing drama. either for stage or for the media / cinema? >> host: thank you, sir. >> guest: i did, i went to harvard for undergrad. and a very conservative department. they had one class.

american fiction after 1945 basically. i took classes in the african-american studies department and the drama department. i did not ask but i studied place. and i think dialogue and the structure has been very important to my work. in times when i have needed money, i think i thought, maybe i will write a screenplay i can make money do that and hang out at my house, i would leave my house to teach and writing a screenplay i will get 30 pages and and i would say this sucks. i'll just go write a novel. i know how to write a novel. and going back to fiction. but i think i grew up on t.v. and film and those mediums are very important to me. i have a lot of ideas from film. zone one comes from science

fiction and horror films in the 70s. so, i was a t.v. critic for a while. i can do fiction and nonfiction but i don't really have the chops to leave those genres. >> host: is underground railroad being serialized the television? >> guest: usually my books have too many black people to go on t.v. or film. this has been embraced and when it came out, various people looked at it and we got a call from a young filmmaker. he had a great idea and it was barry jenkins who did moonlight. when light had not come out yet. but we saw an early version of it. and so i have the, and interview him to see if he was right for the job. if a good working with him. and i said it will be slave movies, do you find inspiration? and he said i don't know about slave movies but i was thinking

paul thomas anderson, there will be blood and the master. and i said that is the right answer! and then, he thought the oscar and the contracts came through a week later. he was taking around and pitching folks. amazon studios will do a mini series of it. there writing that now. we'll see if it goes forward. pretty exciting. >> host: we have dean in monmouth junction, is that new jersey? >> maybe six miles north of princeton. >> host: thank you, sir. >> caller: colson, you were kind enough to autograph my copy of underground railroad. i know that you and kevin young were, usually he is ahead of you know that your classmates. >> guest: yes. kevin young is a poet, nonfiction writer.

>> host: dean, so billy goat is a little hard to interact with the delay here in new york. >> guest: he is now, we started to read together. we knew each other in college. he was more professional and he knew what he was doing and right out of college, his first book he published and now he is, they have the schaumburg library, african-american library in new york city. -- the author of bunk. it just came out. the american way of conning the public. and so, we've always traded work. he is always been a very good early reader, always supportive

and it is great to see him such -- have such a great year. >> host: please go ahead. >> caller: i was wondering, how do they come off with the underground railroad? how were they built? what were the homes? >> guest: a social network. in the 1840s, the locomotive was transforming america. an image and metaphor. so there was a slave who ran away from his master. the welcome next day and said himself, there's no trace of him. it is as it she disappeared and in underground railroad. and that became the term for this human network that would help slaves escape to the north. and it could be a person with a

cellar. you're hiding somebody for a little bit. or maybe were taking them 200 miles in a wagon to the next city. handing them off to someone else. the white people, free black people, risking themselves risking their lives to help slaves escape. and so they were eastern seaboard routes, more western routes that you could end up in indiana, massachusetts, new york. obviously it is not a literal train. when the book came out i did meet people who have gone for decades thinking it was a real train. which of course, is very impractical. we have a train in new york seven miles long and a 2000 mile tunnel from new york to the border is very impractical. >> was their significance in the fact that the different underground stations somewhere

decorated beautifully, somewhere -- >> there was a near station with white subway tile. i want them all to be different and roughly they are carved out of rock. some are very grand. some are accommodating. so different characters of the train stations. >> bob in easton pennsylvania. hume emailed in. you have referred your account more than once. is that what you write and what is a typical day of writing like? >> a temple day writing, i get up and take my son to school. i come back home, i take the first snap of the day on the couch. then i start working, i write a page. i read another page and have a snack. and again, you know, 123 pages a day is a really good day.

i am the kind of person that if i have a doctors appointment when i say the whole day is shot! i will do something else. 3 to 5 days a week, eight pages a week. a typical working day. 1030 to 3 o'clock. and them we have hobbies of cooking so around 330 i think about what to make for the family. and then when you cook, a couple of hours and i have a sense of completion. when you write a novel for two years you have satisfaction of sharing it with people. and not waiting 24 months. >> is go back to the crime. [laughter] >> guest: i find joking about the greater process.

some people go to cafcs to work. i would rather be able to make a ham sandwich. take a nap. i can't really take a nap in a cafc. if you leave the house, what is the word -- there are so many people out there! [laughter] i just stay in my own little hut. it works. >> host: can you still be anonymous now? >> guest: i was in brooklyn for many years. from a small community i get recognized occasionally.i am recognized is doing some more t.v. and magazines stuff. it is sort of uncomfortable. someone is looking at me and

i'm thinking to have food on my face was mifi open? and then i think well maybe they just recognize me. some people say and teach in your book i just read my book or give it to my mother. i could be on some sort of maybe a taxicab is almost hitting your something runs my mood and then it is always nice when you take the time to read the book. and it is a nice kind word for you, it brings you to a good place. >> host: in 2002 you are invited to the laura bush symposium at the white house for renaissance writers. and the washington post book editor at the time, ask you the question, how you felt about african-american section in the bookstore. and you kind of didn't really give an answer. i was wondering if you had a more definitive answer about that? >> sure! that was a while ago.

i think i've had a long-standing policy of having a literature session and african-american book section. and sometimes toni morrison would be an african-american section and not literature. i think ideally, you are in both. when i was in high school, i will go to the black section and i would browse. and you find some random person you never heard about. and then i would see douglas, who is this guy? and it was a place to find books about your culture and i think it came out with a good idea in the 70s with black studies. but what would have toni morrison a black studies section and not another, i think she should be in both. i think my books on in both sections. it is not as big as -- there

was a weird segregation and not as much anymore. when the next call is from tina. north carolina. you are on booktv. >> caller: thank you, sir. i would like to tell this gentleman, i was raised in suburban philadelphia. we were never, never taught that there was a variable with blacks. and i apologize to you that this is what you have experienced. thank you for your work, it is wonderful! i appreciate all you have gone through. thank you. >> thank you tina. i am glad that you grab a progressive and lovely place. fortunately a lot of the

country -- unfortunately a lot of the country does not as lovely and has terrible sides. and allow that sort of terrible part of the human character and zest determining so much about history. thank you for reading. see when you grow up middle-class, upper-middle-class in new york city. did you go through a lot? >> guest: well, it is called, is based on the color of your skin. not your zip code. and so, of course, like most, young black men, i have been stopped by police. handcuffed, interrogated for being in the wrong block at the wrong time. in manhattan. pulled over, asked if i have a drivers license but my friend was driving. why are two black guys in his neighborhood? and then you never know when

that kind of episode will escalate into something lethal. i think black lives matter and what happened with ferguson had that conversation about police brutality. and the future of my life, we have conversations in them we stop. rodney king and then we do that for two years and then we stop talking about it. then we talked again and we stop. whether it is national conversation, it is part of my existence. ever since i became seen as a target, -- >> host: where you'd given the topic? >> yes. i think the early 70s, richard pryor talked about being stopped by the police. you know a white couple should you in a second. and when you go to show them your license and registration,

the dashboard, richard pryor says, i am reaching into my glove compartment. no sudden moves! >> first with richard pryor and then my dad many times, whenever i left the house, be aware that i am a target and i can be shut at any moment, basically. >> from our facebook page at booktv. we have this. my question, if you always write such a short but brilliantly descriptive sentences. yesterday accorded you on my facebook page. as an example of my skill. quote tennessee proceeded in a series of lights. the blaze and devour the next two towns on the standard road. did you write them, did you hunt it down to the court holds that your original sentence?

>> that is nice of you to say. you get better at it. and definitely, there is a narrator in john henry days, narrator and the intuition is which is more encyclopedic. has a different sort of sentence, much more complicated sentences than the narrator of this book. and so, depicting the right narrator for the job and sometimes in encyclopedic narrator is great. i am in a precise mode right now with the underground railroad. the book i'm working on now. and i feel that is from trying different kinds of sentence styles, narrative styles. you exhaust one and you move onto the next. try to invigorate what you have done before. and like i was sent before hopefully you get better at it as you keep going.>> host:

you mentioned above. we tell us about it? >> guest: it is too early but it takes place in florida in the 1960s. usually i go with maybe a funnier book and a darker book or underground railroad has the smallest per page count of anything i have done. like two jokes. this book is also darker and maybe i should just mix it up by having two dark works in a row. the next one will be a little later. >> host: we have ed from iowa. >> caller: yes. can i call you colson or mr. whitehead?>> guest: colson is great. >> caller: i told him i was on the next room i was watching. i did not know if this is prerecorded. i am 73. and i've had books in my head

for years. i've had people tell me, you get busy trying to make a life. feed a family and you get distracted. but i wrote little stories. one of them when my mother was alive. she passed away last year. at 92. i told her i was going to write about her because she had an impact on me like her father had an impact on her. the title, i was going to have call me mother. do not call me mom. that is the only thing i remember calling her. because my dad always called her a nickname. and i had older lady that took me to church in the neighborhood and they said

that's horrible call for that. why don't you call her mother? and every time i did, she would say, you are pulling away from me. your closer to me when you call me by my nickname. i was so maybe i was adopted. [laughter] i looked too much like -- >> host: he has some books in his head. 73 years old.he lives in iowa. >> guest: i think i teach undergraduate time i teach people in grad school and then i worked summer workshops where people are in their 60s and 70s and writing their first novel. for an autobiographical story that they've been carrying around. this is my eighth book. i still struggle with when do i have time to work?

having a family, having a job. where do you find the hours to get your story down? it is always a struggle. whether your eight books and were starting your first story. you do not know, you only know who she is and what she was and what she meant to you. only you can tell that story. the sooner they start, the sooner it will be done. >> host: what is the biggest mistake first-time writers make?>> guest: i realized in my 20s that i have hothead friends who would write the first hundred pages over and over. i would say stop doing that. you will get to the end and fix it. do not get caught making the first 100 pages perfect. would forward and revise. but do not get stuck thinking that you will get it right. get to the end and in the end

will say what's wrong with the beginning. >> host: neville in cleveland. good afternoon. >> caller: i have two questions for mr. whitehead. the first one is, when you are writing, who is your target audience? and my second question is, is there any subject that is off limits that you would not write about? >> guest: okay. those are two good questions. with intuition, i met ideal audience member was a 16 -year-old that might read this and think that i can write. i am a weirdo, this guy colson is a weirdo. i think reading invisible man at an early age, you think there's a spooky dude. maybe i can do that as well.

and then the book came out and there's a 16-year-old kid in the audience. white or black. and i stop expecting from my audience who they are. i am always gaining people, losing people. sag harbor, realistic, less hard to describe. i got new readership and i thought i wrote a book about zombies in a loss all of those people. i'm always used to getting new readers, disappointing them and they move on and then i met my next book. i don't think about my audience anymore. the things i do not want to write about, i don't know much about football. it is unlikely that will have a football novel. i think it is a matter of -- not taboo. i never thought i would write about poker. i think as you go through life, different things become more or less interesting to you. there is no way i could have

predicted i would have written a lot of my books. >> host: the next call for colson whitehead. david and-- david from georgia. >> caller: did you talk about the applicant slave trade? i have been reading about that they describe the arbitrators that came down to east africa especially and murdered villagers and to get 5000 slaves. of course there were buyers so to speak in america so that is like a drug it was now. if there are buyers, people supply drugs or slaves. i would like your comments on

that. >> guest: i have it session on the african slave trade that opens up the book. and then before i get to america and american slavery, so that is all that i have written on the subject but where there is money, people tend to, if there's money involved people tend to explore their worst impulses. so there's obviously a lot of money in the african slave trade. there is money now, stories about slavery now whether it is maybe building iphones in a factory or shrimp on a shrimping boat. slavery is just now in different forms. first, money makes people do different things. i -- stealing liz from long

branch, new jersey.please go ahead. >> caller: hi. my book is the intuitive. interpretations are all over the place. can you explain more about that and especially that the main character? >> guest: sure! the intuition is. the book is very open. it is much more ambiguous than some of my other books. which, sometimes -- what does intuition is him mean? it means something in terms of inspectors, it means something in terms of technology and the city. i did not think about this when i started the book but obviously without elevators you cannot have a modern city. before elijah otis invented the safety elevator, you could only build up to five stories. so the elevator becomes where

it enables the modern city. that is one meaning of the elevator. i was writing the book and the phrase uplift the race occurred to me. i was writing elevation and then sometimes intuition is and is about transcendence. achieving a higher consciousness or higher level of being. so the metaphor of intuitionism is very open and open to a lot of interpretation. once i'm done with a book it is yours. for you to read and interpret, ignore and whatever you think whatever meeting you have, have fun with it. thank you for picking it up. >> host: whenever you are done with the book, it is yours. our conversation with colson

whitehead continues. if you want to make a phone call have a comment or question you can get through at 202-748-8200.live in the eastern hundred you can reach on 202-748-8201 for those amounts in pacific we also have several ways via social media to make a comment or ask a question. twitter, facebook, instagram. remember, @booktv or you can email at booktv@cspan.org. we will continue our conversation just a minute. want to show you the acceptance speech from colson whitehead at the national book awards. this is late november 2016. right after the election. we are also going to show you some of his favorite books and influences and some of the book that he is reading now. >> the last four months since the book came out have been like so incredible.

just like today it is like a make-a-wish foundation. am i dying or something? everyone is nice to me. it is also confusing. i guess i am modeled for acceptance speeches, the oscars, the first one that i thought was like 77, star wars and annie hall. and then annie hall, i was really crushed. i never thought that i would become a writer and actually be a one of these things. it is all really neat. for 18 years, i was going to say, who gets to say the same publishing house for 18 years? and then -- robert pulls this whole thing. [laughter] well done, sir. my daughter is at home

watching, she should go to bed. i really started the way that you were born and thank you for your ongoing gift to my life. [applause] beckett is three. i don't know who you are yet. i am excited to find out. [laughter] it is so much fun watching and you have all of these ideas about things. i'm excited to see how they develop. and then, my book is dedicated to my wife. [applause] it is okay to write good books when you're unhappy. it is better writing better books when you are happy.

so thank you love. [applause] again, the last few months have been crazy. we have oprah winfrey and all magazine. they got the word out and i think people need my copy and they say i don't know. and then oprah is like, read it! and people do.and it is all crazy. [laughter] so, this time last year i was finishing up a book and every day i was like, 19 pages to go. don't mess this up. and you never know what will happen in one year. now the book is out and i would never think i would be standing here. and who knows where we will be one year from now. we are happy here, outside is the blasted hellhole wasteland

of trump land.but who knows what will happen one year from now. so i am still promoting the book and some people say do you have any word on the election? and i say i don't know i'm still stunned. and then i hit on something that was making me feel better. i guess it was, i think hopefully other folks you know be kind to everybody. fight the power. it seems like a good formula for me, anyway! [applause] for nearly 20 years, in depth on booktv has featured the nations best known nonfiction writers. relight conversations about their books. this year is a special project, we are featuring best-selling fiction writers for monthly program in depth fiction edition.♪ ♪ [music]

♪ [music] ♪ [music] ♪ [music] ♪ [music] >> host: colson whitehead, in your speech, he referred to the

terror of this trump land. are you pretty shocked that was just a couple of weeks after the election? >> guest: it was! i grew up in new york. as a teenager he was in front of a weird tabloid. affluent creature. i watched the apprentice. a ridiculous reality show. then, he was so repellent in terms of during the campaign season with his various racist and phobic speeches, rhetoric. it was startling having written about white supremacy to have a white supremacist in the white house? think he is a white supremacist? >> guest: i think you say a lot of racist things and you govern in a way that -- benefits the whites to the detriment of people of color, consistently and over time, it is like a

white supremacist. and if you say it when there are white supremacist marching and holding nazi flags and you call the nice people, it is evidence of a certain sympathy. >> host: is a bill wilkinson. a book that inspired you. >> guest: i mean, it captures the new story of people who moved to the north and the early part of the 20th century. that is how my family ended up in new jersey and new york. my dad, his family came from florida. when his father got into a fight, and great grandpappy was on the porch with a shotgun. you hear from different families. some of his family is from virginia.

that's actually, the people got to newark, they heard the word no work and thought it was new york and they got off the train in new jersey.they felt that they were in new york and penn station. you know black america, escaping jim crow, funding opportunity. that is how i became a new yorker. >> host: i read in an interview that your mothers family were free blocks. >> guest: one of my mothers side descended from a woman named sally madden. came over around 17 something. she was half white irish, half black. came over as an indentured servant and worked on james madison's farm, plantation. and those kids were playing and they had kids. married, yeah. that line and my father's line

comes from barbados. which is a sugar plantation island. and the american south. georgia and florida. >> host: does ralph ellison, invisible man hold up? speech elastomer heard it years ago, i taught it. it is really a marvelous book. i will sort of -- could have lost a few words in the sermon in the early part of the book but i mentioned being a revelation for me as a teenager. i remember reading the first section of battle royale. it was asserted in seventh grade and american short stories. and at that point i was reading fantastic literature. and there was so much absurdity and i felt a real kinship.

it was important to me when i was younger and still was kind of real inspiration. >> host: what you get from -- >> guest: just that ecstatic american voice that is tragic, sarcastic, loving, cruel, on twitter, people retweet from -- i will be watching news on twitter and then, three lines from transit stop up. i was that he is amazing. there are impressionistic as is about the city. hopefully, at moments there is that american boys and ginsberg and walt whitman. >> host: from the underground

railroad, colson whitehead writes that the divine thread connecting all human endeavors, if you can keep it, it is yours. >> guest: you can take capitalism from human slavery. people were objects. they were bought and sold. they had a value placed on their lives. the more that they worked, the more that they made money for the people to own them. the story of slavery is also capitalism. and it makes america into a global -- because of slavery. so we have imperialism, live capitalism. we have manifest destiny and so, the book a different lungs is trying to wrestle with all this sort of major forces that have shaped our country.

>> host: our next call is from bill in new york. please go ahead. are you with us? i'm sorry, we will have to lose bill. a reminder, turn down your volume when you get on the air. otherwise there is a delay and it gets a little bit confusing. let's hear from ken in south carolina. we are listening. >> caller: hi mr. whitehead. i and enjoying the program. my question i think it has been answered but what were one of your favorite authors and what type of inspiration did you get from that author? and when did you know that writing was going to be your

lifetime duty of doing instead of going out and getting a so-called, real job? >> host: we will get answers that just a minute but who is a writer that has inspired you and which of mr. whitehead books have you read? >> one of my, toni morrison has been one of my most inspirational writers. and i am reading the book right now by mr. whitehead. >> host: the underground railroad? >> caller: yes. i am presently reading that now and i'm enjoying every bit of it. this is a treat for me to see you on t.v. today. thank you. >> host: ken, what do you do in spartanburg, south carolina?

>> caller: i am actually, i work for the hospital here. i am a nurse. i like to read. >> host: thank you. >> guest: thank you for reading, can. i hope the end of the book is not disappointing! [laughter] i'm glad you enjoyed the first half of the book. so many different folks have inspired me. i think that you can get something from raymond carver. he is a writer of realistic short stories. also ralph ellison. early influences. twilight zone and marvel comics and stephen king. when i went to college i wanted to write horror. i wanted to write the black cell is lot or the shiny.

-- salem's lot for the shiningperiod -- think my early love for genre joy telling, i see fantasy as a tool. use it here and not there. it is in the novel toolkit. >> host: what does the term, magical realism mean to you? >> guest: what does it mean to me? it means that the real and fake are both presented in the same register. so garcia marquez, one of those bigger practitioners. he came up with his form of this by listening to his grandmother. she would tell stories about her village when she was growing up. mix and some fantastic detail lie, then the sheriff sprouted

wings and flew away. and she presented with a certain face. and he never knew because of that what was real and what was unreal. and if you look at his work, there was magical realism. we are in a recognizable world and then we go back to some fantastic and then we come back with a matter of draft merging of the two. so when i started working on the underground railroad, it was fiction and each thing was different in terms of time. had a much more broader fantastic portion. i went back to solitude by garcia marquez. i thought maybe is that having this gentle why don't i bring it down to a magical realism.

it will be presented with a brick face. a matter-of-fact tone. i think it serves the book. >> host: what did you stare at harvard? >> guest: i was a english major. and again, it was a very conservative department.so i had to take african-american studies classes to sort of, i went back in 2001 and that is one i was teaching intuition is. and as it is not kinda recent? to be doing this in the conservative department?and he said it is the 21st century. now the 20th century books can be taught because they were officially old. i thought it was funny. >> host: the college -- is there any connection to harvard? >> guest: i think i got to harvard names because i remember going there and they were dorms with certain names and i would say what kind of name is that? so i am sure that family, sorry

but it seemed like whatever it takes to get your name on a harvard dorm. it is incredibly waspy. i can't think of anything i will go for an harvard dorm name. >> host: persona teaches regularly, what is your take on first amendment discussions that are being held on college campuses? >> guest: people get upset at college students but you know, postings are supposed to be annoying! better to be annoying in the school years than out here with us being annoying. for a lot of people, their first learning about other cultures and other races. they're getting out of their bubbles of a small town that they grew up in. and so, you are learning this for the first time and it makes you engaged, you are learning things and you can be really

kind of annoying. but again, better annoying for four years than out here with us. [laughter] the one joan emailed. you have mentioned depression and being sad at times. yet your sense of humor comes through in his interview. how does humor seep into this. >> i mentioned richard pryor earlier, george carlin and does something that i saw when i was very young there in front of the world. present in the world and all of its absurdity. and you have this perspective where it has tragedy. and then you go back. i mean i think, colossus has his narrative voice that goes from the tragic to the

ecstatic. and i think we are all sort of moving you know from extremes. i write books that are funny and i can accommodate a certain part of my personality. books are a little darker enough part of me. i think everybody. >> host: ,is that in your outland or your outline when you are planning to put together that i will be this first person and it will be it will be outrageous and then it will be sad and -- >> guest: satire is -- >> host: i mean is that -- >> guest: i think, perhaps it was conscious. i know that the book will be satirical. and in the underground railroad i knew that, it was going to be that slavery would be so brittle and unrealistic, it was not going to be ironic

distance. it would not serve the story. and so, then going in, once i read the first couple of pages i said this is as narrator in this and how i'm going to tell the story. >> host: let's hear from gloria in california. is that -- >> caller: that is correct. i have two questions. one, is colson a family man and second, there was a couple of ways that enslaved people communicated to each other about the underground railroad. when was of course, their song, and spiritual. was there any other way that they communicated to each other? >> host: thank you, ma'am.

>> guest: the first part of the question was -- >> host: is calls and -- is colson a family name? >> guest: my name is actually arch. my father's name is archibald. he just names me arch. colson is my middle name. my grandfather was named colson. his father was or grandfather, worked in a hotel in virginia. in a small town. i think maybe it was lynchburg. he got out of freedom -- he would hire himself out on weekends. and he kept doing that and he bought his daughter out of slavery. and so colson goes back to that individual who got out of slavery by paying his owner

speed. and communication for underground railroad folks. you know, if you were caught, you would be put to death. it was very clandestine. working in a lot of complicated ways. in my book, she comes from georgia. in reality, the underground railroad did not operate that far south. he would never make it through the carolinas, virginia. so really it is that type of thing. you could escape south to the caribbean. to mexico, it you are enslaved that far south. but there are so many different ways people communicated and again, if you were caught you could be jailed, being to death. >> host: marshall, houston. good afternoon.

good afternoon. thank you both for this. i love booktv. i have two questions. do you need to come from an msa program to find an agent? and what if you write different genres? how do you settle on an agent and how does an agent settle on you? >> host: thank you. >> guest: thank you. have of my friends who write, did go to grad school for writing. past trevor half of them did not. for me, i worked on an apprenticeship. i learned to sit down for five hours and knock out a piece. if i didn't, i would not get paid and i cannot pay my rent. i had to learn to collaborate with editors. and so, i did not get my agent through an msa. my first agent i got three newspaper. and so, i had some that i knew.

... so, obviously her list she had a sensibility that seem to overlap with mine and you find you can google now but find another who writes in the same vote as you and find out whether agent is an in my case i wrote it .-period-paragraph and the two page of the book is not offputting and was intriguing, i

guess so i tracked down my agent. you figure out who is representing books that are like yours. >> host: underground railroad has been a bit of a phenomenon and even talking about it working on it now talking about it for two years and working on it for x number of years and are you getting tired? speaking well, you know, i'm not bored or tired. i think it's a credible, you know, four years of writing it and it coming out and somehow i never could have dreamed of this in terms of people who have picked it up and enforce it it's been a full surprise. it's been so wild and it's a lifetime thing so i am enjoying it and appreciating it. >> host: how did you find out

you want to put her speaking actually, finding out is not interconnected but it's a lifestream from columbia and it's not really fast and i'm just like the pulitzer for this investigative journalism goes to and it's not theatrical but it's quick and a lifestream. >> guest: my wife went to work and she said can you watch alisa she came home and plugged in the ipad to the tv suite a bigger thing and they said my name and started dancing and had a dance party and broke out the rose and i met up with friends in my editor and my agent and we celebrated. >> host: what was your friend's reaction to winning a macarthur genius? >> guest: well, you know, it was i had written two books and all of a sudden the check arrived in the mail.

i think people do ask is there a burden or expectation but to leave you alone and you have to handling it at the end of five years. the way i took it was that i had written two books, oddball promises, haven't gotten that from now will, keep doing that will give you money to support you you can keep doing that. i took it as just encouragement and i wasn't anxious about it but this pressure to live up to it was the saying that i'm doing exactly what i should be doing keep doing it. >> host: lets you from john in flushing, ohio. john, you're on with author and novelist colson whitehead. >> caller: thank you very much. also, the praise that you receive from the rolling stone

in "the washington post" and the miami herald you deserve it. you are stepping in high cotton. i would like you to give a short overview of sag harbor because you and i come from north new jersey and on the curator of the underground railroad here in my town. go right ahead and tell us what you can. >> host: john, was there a station in flushing, ohio? >> caller: there certainly was. this is the northwest ohio territory, illinois, indiana, michigan and it was right over the ohio river so what colson said was up-to-date. >> guest: thank you, john. sag harbor talks a bit about it before but it's important book for me because for a moment i started with these intellectual questions i was trying to explore and that was the premise of the novel so john henry and john henry days and what if i updated this industrial age of

john henry went to the information age and what stories i generate from that. and it seemed that i've been avoiding writing drying the material that seemed for books and, four novels and, that it was time to so that book was important to me as a writer just to access different parts of my personality in my world that out there. and it started with the character as opposed to intellectual question, a character in a study. benji, 1985, sag harbor's town in long island and since then i think i've had a bigger emphasis were put more work in my characters starting with sag harbor and for a and then the underground railroad combination of two periods of my work and there's a strong character grounding it and i've been

learning from sag harbor and the other books too but i think the last eight years and they start in this absurd abstract premise what if i made the underground railroad something real so there was this totally strange abstract premise and the character work and they come together in this book. it was important as a writer and as a person and i see its influence in his work. >> host: angelo, newark, delaware or new arc, delaware. >> caller: hello. how are you doing this evening? i'm here in the state of delaware and i'm amazed at how this gentleman writing this book. i just now received got his book the underground railroad and i just got finished reading my soul is [inaudible] by harold grimes and i'm going to tell you it's amazing. you are definitely the in your pen because you doing you got a

sense of humor and you're doing it and by me being an author i'm learning something review. how do you get that last name of yours is that a, how can i say it, is that a slave last name or was it given to you because my father is from barbados and he's from roanoke, virginia but his father was from barbados and my family had a hard so how might me how you keep that sense of humor? >> guest: if you think the name whitehead it's not from my barbados side. that name is clark and so clark family comes to new york, ellis island in the 1920s and talking with the book i talk about some parts of my family

history in virginia and not knowing others in the summer someone sent me a genealogy that they did for me piecing together clues from things i had talked about and so whitehead i'm not sure of the origin but this person trace it back to florida and then before that georgia in the mid- 19th century so poor that i'm not sure. i know there are a lot of white people named whitehead and with the slave masters and, i'm not sure. in terms of artistic work, your writing, you can only get better by doing it so you write a story that's not as successful as we only want to be better than he ever relates and then third story is not as good but you are not so i keep a sense of humor about my work and that's my point of view about the world and then i just keep going to

get better. >> host: maria, el paso, texas. hello, maria. hello. >> host: we are listening. >> caller: thank you. i have a question how much should i accept a nice fiction book is factual -- is there a writers bias in their or can i rely on the facts from a nonfiction book? >> host: do you have a specific book, maria, you are referring to? >> caller: just in general? i like history and autobiography and i accept fiction as just a novel that they may have some historical facts in their but it may not be truthful but i'll give you a simple example.

let's say bill o'reilly book. his book on the pacific war the son of something the sun rises or something -- how factual is bill o'reilly book? >> host: thank you can mail. >> guest: strangely, i don't read a lot of bill o'reilly but i grew up in the 80s and that means that in the age of high postmodernism and so there's no objective truth and your perspective in her vocal bias in her social conditioning affects how you tell the story. if you write a history of slavery now a feminist indication as possible and if you write a history of hundred

years ago all these things enter in an intercultural point of view and someone telling the story of writing a memoir it could be subjective account of how you saw the and your mom and your cousin may disagree. so in terms of how much do you believe, you hope they are getting right but the difference between fiction and nonfiction is that action can make it up but nonfiction has to get right. in terms of the railroad i have been asked by those who read a lot of nonfiction say aren't you getting trouble by mixing the real and fake in this age of big news and don't you have a responsibility to your reader and the answer is no. i don't have a responsibility to the reader. i assume that when the book says the underground railroad: a

novel that it's a piece of fiction and should be taken as the gospel of how it actually happened. i know that you lose people die every year they step in tornadoes and think it will take them to the wizard of oz and is an error and you shouldn't take fiction seriously. i for one refuse to go to costa rica because i know that's where the film drastic park and i'm deathly afraid of dinosaurs. i don't want to get eaten. but for most people i think don't have a problem and can differentiate fiction and. >> host: you really won't go to costa rica are you being for real about that do i don't think. [laughter] costa rica is nice. very humid. >> host: i just wanted to check on that. is there a significant in john henry's that the protagonist just as a j for first name? >> guest: i think i had the team

cagey about the first name and i was trying to take this bigger full floor and find different avatars of john henry this throughout the decades and as paul said in a blue stinker in march or dirty the main character and he's another avatar in his john henry and i will leave it at that. >> host: i want to go back to something you said to her last caller that you do not feel a responsibility to the reader. >> guest: to tell a good story, yes, but i don't feel responsibly to educate them about history. i think what has been nice about the experiments did not happen in 1850 but happen in the

1930s and 40s and beyond. forced sterilizations of people, immigrants, people of color and it did happen in 1850 but later in people haven't heard about those episodes in our history or if they have it happen under slavery in the mood to do more research and that's great. i have a responsibility hopefully not too poor people too much and have my books be worth their while. i have a responsibility to family and friends that has been and good friend and besides that if you think of advertising the copy sounds compelling, pick it up. if you don't think it sounds compelling, don't pick it up. what next fall for colson whitehead. betty, in tennessee. hello, betty. hello.

>> host: we are listening, ma'am. >> caller: i just called him to give him a message. i'm not able to see well enough to read anymore but he was talking about the way the black people and the things they use to get out and they used quilting and they would quote patterns insert quilts and hang them on the clothesline and that was used in the deep. i'm a white lady and i'm an elderly lady and i'm not well educated but i've read a lot of history and i have a lot of love in me, too. i love people. i've always read a lot of books, black and white, and god gave me a lot of love in my heart. this guy is really interesting to watch. but i haven't read his books but that is something he needs to know is i have a paper here somewhere that shows the

different patterns if i could find it again where they would hang the quotes on the clothesline and in 50 miles or a hundred miles they'd be another signal and they would use that. >> guest: betty -- >> host: before we let you go, tell us a little bit about yourself and if you were raised in tennessee and what tennessee was like over the years. >> caller: i was raised in tennessee but lived in georgia for about four years in different parts and that is when i realized that part of tennessee i was raised in the mountains we didn't have that purchase but part of georgia and i met some will hate black people and i've never forgotten them and i couldn't believe, i couldn't believe, things i seem.

i just couldn't believe it. let sit on the front porch i'd say and rocked the baby and oh no we can't do that. they would say. that was like 56, 60 years ago and it was a painful thing but now the quilts and i just thought he said that he would know about the singing but the quilting was used in the deep. certain quilts if i remember one thing, ma'am to thank you for turning in. you said you're not reading as much now but the audiobook is very well done. >> host: did you do the audio? >> guest: i did not. i can read things that i read and i do them as lectures and reading but i read the audiobooks for my short books but it's exhausting and the people the characters and the drama goes into a dramatic

reading of a novel i can't do. spy on my power. professional actors to it and i know that people who like the version and then you talk about tennessee and georgia and it's interesting since the book about your conversation in different parts of the south and i remember when the book came out people with it's weird taking this book down to the south where slavery happened and we had slaves in new york, as well. it's not isolated to the south. north carolina gets a bad rap in my book. it's white supremacist date and it's an exaggeration of what happened under jim crow with the lynching time what sort itself one in georgia. >> guest: but north carolina gets it the worst. i'm going there this week to

durham into waynesboro and i've been there five times the books come out and we have embraced libraries people come out to these events and its marketing. if you grew up on property and family for generations and you are a white person how do you reckon with the fact that your great, great great grandfather raped, tortured, brutalized people and that's what pay for the plan for the house you're still in. you know, as a black person i was returning the story i was i had to reckon with in many ways i should be here and it's luck that my great-grandparents were killed at this or that junction or this or that plantation during the middle passage and so no matter where you come from i think it's an interesting

reaction when they came out in france and they were not used for working against [inaudible] packet has been interesting to see people different cultures different countries react to parts of the book. >> host: you enjoy the college lecture circuit. >> guest: i do. would you have anxiety mark no, i talk about the book and if it's something new for the first time then i want to have turnout and i'm going to start reading for my new book later this spring and how people respond. >> host: is the finished? >> guest: i'm two thirds of the way through but i think certain books it is pretty helpful to test it. are people laughing at the jok

jokes? are they falling silent and terrible parts? also, if you get a good reaction then it's not such a crazy idea and it's working and you're trying to understand what you're doing. >> host: without delving too far into your character you didn't sign up for the college lecture circuit would you be essentially in this tethered to the scout? could you easily do that? >> guest: i work at home so i do spend a lot of time there and going to foreign travel for publication in different countries and going to north carolina and tucson is a way of not being such a hermit but also being i love new york and i see a lot of places i would not normally go and it's a good and positive part of the work.

>> host: president obama praised the underground railroad and did you get a chance to meet him while he was in office? >> guest: i did. it was very strange. i got the e-mail from one of his assistants and i was like someone is bringing me again and then i googled the guys name and he actually was a white house worker in so i went and a bunch of novelist and he just said he had been in the white house for almost eight years and it was the week before leave and he said he always wanted to chat with writers and have lunch with them and he had only had a couple days left. our time is running out and so being lefty writers who were all

[inaudible] and we were dazed by the news of the trumpet coming in and after 20 minutes we were like light not, and we did lighten up and then we talked about writing and he's got great books and he got animated talking about being a broke writer writing his first book and he was in indonesian island and but he was broke and riding in a hut and there were lizards that would croak loudly and he got animated just thinking about how the thrill of creative actions which we all can relate to. >> host: where were you writing your first book? >> guest: i was in brooklyn. >> host: moving in or -- >> guest: i wrote some really good books in brooklyn and i'm fond of the early days. as we broke in writing the

article and then i would write another article that would buy me another couple days and then i would live in various rooms with slanted floors so i was up looking at ads in [inaudible] they were terrible apartments that you do when their 81 jenny, honolulu, good afternoon to you. hello. it's nice to be here on air with you. colton, i would like to know if you're familiar with the writing of an italian [inaudible]. he wrote in the 60s and his most famous word was the cosmic comic and he's not really a novel but each chapter is like a little short story unto itself but when i hear you laugh i

thought maybe you'd like the humor of the cosmic comic and he also wrote i don't know how to translate it in english the climbing baron or the baron in the trees and it's about [inaudible]. >> host: why is this appealing to you? >> caller: it's magical realism. he came a little earlier than garcia and it's the language is beautiful and so intriguing to's imagination. is that a familiar author? one thank you, ma'am. >> guest: he is great and [inaudible] are both great books. again, i felt a real affinity with him when i encountered his work in college. from being someone who like fantasy and was a so-called highbrow writer he's using the

tools of storytellers that i adored growing up and whether that fantasy dial is on a calvino s or arthur c clarke 11 and if you pick the right the dog in that lovely, whimsical, voice is inspirational and if you're watching the book for short and, one according to what you sent us colson whitehead is currently reading a comic book mr. miracle. >> guest: yeah, i had my last big comic tag when i was writing sag harbor. sometimes when you write a book you research and you go to plantations and was sag harbor which is about 1985 and pop culture we re-created my money men mix tapes from the 1980s with new wave mix tapes and i'm

not up on all the stuff coming up nowadays but mr. miracle was getting great reviews and so i downloaded it and it's about a small corner of the dc comics world and the spider, king, is having a very sort of 20th century postmodern take character of the 70s and the. >> host: david, tulsa, booktv with chris whitehead. >> caller: hello, thank you for taking my call. to preface my comment one of the most interesting summers ever spent as a teacher was in 2003 as a teaching [inaudible] for c-span and as mr. whitehead probably knows it's very difficult to encourage students

to read and could he send a message to my students on the benefits of reading books as opposed to some other activiti activities. >> guest: sure. i'm only a writer because i love reading a lot when i was a kid and it wasn't like this are supposed to read with comic books and science fiction and i wanted to write stories of zombies and werewolves and maybe want to write serious fiction. and so it doesn't matter if twilight or hunger games and if you like it, read it, don't for thworry about what others are saying and if you like hunger games, there are other dystopian

books takes on society that you might also like from different writers. ...

my daughter novels for younger readers, tweens, are really big now. she is 13 and now she is moving into ya stuff. >> host: next call is merit-do myrtle in elizabeth, new jersey. you're on booktv. >> guest: every week on sunday. and sometimes during the week; mr. whitehead, i want to know if you're doing any book reviews and the elizabeth area? >> guest: i'm not sure where that is. but my web site has -- i am doing touring in the spring, and perhaps i am coming to a town near you. >> host: she is in elizabeth, new jersey. >> guest: elizabeth, new jersey imthought new york. >> host: right. >> guest: i was there for a book festival a year and a half ago. i'm going to newark, rutgers, newark, on tuesday, actually,

which is not too far. so i'm able to see you there if you do come, wave. >> host: you're speaking at rutgers. >> guest: yes. >> host: do you do book signings? >> guest: i do. i was like -- if you -- >> what. >> host: what's most common comment people make to you and the most offensive comment somebody has made to you. >> guest: offensive, i try to process at that time out. i think, that was totally messed up. it's funny because definitely in new york there's a different acquaintance or lack of acquaintance with african-american black culture and questions about the underrailroad and how it worked, which makes sense. then questions like, could a white person have written this book? that's a question about cultural authenticity. you would never ask a, could a

black person write this book? now there's a big question about cultural authenticity and being framed in a way with nothing to do with my book. sort of like you're an exotic black person. >> host: these are questions you get in europe? interviewers. >> host: you get a apologized a lot to in the south, here in the u.s.? >> host: a couple of caller head apologized. >> guest: people are moved to apologize for some southern culture, what they're great, great, great, great grandparents did or did not do. but that's like a small percentage. it doesn't bug me. most common question is about why a female narrator, and i answered. being inspired by harriet

jacobs, mixing up. exploring the dilemma of female slaves. basically take the time even to question is kind of dumb, i'm real happy you came out and i'm happy sort of answering and engage. >> host: because of the underground railroad and because of your books, have you become an african-american writer? >> guest: well issue think if you to -- if you're african-american, get any sort of slim recognition, people do want you to talk about "black lives matter." we have a booking, need somebody to talk about on the 4:00 spot. are you available? and it's like, why don't you have somebody from "black lives matter" talk about "black lives matter" and not some dumb novelist. my book does spin off into a lot of different topics, about white supremacy, what is happening in america now, the racism and

racism in 1850 because beings have or have not changed. contemporary political culture and goes into a natural conversation about the book. i'd rather be home working. it's not my job to fulfill your -- be the fourth seat on your talk show. i really am a writer, and rather be home writing. >> host: greg, missouri, good afternoon. >> caller: good afternoon, and thank you for the fascinating interview. two quick questions. as mr. whitehead -- are you familiar with the slave writings of william falkner, especially in the long short store "the bear" and scream of consciousness technique, and second question was, watt do you think about he post modern novelist and that school? >> host: what do you think of them, greg?

>> caller: well, i think -- i thought they're fascinating. robert cooper, post modernist now about the julius neville rosenburg, williams gast from st. louis who just passed away at an age 88 or something, and fascinating novels like "the tunnel" and -- but interesting school of writing. >> host: thank you, sir. >> guest: sure. mean, i read -- in terms of faulkner issue read "light in august." i'm blanking. in college. he has not stayed with me. i don't think about him often as

an influence, and i don't have much use for him, guess in terms of my work. i haven't read him in 30 years them postmodernist, robert kurver i remember reading "the baby-sitter" was very important for me. he is one of the first writers i read them in -- a class and he went out and bought their books that summer to continue studying up on them. i haven't read gaddis, it's like 800 pages and jr, i prefer jr, those really distinctly american novels, kaleidoscopic

interpretation of american culture inch terms 0 public burning, richard nixon there is as a character, and the kind of way of taking real life characters and putting enemiure book and having your own spin. it was okay to do that. i got some from kuver, from reading their works in my late teens. >> host: from a profile of you in "the guardian" in 2017, writehead's parents ran an executive recruit cutement firm and were less than delighted when he announced a desire to become a write sneer -- writer. >> guest: sure my father was first generation college, grew up poor. and hope for his children that wouldn't be broke and i've been broke many times since i got out of college. because of my career choice, but hoping for a long time i would get a straight job, and then the

intuitionist came out they real a'sed i was in it for a long haul and have been pet pretty zicked since then. >> host: is that's your father in sag harbor? can we read this is your father, quote: kept changing the channel out of habit. cnn and the nightly news were the only things he watched. to him the faces on the screen, anchors, newsmakers this day's news victim and heroes were a parade of shifting masks, props of an idea like the souvenirs or friends and neighbors brought back across the atlantic. he didn't need a teleprompter, he knew his commentary by heart, the problem with black people is they waste time praying to god when they should be out looking for a job, a televangelist said. nobody ever gave u gave me anything, didn't give me anything, some people need to

get off their asses, et cetera, it's. >> guest: a very conservative tame in terms of pulling yourself up from your bootstraps. he grew up car and started his own company that's him definitely in the last part. i think sadly the first part of that, yelling at the tv news, sounds like me. i've become him. [laughter] all i do is yell at cnn, mmsnbw. >> host: thought about changing the channel? >> guest: exactly. i was -- when i work i have to have six months free, but i became such a news junkie in the last spring that just to avoid the news i started working on a new book, and i helped. front 10:00 to 3:00 i was off the tv news nipple. >> host: have you remained

sober? >> guest: exactly. definitely the slow days, i'm back, or something crazy is happening, is this actually happening in america? i'm stuck back in. i'm glad i finished this book before our latest charming round of news. i know a lot of people who are writing who just now drooling idiots. it's like -- >> host: which round of news. >> guest: keeping on track of the -- did trump really say that? is this happening? really going to open up a national park to drilling for uranium? all these crazy things cycle knew people would were just thinking, like, good liberal tradition, is my work worthy now? because i was writing a comedy and now living in such a dark time, i think, and so i'm glad i finished my book before i got affected by in the news cycle.

>> host: kirstin, new york city. >> caller: thank you for taking my call. so, i. >> host: we're listening. >> caller: two questions. one it was dot mr. whitehead think about the use of the n-word today and if there's a difference in his mind win stereotyping and racism, between any races or ethnic backgrounds. >> host: what is your answer to those two questions, kirsten? >> caller: well, i live in washington heights harlem for the past 30 years as a white woman, and certainly hear the n-word a lot, so -- but god forbid if i let it slip. it would be a big wrong. so my personal opinion is that all of vocabulary should be available to all people, and the second one is, i think stereotyping is a gateway towards racism or could be a mind set but there is a difference. so if i hear somebody saying,

oh, black people have a great sense of rhythm, is that racism or stereotyping or a dangerous stereotyping? >> host: where did you grow up? >> caller: originally i'm from germany, and i immigrated 32 years ago to new york city, washington heights. >> host: thank you, ma'am. >> guest: very good. i can't break down the deep differences between stereotyping and racism. racism depends on negative stereotypes of people of different skin. misogyny on stereotypes about gender. xenophobia about stereotypes you have about people from other cultures and the distinction between the two i'm not smart enough to make.

in terms of the n-word, as somebody who has dealt with white-black culture for many years, to have to at this point in history say who can use the n-word and who can't is exhausting. it's just really tiring. if you're a white person and want to say the n-word, why do you want to say it? why is this an issue for you? why are you asking, why do you spend time wondering why cant use the n-word? obvious lin word is used in different ways. in the way the word bitch can be used by men and women in different ways in terms of context. it's exalting someone's brassy personality or misogynies way of describing a female personality and female power. if you wonder if you can say it,

don't. >> host: what if it slips out? >> guest: you're probably a racist. >> host: this is an e-mail from marsha. how important were your teachers in impacting your current literary success? >> guest: it's -- i'm often asked about was there a special teacher, mentor, who took a shine to you and the answer is, no. no one ever took a shine to me for singling me out for special treatment. i think about teachers i had, i think about mr. johnson introducing me to ralph ellison, his teacher who -- they were consistent of racist but did introduce me to hundreds of solitude as a senior in high school. no one has took me aside and was like, you're special. but they introduced know great books and important moments in my development as a person and a writer and i still think about

so many things i read in elementary school, reading the lottery for the first time like all of us do and what does that teach us about 1950s america, shirley jackson's story. introduced to this novel, to james joyce as a freshman in college, when i'm speaking with my voice, and there's an explosive dynamic talent in ulysses. so, none of the teaches remember my name or know me but introduce node very important books that it still draw upon today. >> host: iris, south lyon, michigan. a few minutes left in the program with author colson whitehead other. >> caller: i love your hear. i think he went to my high school. lived in a mixed area. we all got along.

we laughed together, we sat together, we didn't call each other names, and, boy, a lot of people that graduated with me of color, as they say, or noncolor, went on to really great things. in fact, one of the -- two of the officers from our graduating class were people of color. we didn't call each other names. nobody called me a dirty jew and i didn't call anybody another name. we live together in the same neighbor. we got long great and i think the new racism is really ugly and don't like the groups getting together in government to fight each other. i think that's really petty. >> host: irish -- iris, what do you mean by the new racism. >> caller: sub group of grouped in government that he get together and call. thes one group or another and get behalf microphone fighting for a certain cause when it

should be one person, one important. they're supposed to speak for their constituents, not for. thes, wearing colors to represent at thing the differences of this is america. >> host: iris frog michigan. any comment for her? >> guest: sadly it's not new racism. it's -- manifestation of an american darkness that goes back centuries. i think when obama was elected, people would say, we're in post racial society. i don't know a lot of black folks who would say we're in a post racial society. that happened and i think obviously the people who did vote for obama, 49% of the population, did end up voting for donald trump. when we were talking about hate

crimes on the rise, we're talking about people marching with neo-nazi flags and confederate flags, up ashamed to show their faces. they're not even bothered to wear a kkk mask. we're talking about the return of something or the reemergence of something that's always been there, it hides and will continue to be with us for a very long time, unfortunately. >> host: if you took out all the references to race, basically in sag harbor, that could have been written by anybody. >> guest: it's a book about becoming a teenager and entering into your own identity and it's not -- for me it's not a black kid figuring himself out. it's about a kind of identity formation we all go through in our teens, where do i start and where my community ends?

i. >> host: why did atex -- apex change its name. >> guest: it's about a town in the midwest and they want to regrand themselves so-so they -- they hire a consultant who is the pronag nist. he naming there is like knew antidepressants, names a band-aid calls apex. a kind of band-aid that comes in different skin tones so you can fine your own skin color and not be ashamed, if you have dark skin, or flesh toned band-aid, and so branding, what apex -- the town wants to change the name of their town because of branding, the same way neo-nazis and white supremacists are rebranding themselves as the alt right. a new image projects a new identity for yourself, starts with a name.

i'm bringing the two questions together. >> host: that was pretty -- what name wins, what names are considered, should i say. >> guest: it is the very -- >> host: we won't give away the end. >> guest: well, yeah. the main character is faced with what's the emessence of the town the essence of american history, how can the new name of the town capture where winthrop is going, where it's been, has duty to tell the truth or sell this new identity? and he comes to a -- a few misadventures and comes one -- comes up with a solution that represents his world view. it's not t-shirts or signs but his solution to the town's problem.

>> host: bryn, tennessee. you're on book tv. >> caller: hello. you got my name correct. i wanted to ask a question i think what i've been listening to the program that you written work that has some humor in your written works. i'd like to know have you thought about writing something that is purely humorous, either like a farce or a satire on some serious subject, like slavery or lynching or civil rights period with jim crow possibly. >> guest: sure. i think john henry days deals we moments of black history through a satirical lens. humor is just a tool. it's a tool for this job or not? the right tool or this story or

not? so, my most purely comic book is the novel hudsle and i had a lot of fun writing it. the first line is, you know, i have a good poker face because i'm half dead inside. either you find that line funny or don't. you're bored for the weird, miserable humyear or not but i think that kind of sums up where it's coming from in that book. >> host: aneat dark madison, wisconsin, high. >> caller: hi. thank you for taking my call. got a big question. i'm a librarian or a retired one but never quite retired. i want to know, the books he loved or that were important to him in middle school and high school. >> guest: middle school and high school. thank you. reading hundred years of solitude as a high school senior was really great.

i had a cool english teacher who taught a class on fabulousism. so we read pilgrims progress, that old british religious story about pilgrims going through adventures and that sort of template for corey and the underground railroad. pilgrim's progress, the odyssey, that kind of structure. then that class, i read hundred years of solitude, and the introduction to magic realism and use that in this book. earlier -- i think stephen king, i remember reading "carrie" in seventh grade.

an interesting structure, the linear store of carrie in her high school in her town, and then interspersed are newspaper conditions of the carnage that carrie unleashes. so it's foreshadowing and also an extra -- it's a text outside of the main text that's being inserted. and i remember reading that and, oh, you can actually play whatever seventh grade phrasing of that it, you can play with structure in that way, and play with how you tell a story. however i would have phrased that back then, i remember thinking that by reading "carrie." >> host: ever have any trouble naming your main character in mark spitzy after the. >> guest: mark spitz one goad medals for swimming.

mark spitz in my book cannot swim. so ironic name for mark spitz. >> host: barbara in virginia beach. hi. >> caller: hi. thank you for taking my call. such a fascinating interview. i'm enjoying so much. i'd like to ask colson whitehead if he admires or likes the work of walter mosley, a writer i very much enjoy, a writer who is versatile like himself in terms of genre, and also, as someone who can talk about being a black man in modern america. i thank you for taking my call. >> guest: thank you for calling in. walter mosley is great. as i said earlier, when i was trying to find a model for a book with a plot, i was trying

to learn how to back better writer, learning about structure, reading a lot of detective books and i read elmore leonard and walter mosley and a great couple of months of my life, studying the convention of suspense, how to bring in politics, in terms of james el roy, how to bring in race in terms of james walter mosley and very fortunate when the intuitionist was finished, they sent it out to people for blurbs, and walter mosley was very kind and gave me three sentences endorsing the book, and i met him since then and it's great to see him. and when the book came out, people would say, i bought your book because walter mosley is on the back and i love walter most lee. wait really sweet of him to take the time. a good individual. >> host: warted tell mosley will be sitting in that chair for april during our special year of

fiction authors. he'll be there in two months. if time, i think, for this last call from nancy in bremen, georgia, go ahead. >> caller: good afternoon. mr. whitehead, you are real refreshing breath of fresh air. want to ask if you know of the work of charles chestnut from the 1890s. he was an attorney and an african-american attorney in chicago, who wrote the conjure woman, and i was an attorney ump wonder if you know about his fiction. >> guest: i do indeed. i told you that my english department in college was very consecutive so i took classes in african-american literature, and the african-american department and that's where i came cross slave narratives and charles chestnut, very early black fiction writer. the conjure woman is great and

has a great word gooper which is black southern slang for magic so some of the gooper dust in your eyes eyes and you would be bewitched. a crazy that as a writer i'm always trying to use and i was lucky to use the word in underground railroad and talking about -- there was a slavemaster would hire conjure team, which is to make us sort of hex around their plantation that would prevent slaves from running away as sort of binding spell and so people would be afraid to run away because they would cross this magical line and be goopered, and sickened by the bad magic, and of course, i...

>> host: sag harbor, 2009. zone 12011, the noble hustle about playing poker came out in 2014 and finally the pulitzer prize winner, the underground railroad in 2016. the new book is out when?

>> guest: hoping for next year. >> host: thank you for spending three hours with her audience. >> guest: thank you for talking with me and tuning in america. >> for nearly 20 years in depth on the tv has featured the nation's best known nonfiction writers for live conversations about their books. this year is a special project we are featuring best-selling fiction writers for monthly programs, in-depth fiction addition. in march on the tvs in-depth special patient addiction will be live with historical novelist other of gods and generals as well as to the last man a story of world war i and his most recent book the frozen hours on the korean war. visit booktv.org for more information.