>> From the Library of Congress in Washington DC. ^M00:00:03 ^M00:00:07 >> Audie Cornish: Hello everybody. We can be a little louder than that. I think it's almost noon right? [laughter] Hello everybody. [applause] My name is Audie Cornish and I host NPR's "All Things Considered." ^M00:00:18 [ Applause ] ^M00:00:21 And I am a sometime panelist on NPR's Pop Culture Podcast, "Pop Culture Happy Hour" and, like you, a book lover. NPR is a media partner this year with the National Book Festival. We want to thank the co-chairman of the festival, David Rubenstein, and the many National Book Festival partners like the ARP. Thank you so much. Now today we're going to have a conversation with two amazing writers. It's not my idea to put them in the same room. So, whoever's idea it was, let's say thank you to them. Winston Groom, author of the forthcoming novel, "El Paso." Winston Groom. Winston Groom was DC born and Alabama raised and he's mined history for much of his writing career, from his first novel, set during the Vietnam War, to his non-fiction works like, "Shrouds of Glory," about one of the final campaigns of the Confederate Army, and of course you might have heard of a little book called "Forest Gump," popularized by the motion picture that followed. It's a romp through boomer generation history, told through the eyes of a southern man with a knack for being in the right place at the right time. Now Winston Groom comes to us today on the eve of publishing his latest book, "El Paso," and that book -- you'll need this for the rest of the conversation -- is set during the early 1900s during the great war, the Mexican Revolution, when an American railroad tycoon finds his family kidnapped and his Mexican cattle business under siege by a cut-throat revolutionary. That book is out in early October. Winston Groom, welcome to the stage. ^M00:01:51 [ Applause ] ^M00:01:56 >> Winston Groom: Thank you very much. [inaudible] >> Audie Cornish: Yes. ^M00:01:59 [ Applause ] ^M00:02:03 Our second author is Colson Whitehead, who is a New Yorker, born and raised. [applause] Colson Whitehead has made his mark basically dancing in and out of genres; a zombie apocalypse in the novel "Zone One," corporate culture satire in "Apex Hides the Hurt," and a myth-busting turn in the novel "John Henry Days." He joins our stage today having just published "The Underground Railroad." That's the story that imagines; what if the network of former slaves and abolitionists that helped runaways leave the South had an actual underground train? The book is out everywhere [laughs] including Oprah's Book Club. Colson Whitehead, welcome to the stage. ^M00:02:45 [ Applause ] ^M00:02:52 So, I have a little bit of housecleaning before we start. Number one; this is your opportunity to turn your cellphones off and think about the questions you might have towards the end. We are going to have a Q and A. So, to start I want to ask with something that I noticed in the start of your book, Winston Groom, which is that you said, "This is not a historical novel in any conventional sense." [laughs] So, tell us -- define that. What, to you, does it mean to do a historical -- >> Winston Groom: Well, I -- when I think of a historical book I think of like "Prince Valiant" or something. [laughs] This is historical characters that I used to move my story along. It was a historical setting that I wanted because of a story that a friend of mine told me about his father. My friend was a Morgan, [assumed spelling] a New York Morgan, and not -- it was a different family from JP, they were cousins. But they were quite wealthy and in the late 1800s they owned an enormous cattle ranch in Mexico, in the state of Chihuahua. The elder Mister Morgan, who had been, I believe the Governor of New York, used to take his private railroad car down there to inspect his quarter of a million head of cows, or whatever it was. Unfortunately in 1916 the American Revolutionary bandit, General Poncho Villa, had begun to depredate these American holdings down there and he in fact -- my friend's story was -- he took the manager of the farm, of the cattle ranch, and he strung him up and he sabered him -- had him sabered to death -- he kidnapped two of his children. And so that story captivated me to the extent that I've thought about it for 20 years and I made -- I wrote on it for 20 years, but I could never get it right until about a year and a half ago. I threw everything aside and fooled with it, but what I have in the story is that it is the grandchildren of this wealthy railroad baron -- he's not a Morgan, I changed his name -- but to make it a short story, as you do in Hollywood -- if you going to pitch a movie they say, "Pitch it in the space that it takes to take an elevator ride." So, to make a long story short, it took about 400 and something pages and 300 and something of them concern a manhunt through the high Sierras to try to get back these kidnapped children. >> Audie Cornish: And this manhunt takes place in Northern Mexico and throughout the book they sprinkle real-life characters -- you sprinkle real-life characters; John Reed and Ambrose Pearson and names from the period. Colson Whitehead, I want to ask you, with your book, "The Underground Railroad," it kind of mimics a slave narrative in that it's told from the point of view of one particular slave for much of the book and you don't necessarily draw names from the period. Am I correct about that? It's a little bit of an alternate universe. >> Colson Whitehead: Yes, I mean it starts off, hopefully in a realistic 1850, and then, you know, the premise is that the Underground Railroad is an actual railroad. And so you're already departing from reality, as far as I know, and it's not straight historical. And then each state our protagonist goes through -- South Caroline, North Caroline -- is a different state of American possibility, sort of like "Gulliver's Travels." So, definitely the later chapters don't stick to historical record and for the most part aren't inspired by real folks, although real events do inform what happens to our protagonist, Cora. But I did want the first section that takes place on the plantation where Cora lives and works and has many troubles to be realistic and take place in a -- I guess what most people would call in a historical novel -- imaginative space. >> Audie Cornish: And I just want to make it clear; this does not feel like science fiction when you're reading it. I had -- I read, you know, the first chapter of your book and I just put it down for five days because it was sort of -- it was pretty intense. And I think when you go back into these periods writers, I assume, in your research look for, I guess totems or actual artifacts from the period that help inform your work. And for you, can you list some of the things that you found that helped you inform sort of how you went about the story? >> Colson Whitehead: Sure, yeah. I mean there are a few general histories of the Underground Railroad -- "Bound for Canaan" by Fergus Bordewich came out about eight years ago -- but my main source were the actual slave narratives -- pre Civil War; Fredrick Douglass, Harriot Jacobs, sort of the famous ones, and then in the 1930's; FDR being a nice guy, trying to get people back to work during the Great Depression had the Works Progress Administration and they sent out writers to interview former slaves, people who had been kids or teenagers at the time of the Civil War and then that was like my biggest resource. I drew a lot of slang and words, physical details about how they lived, which really made the work come alive for me. You know I'll know before a story what kind of clothes they wore or food they ate, you come across a reference to an ash cake. It's like; what's an ash cake? That sounds terrible. And then you read up on it. It's like; that's actually it's worse than you really thought. [laughter] So, you know, as I was going through these oral narratives I would just take out nouns and adjectives, things that sounded great, and then when it was time to write I would have this storehouse of vocabulary to make it rich. >> Audie Cornish: Winston Groom, for you similarly; this is a period of American history and a region that people don't talk so much about, these border skirmishes between Mexican revolutionaries and American landholders, essentially. What kinds of materials were available that helped you understand the period? >> Winston Groom: Oh, there's tons of it. It's not very much read. You know there's a great big war going on in Europe during this period; 1916. That was the First World War. But the Americans had an army down there of some sort -- not a huge army -- under General Pershing and his assistant was a Lieutenant George S Patton that made a name for himself in World War II. And of course there's a great deal on General Patton, a great deal on General Pershing. General Patton's diary is terrific on that area. But I threw in some other people just for the hell of it; Ambrose Bierce who was a crusty old guy who wrote something called "The Devil's Dictionary." >> Colson Whitehead: Yeah it's -- >> Winston Groom: And he was down there and nobody knows what happened to him. There's many versions, but I've got him -- I'll tell you what happened to him. [laughter] I made it up. That's good. >> Audie Cornish: But one thing is, when I was reading it then I wasn't sure whether to trust this character that I was reading. I was like, "Did he make this one up? Is this a real person? How should I feel about this?" What's your view on kind of taking poetic license with the [inaudible]? >> Winston Groom: I got you thinking about it didn't I? >> Audie Cornish: Yeah, you did. [laughter] >> Winston Groom: That's the way to do it. I -- you know, once I get these people in there -- there was the old cowboy actor, Tom Mix, and he was just rumored to have been there as a -- some kind of guy with Ambrose Bierce. There's no factual proof of it, but that's the good thing about doing fiction and I've done enough nonfiction in the last 20 years. That's all I've written is history. It's fun to be able to play with the characters, so long as you don't get them out of character, and I tried not to do that. I tried to -- for instance, John Reed was down there and he was a famous journalist who became a communist and was exiled from this country and went over to cover the Russian Revolution and he died there and is buried there with all the famous communists. But he was down there covering that revolution. So, I sort of put them all in a pot and mixed them up and see how they came out. Sometimes it's like a cement mixer and sometimes it's like a smoothie mixer. [laughter] It's all good stuff. >> Audie Cornish: I sort of have the opposite problem with your book, where I thought; oh this is going -- I thought this was going to deviate more from the history than it really did. In fact, it felt actually super grounded in the history. And I just had a question; when you're writing you are world building, right? But when you're writing history, that world is built already. So, how do you decide like; okay, what's going to exist and what's not going to exist in this world? >> Colson Whitehead: Well, I had a few ruled, I mean before the book takes off into alternative histories. I want to have that first section be as realistic as possible. >> Audie Cornish: And this is life on the plantation? >> Colson Whitehead: Yeah, and so it is very brutal, as you were saying, because that's the way the plantation system was. And the more research I did, the more horrified I got as I was reading it with an adult perspective on the violence. Just to pay tribute to my nameless ancestors who went through the system, lived and died in Louisiana or Florida or Georgia, who knows. Most of my family history doesn't go back before -- it wasn't traceable -- before 1900. I wanted to make it as realistic as possible and then -- also for just everyone who went through that, you know, terrible experience before I started playing with history, playing it straight. And I guess -- and then once things are altered my rule was; I'll stick to -- I won't stick to the facts, but I'll stick to the truth. And so as the conversation about slavery and race in America gets larger and larger chapter to chapter I was moving historical events around in order to get to a larger truth. And so, you know, we're talking about -- >> Winston Groom: Like what [inaudible] sometimes you've got to lie a little bit to tell the truth. >> Colson Whitehead: Sure, yeah -- and the ability to make things up. Historians, hopefully are playing it straight, and then sometimes -- you know the fun of the fiction writer is being able to break the rules. >> Audie Cornish: It's interesting to hear you say, "Get to the truth," because I think with both of these periods that you've tackled; the sort of last throws of American West mythology and the many ways the story of slavery has been written and then rewritten and interpreted depending on who's writing it. Kind of what is the truth, right? Like as you're deciding; how much do you police yourself for a modern lens, right? When you're looking back. >> Winston Groom: Well, I think you -- it comes down to me to believability. If you get people to believe it then you've got a story. For instance, when I wrote "Forest Gump" I didn't know what I was doing and I got to the point where I had him playing football for Coach Paul "Bear" Bryant at the University of Alabama and I thought, "If they will believe that a perfect idiot could play football for 'Bear' Bryant [laughter] they'll believe anything." So, that was -- I said, "I gotcha. [laughter] I'll do what I want to." But it's the same way with this, I just tried to keep the characters in character. A lot of characters in my story who are nobody -- I mean they're not well known or historical figures -- and those are the main characters, which is, I think, why I differentiate what I did and what is normally called historical fiction. Most of the characters -- development of the characters is an ongoing thing between these -- mainly Arthur, the son of the old man, Shaughnessy the rich railroad baron and his grandchildren, this is his kids that have been kidnapped and he's not ready for the trail. He's a guy from Boston who is a butterfly collector and he has to undergo a lot of tough stuff -- and we see it all along the way -- before he finally faces down General Poncho Villa to get his kids back, and he outdraws him. And it's that kind of thing that I think it just keeps a reader -- When I do this I know how to do it because I've done it a lot of novels before I was a historian, or a historical writer anyway, and you've just got to keep the story moving and you keep the reader on the edge to say something is going to happen here pretty soon. And then after it happens they go back to being comfortable. As soon as they get comfortable I make it uncomfortable for them again. >> Audie Cornish: [laughs] And for you Colson Whitehead, I mean when you take apart something to put it back together you learn new things from it. And in trying to understand this period what did you -- how did it change the way you thought of the runaway story? >> Colson Whitehead: Well, I think, you know, it definitely did in the first section. I was trying to make a psychologically rich sort of plausible account of plantation life, you know, for me as someone writing in 2015, I was writing last year. I think we have an idea of the 100 person plantation from movies, you know, obviously there are -- you could be a slave in a single brownstone in Baltimore working for a family or one of two slaves on a small farm. So, for me it was -- I had my own different interpretation of history before I started. Sometimes you want to get infected with other people's take on the subject, sometimes you don't. I am -- >> Audie Cornish: Although, when you use the word infected I'm going to assume that you don't -- [laughs] >> Colson Whitehead: It sort of depends. This time it was like, "Oh, I haven't read 'Beloved' in 25 years. I haven't read 'The Known World' in 14 years. I'll go back." And the story of "Beloved" again I was just like -- after 30 pages it's like, I'm screwed. You can't beat Toni Morrison [laughter] obviously. >> Audie Cornish: It's confirmed. >> Colson Whitehead: Duh. So, all I can do is hope that, you know, I have something, I have a unique take that I can add to our idea of what slave literature is or, you know, plantation depictions; no matter what you write. >> Audie Cornish: But what was that idea, right? I mean, for me when I read the book I thought that you took us inside the minds of images we are familiar with. For instance, the image of a hanging before a crowd and there are all those faces. Right? The black bodies hanging, white faces looking into the camera, and in one of these chapters of the book you kind of take us into a community that would have held such an event. Were you trying to get us to think of some point of views maybe that we don't normally? >> Colson Whitehead: Well, I mean I don't think I -- you know the depiction of the lynching in the book, which happens once a week as a sort of entertainment for this town, isn't historically accurate. They weren't weekly gatherings, but the idea -- but the truth is real. They were, you know, planned entertainment sometimes. You would have the whole town, bring out the kids, and watch your scapegoat black male lynched, burned alive, take pictures, pose for the camera, you know, you would -- there are big collections of lynching postcards. "I wish you were here," you know, "had a nice time at this lynching." And so I'm making it, you know, into weekly events, but I'm not pushing it that far. Whenever I thought I was being a little too brutal on the page I would go back to the research and realize that, no actually I was sticking to, you know, to a version of reality. You know I'm one person writing a book for a year, slave masters were watching their fathers coming up with, you know, all sorts of sadistic things for decades and decades to keep people in line. And I can't really compete with all the stuff that they thought up because it was their job to come up with these sort of -- to keep the brutal system in place. >> Audie Cornish: You know, both of you have done stints as journalists; [laughs] Colson Whitehead as a TV critic for the Village Voice. Is that correct? >> Colson Whitehead: That's true. >> Audie Cornish: And Winston Groom you were at the Washington Star Newspaper. >> Winston Groom: I was at the Washington Star. >> Audie Cornish: So, how does that affect how you go about your work? What is it about that particular discipline that you -- still sticks with you? >> Winston Groom: It opens a door. It doesn't open it all the way. And I know that when I decided to leave the newspaper I did probably the bravest thing in my life. I went to the editor and said, "I'm going to resign. I'm going to write a book" and it was because I knew that if I failed I would be too embarrassed to come back to the papers. I got [inaudible]. >> Audie Cornish: You wouldn't be the first journalist who had made such an attempt. [laughs] >> Winston Groom: But I started trying to write it in Washington and, you know, we had -- we couldn't even clean up a quote and I was beginning to feel guilty. And Washington's a very political town, but -- and I'm starting to write fiction. I said, I can't do it here. So, I went to New York where there were fellow writers. But I think the newspaper business certainly teaches you clarity of thought. It teaches you clarity of language. It teaches you gravity. But the finesse that you have to do to translate that into a novel is -- it's a juggling act and you learn it. I learned it, but it took a while before it didn't sound like newspaper copy. Suddenly it starts -- zing. And that's fun. >> Audie Cornish: I was amused about the TV angle of your gig because, this book in particular, feels episodic. The way it's structured each chapter is in a specific state as this runaway slave is travelling along their path. And I wondered if [laughs] sometimes you sort of have an eye towards narrative in that way. >> Colson Whitehead: No, not so much. I mean, you know, when I was a TV critic it was early 90s and I'm like -- it was really embarrassing to be a TV critic. Now people are recapping [laughter] and it's like, you really engaged the pop culture. Me, it was like the only gig I could get and no one else wanted to do it. [laughter] And when I watch TV now I'm very glad to be a passive spectator and not to have sort of grand theories about why things are working. >> Audie Cornish: Yeah, it had a "Twilight Zone" feel [laughs] a little bit. >> Winston Groom: I have a question. Can I ask a question? >> Audie Cornish: Yeah, please do. >> Winston Groom: Colson, what -- how -- these fugitive slaves, how were they received? And how were they -- ? >> Colson Whitehead: Sorry? >> Winston Groom: I say, the fugitive slave involved -- I mean, would they have a trade when they got out of the slave states? >> Colson Whitehead: Sure. No. I mean -- >> Winston Groom: Were they received nicely or -- >> Audie Cornish: This is a question about how the slave narratives were published and received. >> Colson Whitehead: Yeah, well they were political tracts. So, the ones from the 1850s they were printed to get people to abhor the slave system. And so printed by white abolitionists in Massachusetts and New York and disseminated as testimony about the brutal system in the South and, you know, there was -- it became ammunition to end slavery. The ones collected in the 1930s, apart from getting people back to work, you know, I imagine part of the impulse was just to preserve. You know nobody was keeping track of the slave experience, you know, prior to this century. People were dying off and so you want to capture it before it's lost. And I'm particularly [laughs] very glad. >> Winston Groom: That answered it. >> Audie Cornish: Now this is the portion of our afternoon where we're going to take questions from the audience. We have two microphones in the center aisles here and we'll sort of ping pong back and forth between the two. ^M00:23:10 ^M00:23:16 >> Winston Groom: Do we ask ourselves questions? >> Audie Cornish: Let's see. There you go. >> Yes, there we go. I was just wondering about the cross cultural aspects of both of your books in the sense of covering Mexican events from a different perspective. And also just, you know, the nature of the Underground Railroad was a story that's of interest, not just to African American communities or just told during Black History Month, but it's of interest to a wider audience. How do you honor the integrity of the cultures that you're writing about and, you know, talk about that, but also broaden what you're writing about to a wider audience. >> Audie Cornish: Right. Winston Groom, in your book you were seeing many chapters from the point of view of General Poncho Villa and from some of the people who are working with him as revolutionaries, although they seem to question their role over time. >> Winston Groom: Yeah, well I mean I don't do points of view by chapters. I did it by scenes. And so I've got a lot of people doing a lot of things and thinking a lot of things at the same time. It's a literary device. I remember once I was stuck on my first book. I had a scene; it was too long, too many people talking. And I went to see a friend of mine, James Jones, who had written "From Here to Eternity," and among other books, and he was working on his final novel, he was to die in a year or so. But anyway, I said, "Yeah, I just can't seem to get this right." He said, "I tell you what, I just had that problem this morning. Instead of having one character think what the other character's thinking about, have the other character think what the other character might be thinking about him too." So, you have two or three things all going on at one time and I'll -- but it keeps the reader on their toes and I mean everybody -- I give everybody a point of view, just about. That can be confusing, but I think it's useful as far as the follow of the story because you want that story to punch forward all the time. >> Audie Cornish: Colson Whitehead, what kind of cross-cultural -- >> Colson Whitehead: Yeah, I -- you know the young gentleman asked about the cross-cultural stories. I guess I don't think about my work in that sort of way, in the same way I don't necessarily think of this as a historical novel. It's just a novel. And so I'm not thinking so much about audience or what I'm transmitting to -- from my culture or onto different audiences, a white audience or whatever. You know I'm trying to figure out something about the world in each book, or something about myself, and hopefully do it in a way that's artistically cohesive that other people can come along for the ride and I always feel fortunate when that works out. -- >> Hello there. Thank you for writing your books and my question for both of you is; of the historical characters in your books, do you have a favorite one? >> Colson Whitehead: Yeah, I don't have any -- >> Audie Cornish: The question, just for everyone here; their favorite character, historical character, in their book. >> Colson Whitehead: Yeah, I mean I don't have any characters based directly on people. Cora, as our protagonist, is, you know, partially inspired by Harriot Jacobs. >> Yeah. >> Colson Whitehead: She's a woman who wrote a slave narrative about leaving her house at age -- you know, in her teenage years and hid in an attic for seven years before she got passage out of North Carolina. And the female slaves -- you know, the dilemma she described in her narrative motivated me to have a female protagonist. When you're a female slave, when you hit 14, puberty, you're supposed to pump out kids -- more kids means more slaves and more slaves means more cotton and more money and you become -- you're prey to your master's desires, desires of other people on the plantation, and it seemed compelling material to explore. And so while Cora's not based on Harriet Jacobs, definitely reading Harriet Jacobs' narrative 30 years ago in college, you know, sort of bubbled in the back of my mind for many years and was a partial inspiration for the book. >> Audie Cornish: You have a lot to choose from in terms of characters. >> Winston Groom: I what? >> Audie Cornish: In terms of characters you have a lot to choose from. Is there a historical figure that became your favorite as you were writing? >> Winston Groom: Well, I kind of like the contrast between Ambrose Bierce, the "Devil's Dictionary" guy, and John Reed, who was a communist. And as they go along the trail they're constantly arguing politics and that's -- it's a sideshow in a way, but it gets -- it still moves the story forward because you're building the characters. So, the reader, at the end, they will say, "Well, I kind of know that fellow and I liked him." And what happened to him, you don't want to know. >> Audie Cornish: [laughs] Yeah, I have to say, towards the end of the book various people are dispatched in increasingly creative ways. [laughter] I did not know how many ways there were to die in the West until I read this book. >> Winston Groom: It's very Shakespearean. >> Audie Cornish: [laughing] Yes it is. It is. >> Winston Groom: A lot of murders. A lot of blood that won't wash off hands and so forth. Yeah. [laughter] Audie Cornish: Mam. Winston Groom: Perfect night for a murder. >> My question is for Winston Groom. Knowing Birmingham, Alabama and having visited there a long time, I'm wondering to what extent growing up in Alabama and -- has influenced your writing and also where you went to college. I loved hearing about everything that happened after it, but I think those two factors often underlie some of the writing that I've read. >> Audie Cornish: When it comes to education in Alabama isn't there really only one answer? >> Winston Groom: Roll tide. >> Audie Cornish: Are you allowed to give any other answer? [laughter] >> Winston Groom: Well, I'd say I went to boys' military school growing up and then I went to the University of Alabama and I was lucky enough -- I believe my sophomore year -- to have an instructor called Hudson Strode, who had taught my mother dramatics and literature back in the 1920s. And he had a small class that he had of writers. It was above the library with big velvet drapes and a bust of Liabee [phonetic spelling] in the corner and a long table. And everybody sat around in that old Socratic method of criticizing everybody else's work. And that was -- it was useful to that extent and -- but when I was in college I was the editor of -- first the literary magazine and then the real prize was a humor magazine, and I thought I was very well equipped to go up to New York and become the editor of Esquire at that point or something. And Doctor Strode -- I had to go to Vietnam first with the Army. And I got out of that and I went up to New York, he had got me appointments, and they were all very nice and every one of them said the same thing, "but you don't have any experience." And I thought, "Well, I edited my college literary magazine. Isn't that experience?" No. So, finally one fellow, Don Erickson -- who later became the editor and chief of the New York Times Magazine -- I asked him, "Well, what am I supposed to do to get this experience?" He said, "Why don't you go work on a newspaper?" And -- okay. I'd never even thought about that. I mean we had -- journalism was not really a subject that was taught well at the University of Alabama in those days. As a matter of fact, Joe Namath majored in journalism. [laughter] And the funny thing was, when he got off the plane in Miami all the sports writers said, "Well, Joe what did you major in at Alabama, basket weaving?" He said, "No, the same thing you majored in." [laughter] But in any case I was lucky enough to get on at the Star. I spent 10 years there and finally I said, "If I don't get a break here I'm going to wind up with a, you know, mortgage and a car payment." And I said, [dissenting noise] "I'm going to give this a shot." So, that's basically -- that's the short history of my life. >> Audie Cornish: [laughs] Colson Whitehead we should ask the same with you. I think we learn a lot from writers in terms of the early years in which they form their identity. So, high school? College? >> Colson Whitehead: Yeah, well I think in terms of writing I wanted to become a writer from reading Marvell Comics and Stephen King and Arthur C Clarke, "Twilight Zone" -- watching "Twilight Zone" and "The Outer Limits," and wanting to make things up. And I think later on in college -- I was a freshman at Harvard -- I started reading Garcia Marquez and Bora Hays, [phonetic spelling] and Beckett and was introduced to a different way of using fantasy; fantastic effects. You know different way of dealing with vampires and werewolves than say, the blasted landscape of "Waiting for Godot" but using fantasy in different ways. And I think definitely with this book and some other books of mine I've been, you know, still drawing from all the fantasy literature I read when I was, you know, in fifth grade and sixth grade and find inspiration and find different ways of deforming reality to get at that larger truth we were talking about earlier. >> Audie Cornish: We can feel you trying your hand at each genre like -- [laughs] >> Colson Whitehead: Sure, yeah. >> Audie Cornish: It's zombie time. You know? [laughs] >> Colson Whitehead: No I mean -- >> Audie Cornish: I feel like -- >> Colson Whitehead: You keep writing, you know, and I like poker -- I wrote a poker book. If you keep writing I guess you get enough time to address things you like [laughs] and interests you. So -- >> Audie Cornish: We have a question. >> This question is for Mister Whitehead. About your novel "The Intuitionist" and I'm curious where the idea for that novel came from and particularly what was it about the image of an elevator that is so central to that novel? Kind of what is the symbolism of that and where did that come from? -- -- >> Colson Whitehead: Sure, yeah. >> Audie Cornish: Do you want me to try and give the synopsis? >> Colson Whitehead: Oh no. Yeah. [laughter] I can do it. It's -- the question is about, with "The Intuitionist," how it evolved. Well, I'd written a book two years before and everyone hated it and it got, you know, 25 rejections. So, I figured I'll do something different and maybe do a book with a plot. People like that. People like plots in books. [laughter] And so I was going to take off from a detective novel structure and came up with the idea of what if an elevator inspector -- someone who inspects elevators -- has to become a criminal inspector and solve a criminal case? So, I went to the library to see what kind of skills an elevator inspector would bring to the criminal case, and the answer was none because they [laughter] inspect elevators. And so the crime in the book became an elevator crime and then I had to build a world. And so I figured if they were -- it's an election -- taken off from the detective story -- it's an election year in the department. So, there's sort of republicans and democrats and that became the intuitionists and empiricists -- progressives and conservatives. If there's a school where they learn how to do it there has to be some sort of academic in fighting. And so there's sort of this building of a world, like what's their school like? Who's the main theorist behind intuitionism? And each time I would solve a problem I'd have to, you know -- I'd have more questions I'd have to answer, but it was usually about building a world in a real kind of science fiction kind of way. ^M00:35:05 ^M00:35:09 >> Hi. This is for Mister Whitehead, although I love "Forest Gump." I always will. I'm like Audie, I read the book, the first chapter, and put it down for multiple days because it was so intense. And the way you build Cora out and her -- she's the main character throughout. What was your intention? What do you want the reader to leave with other than pain? >> Colson Whitehead: Well, I think there's more than pain going on with Cora. How do you -- you know, I think hopefully when you're reading that first section you're thinking, "How could this go on? How did this brutality -- ?" >> Right. >> Colson Whitehead: How did the country countenance such depravity? And then you think of; how did they survive? And how could any human being endure such horrors intact? And then once you set that up, what does it take to take that first step off the plantation to freedom? Would I have been able to do that? To find that power within myself to run North? I mean, you'd like to think that you're -- have that kind of strength, but most people didn't. The system was so brutal you couldn't try it. If you did try it you got caught, lose a foot. So, what kind of character can go through what Cora goes through and has that courage to run North? And I think it starts there and in that first section there are a few moments where I say, "The human part of her outpaces the slave part of her." And that human part of her is what animates her journey northward and then as we get to these different situations her movement to a different kind of freedom. So, I think that sort of answers your question, but gets at my intent with Cora. >> Audie Cornish: We could ask a similar question of you because I think one of the things that happens in this particular story is that you see the way General Poncho Villa operates as he moves through the North from town to town in really brutal ways in the pursuit of his revolution. And what did you want people to take away from that? Because in some ways it definitely undermines the hero aspect of him, right? >> Winston Groom: Well, I don't think it -- what I have read about him, and there's a great deal that's been written about him, and probably 40 or 60 percent is false. I mean, it's just totally contradictory. There've been a couple of good books about him and I listed them in the -- somewhere in the acknowledgements. But he was -- that whole country was brutal then. It -- I mean it was a horrible place to live. The Apaches and -- brutalized the people and they had learned from the Apaches. And Poncho Villa one time -- and this was -- I presume it was a true story -- he -- somebody bet him that he couldn't shoot a man's eye out and he shot the man's eye out and then he felt sorry about it so he gave his wife 100 pesos. That's brutality, but they were rough times. And I mean he'd have you skinned alive and so forth. General Fiaro, [phonetic spelling] he was known for some very bad deeds. They called him "the butcher" and that wasn't just on the Villa side either, it was on the government's side. There was no quarter [inaudible]. ^M00:38:42 ^M00:38:46 >> Audie Cornish: Question over here. >> Yes, my question is for Colson Whitehead. I just wanted to say I loved your book. I thought it was brilliantly written, but I was kind of confused and really baffled by the ending and I really didn't know what happened. I know you may not want to give away the ending, but I was wondering what actually happened to the slave hunter and what ultimately happened to Cora because I didn't quite get it. >> Colson Whitehead: Sure. Thanks for reading. It hasn't come up a lot. I think most people have come to the round reckoning with Cora's story. I will say this about Cora; even if she gets to -- in an alternative story -- gets to Massachusetts and wins a lottery and wins three billion dollars, she's still an African American woman in 1850 in America, which is a racist place. So, what is her best case scenario when she lives in a racist country. So, you'll be able to get there. Maybe that can be -- work, I hope. >> Audie Cornish: Yeah, but it's an interesting question because if you're talking about brutal periods of history, this is where you come up against the rules of these worlds, right? In terms of history there's only so far you're going to get in terms of these characters. >> Colson Whitehead: Yes. I mean -- >> Audie Cornish: Necessarily have a happily ever after. She'll have something, but it's not a tied bow the way we would all like I think. >> Thank you. >> First of all, thank you both for your work because it is work and it's very grueling. And my question -- it's a statement and a question I guess. Your notions about the depictions of history and the implications of that are such that neither of your books can be merely a book. They simply are not. And because of that depiction of everyone I'm wondering about the role, Mister Whitehead, of resistance in your book because the narrative is that -- as you said -- people rolled over, basically. And that is not quite an accurate interpretation of the truth, if you will. The truth is that there were over 400 rebellions on the Atlantic Ocean and the Amistad wasn't the only truth. The truth is that there were a million acts of resistance every day because you don't have to run away to resist and your Cora did not grow up in a vacuum. She was nurtured, and that energy of taking that step was nurtured and was affirmed so that resistance -- she resisted and that resistance was rooted in community and in values about "I don't think so." So, in your -- I don't know -- >> Audie Cornish: Well, we can let him answer. Yeah. >> Okay. >> Colson Whitehead: I agree. It's not -- it was a statement that I agree with. So -- >> Audie Cornish: Did you have a question to add to this? >> In your next work are you going to talk about resistance explicitly and how that went on? >> Colson Whitehead: Probably not. Will I address that in my next book? Probably not. I, you know, when I'm done with a topic I like to move on to the next one and the next book takes place in a 1960s Harlem. It has a different sort of striving in there. But you -- but I think you're totally right about our daily rebellions, whether it's, you know, in contemporary life; how do we keep going and how do we stand up to the forces that raid against us? Or 20 years ago; how do we figure out systems that help us get it through the day? And, you know, hopefully in Cora's story and in the supporting cast you get different kinds of stepping up and different ways of overthrowing tyranny. Thank you. >> Thank you so much. >> Audie Cornish: Unfortunately that is our last question because we're towards the end. I think it's a good question to end on because it gets at the idea of responsibility. Whenever you're tackling history you embrace the responsibility of interpreting that time. I want to thank everyone for coming and I hope that you'll consider donating to the National Book Festival via their App. There's also information in your program. Colson Whitehead; author of "The Underground Railroad." Thank you. >> Colson Whitehead: Thank you guys. [applause] >> Audie Cornish: And Winston Groom; his book is called "El Paso." Thank you.