>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. ^M00:00:04 ^M00:00:07 >> Good afternoon. I'm Ron Charles, Editor of the Washington Post Book Section and I'm so delighted that you're here today. First, a word of thanks for our co-chairman of the festival, David Rubinstein, and many other sponsors who've made this event possible. And if you'd like to make a financial donation to this festival, there's information in your program to make that happen. We will have some time for questions when I'm done. There's a microphone there and there. If you come to the microphone to ask a question, you will be recorded and become part of the Library's permanent collection. So if that's not something you want to do, stay in your seat. Okay. My guest this afternoon is Lauren Groff, the author of two of my favorite novels, "Arcadia" and "Fates and Furies." ^M00:00:48 [ Applause ] ^M00:00:53 But she has much bigger fans than me. ^M00:00:56 ^M00:01:00 Her first book, "Monsters of Templeton," got a rave review from Stephen King, who was just here a few hours. >> I know, yeah. >> Probably looking for your autograph. >> No. >> And her most recent, listen to this, her most recent novel, "Fates and Furies," was President Obama's favorite book. ^M00:01:15 ^M00:01:19 Thank you so much for being here today. >> Thank you for doing this with me. Thank you for being here. This is really lovely. >> It is. Now let's start. Since we're in Washington, what is it like to have the leader of the free world recommend your book? >> So I passed out. I really did. I really did. I was like, what just happened? Came to, called my husband and was like, get home, right now. And he came home, and I said you don't have champagne, go. And he went out and got champagne, and came back. So the thing is, I was really astonished that he has time for fiction. >> Yes. >> But not surprised, because he's a good human being, right? Yes. >> How did you hear, though? What was the actual moment when you heard the news? >> Okay, believe it or not, Twitter. I was on Twitter, and someone tweeted it at me. And I said, that's not true. And I went and then I saw it in People Magazine, which, again, it was very surreal. And I'm just astonished. But you know what? He's such a kind and gracious human being that he actually sent a note to my house. >> Wow. >> Which I framed, and it's the thing after the kids and the dog that I will save if it ever comes to that, because I love the man. >> The dogs and the kids, they will leave you. >> They will run away, but I will go and get the framed note from Barack Obama, yeah. >> That's great. I should also note that "Fates and Furies" was shortlisted for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Kirkus Award. It was on dozens of best-seller lists, including ours. >> Thank you. >> And recommended lists, end-of-the-year lists. It was just a tremendous, tremendous novel. People who don't know, "Fates and Furies" is about a long and passionate marriage between a very successful playwright and his wife. The first half of the novel focuses on the husband, and the second half focuses on the wife. And they turn out to have very different lives, and very, very different perspectives, both of them fascinating. >> Oh, thank you. >> Now, Lotto is brilliant and vain and self-aggrandizing, but he's really sort of charming, too, and wonderful. And Mathilde is quiet and supportive and meek, but also kind of sneaky and furious. Yes. Now, you haven't really written enough novels to have a type, but I was completely surprised by this novel. >> Okay. >> If it's not a departure, it seems like a really daring novel to write in so many ways, and did you start thinking about it as a novel in two distinct halves? How did that whole structure evolve? >> Believe it or not, I actually thought four or five years, I was writing two separate novels, because I wanted to do Mr. Bridge and Mrs. Bridge, but like redux. And it didn't work out at all, at all, in any way. And, so I gave it to my agent, who's a great, great mega agent, and we were sitting at this sort of dive vegan, I don't even know what it was, café in New York City, and I was picking up this piece of [inaudible] cake. And he goes, "Lauren," and he sits forward, and he pushes the two parts of the book, which I thought were two books, together, and he goes, "You have made a marriage, two autonomous parts within a whole." And I was like, "Oh, you're a genius! Thank you!" So, yeah, it is. Then I had to do a lot of work after that, but he helped a lot. >> You weren't resistant. You realized instantly that's -- >> No, no, no, I cried. I always cry whenever he talks to me, but after a good -- after about two hours, I ended up being okay with it, and realizing he's right. I mean it's a marriage in a lot of ways. He's always right, and I'm always wrong. >> It's tempting to think that Lotto is the wholly deluded one, and then we find out the truth in the second half, but it's really not so simple at all, is it? >> No. No, I tried hard not to do that, but of course, if you believe that this book is actually Mathilde, that's kind of okay with me, because one of my inspirations was Vera Nabokov, and she was this mega genius herself, but she completely effaced herself. And Stacy Schiff is here. She wrote this beautiful, beautiful book about Vera. And that was actually the inspiration behind a part of -- that part of the book. And if, so if you do believe that the book is actually Mathilde's, it's almost revenge for all of the wives who've had to hide in the corner. But in truth, I actually really wanted it to be a story that could be truthful in multiple different ways, right. I wanted to have it sort of resound, depending on where you, the reader, are in your life, in any particular way that you respond to it. There's no single truth. >> Right. >> Yeah. >> It is very unstable. >> Yeah. >> In a fascinating way. It seems very traditional in some sense. You've got this outgoing, successful man, and then the power behind the throne, this woman who's pulling all the strings. But in the second half, we find out that's so much more complex, that -- I'm sorry, I'm mispronouncing her name. Mathilde? >> That's how I say it, but you can say it however you like. You're [inaudible]. It's good. >> No. So I'm thinking Lady Macbeth. >> Yeah. >> Livia. >> Yeah. >> The Emperor's wife. As you thought about her personality, did she take on that sort of maniacal character for you? Or did she remain a really human person? >> For me, she was always very, very human, which means that like every other human in my life, I may love her, but I don't necessarily like her, right? I say this -- I'm the mother of two small children, and you love them so desperately, but they're hard to like sometimes, and it's very true. So throughout, I saw her as this person that, in many ways, I would actually like to be like Mathilde in certain ways. She is so clear-sighted. >> Yeah. >> She's so able to sort of know how a small change right now will affect everybody else in the future. So she's almost like a mathematical genius in a certain way, but she's so reserved, right? >> Yes. >> And she's self-effacing, but in a self-willed way that makes her somewhat difficult to cling to. And she's really, really angry. She's furious. And that part of her I really liked, actually. I love her rage. I think it's the animating feature of her. >> I want to talk about rage for a minute. >> Okay. >> Because it's such a -- we use that as such a way to denigrate women, don't we? They cannot ever be bitter or angry. Strong, yes, maybe, but not angry or bitter. And I think the way you bring that out is so powerful. There's a lot of mythology in your earlier works. It's, I think, very evident. But there's mythology in this book, too, isn't there? Isn't there? >> Yes, I thought at first you said -- I thought at first you said pathology, and I thought -- >> I lost my voice -- >> Probably. >> At the party last night. I talked way too long. >> All right. >> Mythology. >> There is, there's a lot of mythology. Yeah, there's mythology everywhere, because I can't get away from it, but I love it so much, right? Yeah. >> Yeah, let's talk about the mythology. >> Okay. >> In your first book, for instance. >> Okay. >> What -- did you study those myths? Did you love those myths when you were a child? What is it about mythology that you like? >> Well, in the first book, the myths were mostly about Cooperstown, New York, where I'm from. >> That's a classic America place. >> It's very Americana, yeah. >> Yes. >> And James Fenimore Cooper is from there, his father started the town, but also baseball is, itself, very much a myth, right? >> It is mythological, yes. >> Mythological. Like the foundation of it. It actually didn't start in Cooperstown. Everybody knows this, and yet they all go there to the Hall of Fame. My house, when I was growing up, was a block and half away from the Hall of Fame, and so when Phillies, in particular, came to celebrate the induction of Phillies, they would, like camp out on my yard. But -- so I'm deeply in love with this idea that we all live within this net of stories, right? >> Yes. >> We were caught in this net of stories. And the stories we can use to tell the story of ourselves, in a certain way. And I think that we can't get away from the narrative that we spin for ourselves, and for our towns, and for our places. So in that book, in particular, is a very local set of myths. In this book, it's a much different set of myths. I think it's much more dependent on Greek mythology, but also -- >> Yes. >> The myths of narrative. A lot of different prototypes of narrative are happening. >> You're thinking of Medea? >> Oh, yeah, I am. Antigone, right? Because I actually wrote an opera about Antigone. >> You wrote an opera? >> Well, in the book there's an opera. >> Oh, yes, I'm sorry. >> Yeah, yeah. >> I have read the book. ^M00:09:58 ^M00:10:01 >> But I tried to write it as an actual opera, and no musician wanted to do it with me. I was really depressed. I think it would be amazing, right? >> Yeah, it would. >> Maybe there'd be a puppet in the middle of it? Dancers? I can see razzmatazz. But I think in this particular case, what I was so fascinated by is the idea that Greek mythology exists within a separate kind of plane of storytelling. I mean, the stories that we tell now feel very terrestrial, right? You're walking on the earth, you're going from one place to another in a lot of them. But Greek mythology exists within sometimes even competing stories of the same characters, right? >> Yes. >> And the gods are these large overweening characters that sort of exist up here, and they're so -- they're involved in everything, right? They're responsible for everything, but -- and the mortals are these little, like, people down here that are easily crushed, and -- so what I like is that there are -- there's a multiplicity of time happening with the Greek myths. >> Yes. >> Because there's this larger elemental time happening up here, and this small mortal almost granular time happening down here. And then you, the consumer of the myth, are somewhere in here, in the middle. >> Yes. >> And it's almost like you're in an aquarium, right? And these are the sharks and those are the hermit crabs, and you can see them coming in and out. >> Yes. >> So what I love so much about it is this idea of flexibility and layers in terms of storytelling. I find it so fascinating and wonderful. >> It is. >> And that's what I wanted for this book. That's why I structured it the way that I did. >> Aren't you surprised when you read the myths, like Medea and Antigone, how contemporary and powerful they are? >> Oh, God, yes. >> Even though they're -- I mean, you read some stories that are 300 years old, and they're already so dated you can barely understand them, they don't speak to you at all. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Then you read these plays, and they seem so immediate. >> I think part of it is that they're boiled down to the bones, in a way that almost the fairytales are sort of -- >> Yes. >> They're just the story. >> Right. >> And we put onto the characters all the flesh as readers. And the same thing with the Greek mythology. But all of the -- what the Greeks are talking about are these elemental emotions. >> Yes. >> Right? >> Yes. >> And I don't think, I mean, human technology has changed, but humanity has not changed all that much in the past few thousand years. >> Right. >> Deeply, I mean, in terms of emotional. >> Right. >> Things. >> Right. And in "Arcadia," it is about mythology or the mythologies we create about our past and our childhood. Long after Bit realizes what that commune's really like, he still is haunted by what he imagines it was like. And those two things compete for the rest of his life. >> And what he imagines it could've been, too. >> Right. >> I mean, he's actually -- that's the thing that haunts him the most, I think. >> And it, of course, it can't be. >> It could never be, right? Because we humans are flawed. >> Right. >> Firmly. >> All those utopian communities end in essentially the same -- >> Yeah. >> Way. >> Except for, I think, religious communities, which are, in a way, utopian, right? >> Right. >> I mean, they could be seen as utopian. >> Right. >> People are devoted to a more perfect union, so -- and the Amish. >> Right. >> Very successful. >> That's true. That's still going on, you're right. >> Yes. >> And "Fates and Furies" is about the mythology of marriage in a way. The stories we tell, the stories we want to be true, the stories we cling to even after we realize it's not true. >> Right. >> You're married. >> I'm very married, yes. >> I imagine. >> Where are we going? ^M00:13:40 ^M00:13:44 Yes? >> I imagine a story about two beautiful people who are married, and then you write a novel about [inaudible]. I imagine people are always pestering you about the autobiographical roots of this novel, aren't they? >> Right, yes. >> And it must drive you crazy. >> No, because I played with it intentionally. >> Really. >> Yeah. Because I knew as a female writer, I'm always going to be asked these questions. Men are almost never asked these questions. Women are almost always asked these questions. >> You sniveling women. >> We scribbling lady novelists, that's right. >> That's it. >> And, you know, I've been annoyed by this question since I've been writing books, but in the last few books, in fact the books that have been published, I have been playing with this question a lot. >> Yes. >> And I've been playing intentionally with the readers' response to it, because if you can't combat it, why not play with it, right? >> Yes. >> So I put certain elements of me into the story, and if you know me really well, you'll see my husband, particularly, in Lotto, in a way that it's a joke, right? I mean, he's not Lotto at all in any way. >> Yeah. >> But I put, I mean, my husband is 6' 6" and so is Lotto, right? >> Yes. >> We met rowing, right? >> Yes. >> So a lot of things are in the book, seated in the book intentionally to play with this idea of autobiography. >> And how can the reader participate in that play? >> Oh, because they're always asking the question when they're reading, right? >> And what do you tell them? >> I tell them everything is autobiographical, but not. >> So they think, oh, it's really about her and her husband, yes. >> Yeah. It's okay. You can think whatever you want. >> Does it kind of freak your husband out to read the book and see these elements? These echoes? >> He's the phlegmatic, so the answer is no. He's totally fine with what I write, and it's -- so, okay, he hasn't always been fine with what I write. >> Yes? >> The very first short story I ever showed him, and this is, you know, years into my writing. We were just dating, and I gave it to him, and he saw himself in the character, and he wrote "bleh" on the paper, and then threw it at me. So he's gotten much better. >> Wow, yeah. >> And now he's really great about it. Now he writes me these single-spaced, you know, 12-page letters. >> Come on. He writes you letters? >> No, I can't take it verbally. >> So you're sitting there in the same room, and he's writing you a letter? >> Yes. >> And then you read it while he's sitting next to you? >> No. I go into another room. But I know that if he responds to the text at hand through text -- >> Yes? >> He's able to see it almost intellectually as a different thing, as not reflective of our lives together. >> That's got to be hard. >> To live with me, absolutely. It is not easy. He is not a saint, but he's pretty close. >> Is his criticism helpful? >> Every time. >> Really? >> Yes, because he's a really smart general reader, right? >> Nice. >> And I think a lot of times we rely on other writers who know the same tricks that we do. >> Right. >> And so there's almost a shorthand that I think we take for granted. But the really smart general reader will ask questions that a writer won't. >> Right. >> So, yeah. >> Now, Lotto is married longer than you've been married. >> Oh, yes. >> How did you project yourself into that undiscovered country of a long marriage? >> Well, they're only married for 26 years, which is, I mean, I've been with my husband for 19, so it's only seven more years. >> Okay, so you're getting close. >> We're getting close, yeah. >> Yes. >> Yeah. >> But how did you think how a long marriage would evolve? They're also older than you. >> They're, yes, they're older than, yeah. >> Yeah. >> Well, you know, I have eyes and friends, so. >> You mean you used your imagination? >> I did, also. But, you know, you sort of watch the way that your parents -- my parents are still together very happily, and I watch the way that their relationship has unrolled. And my friends, I've got friends who've been together for, you know, 30 years, and so you just ask a lot of questions a little bit on the side so they don't quite know what you're getting at. >> Until they read your book. >> Until they read your book and see themselves in it, yeah. Yeah. >> In almost every interview I've read with you at some point you say I'm a private person, a shy person. >> Yes. >> Here we are. Is there something about the way we've constructed the modern publishing world that we make people like you leave your rooms, and your offices, and your homes, and go out on tour and talk and meet with readers. Are we making it hard for a certain kind of author, do you think, to read and publish nowadays that we didn't in the past? >> I do think so. Yeah, but then again, there's Elena Ferrante, who does the exact opposite. >> That's true. >> Which is she became a cipher. >> Yes. >> I mean, she's just words on the page. And, actually, she's playing with that, too. >> Definitely. >> I really think that her game is one of tempting the reader to see the autobiography in the text in every one of her books. I think she's really playing a game. But I do think in our publishing community, it's really, really, really hard to be a hermit and a writer. >> It is. >> So, what you do is you develop a personae, right? >> Yes. >> It's like a Scooby suit that you unzip at the end of the night, and it falls to the floor, and the tender little writer gets out and like cringes. >> Was it hard for you to do this kind of stuff? >> Well, at first it was. I really, really hated it for the first two books. But now I love it. >> That's good. That's good. Well, we're glad you're here. This will sound weird, but you already know what I think of your book, but I didn't realize how good it was until I started to talk to people who hate it. >> Oh, good. >> Yes. Because what -- hang on. No, because the really great books generate strong opinions on all sides. >> Okay. >> No? No. And it led to great discussions. It means it's a great book for a book club. It means it's something to say. It means the book is really touching people. That's what really impressed me about it. Have you talked to people who have wildly different views? Or are people too shy around you to tell you? >> No, people definitely tell me, yeah. I get lots of emails. >> And how do you react to that? >> Oh, erase. ^M00:20:01 No, I mean -- you know, I'm actually pretty tough. I can take a lot of critique, but not at the time that a book is published. >> Of course. >> I am really, really, really, really tender. I can't actually read my reviews. I can't exist in the world in which I feel like people are judging me, which is really hard. >> Yes. >> So I take a step back, and I let my husband do all that, and he really does. He collects all the critiques. >> The useful critiques. >> The useful critiques. He puts them on a Word document, and then two or three years down the line, I say, all right, give it to me, and I take it. But, you know, I care. I really, really care. I really want to be a much better writer than I am now, so I really, I need to take this, the things that people are saying. >> Right. >> But I need to choose who I'm hearing from, right? >> Yes, definitely, yes. >> And you can't take just anybody's point of view. >> No. Of course not. >> Yeah. >> I agree with that. >> Yeah. >> Right. I heard you wanted to be a poet for a while? >> Oh, yeah. Yeah. >> Which makes sense. Your writing is gorgeous. >> Thank you. Yeah. >> So no collections of poetry published by you? >> Oh, God, no. If I did, it would be under a pseudonym. >> So you may have published poetry? >> Possibly. ^M00:21:13 [ Laughter ] ^M00:21:16 The thing is, what I love about poetry is not what makes one a good poet, I think. I really love the form. I love the formal poetry, just desperately, because I love the ideas that come out of being constrained to a very small amount of space. >> The way the discipline shapes the language? >> The way the discipline shapes the language. I think that's really fun, but I -- and I know there are lots of really good formal poets out there. >> Yes. >> But I am not -- I'm just not one of them, which is unfortunate. >> Well, no, I mean, you bring that poetic [inaudible] to your writing, I think. I also heard that you write in longhand still? >> I do. Yes. >> Well, that seems really surprising, because you're of a generation, you grew up, I suppose, on a computer. >> Yeah. >> What made you begin to do that? >> So I -- it's very -- it much more sensual, actually, in a way, right? So if you're writing with paper, the paper has pores in it, like human skin. It smells like paper, and the ink on the paper smells different, too. And your body is sort of engaged in a way that if you're writing on a computer, you're sort of almost pushing your work away, in a certain way. But also at the same time, I think I'm afraid of setting things in stone too early. >> Yes. >> And on the computer screen, it almost looks as though -- the text almost looks as though it is printed text, right? >> Yes. >> So it's actually much, much harder to change than when you're just writing along on a madcap [inaudible]. >> Yes. >> And it's on paper, and you can go in and you can put in other ink and you can just throw things away. I throw tons of things away. >> Do you really? >> Yeah, in fact, I write a really fast first few drafts, and I throw them out in between, and then a -- and for this book, it was about 12 drafts. So what happens is the first draft was about a month. Well, actually the first draft was these huge pieces of butcher paper on the walls that I was writing Mathilde and Lotto back and forth like chess. >> What was on those pieces of paper? >> Oh, just like little stories that I would write. I would write a Mathilde story, and then turn around and write it from Lotto's point of view. >> Oh, so you keep track of these things? >> Yeah, well, yeah, well, and then I threw them out. And then, yeah, but then I moved them to actual paper, and wrote what I thought was the story in about a month, and then the stories in a month, and then threw that out, and kept going, and kept going, and kept going. What this does for me, and I love it so much, is that it doesn't set anything in stone. And because I love the sentence so much, I can spend all of my time just fixing one single sentence, when in reality, the foundational issues are what I need to address, right? The character needs to become bigger, and stranger, and all of the peripheral characters need to have their own back stories. And so the first few, usually about five or six drafts of anything that I write is just junk, and I let it be junk, because I think that that's the way, as in this Leonard Cohen song, the cracks are the way the light gets in, right? And so you intentionally build into the process a lot of cracks. That's what I do, at least. >> Yes. >> Yeah. >> The style of that first half of the book in that lush, romantic tone -- >> Yeah. >> That you begin to realize is Lotto's reflection of himself. >> Right. >> Or at least that's what I thought. >> Right, yes. >> It's just gorgeous. >> Oh, thanks. >> Just so gorgeous. And the harsh, bitter tone of that second half is just as perfect in a different way. >> Oh, thanks. >> It is really a triumph. >> Well, the first half I'm building out of other narrative techniques, right? So like the courtly romance is in there. >> Yes. >> And the opera is in there. >> You hear Fitzgerald in there. >> Yeah, the Fitzgeralds, and the men who are entranced with themselves -- >> Yeah. >> Are in there, right? >> Or just men. >> Or just men. The male creator is in the first part. The [inaudible] is in there, the [inaudible] is in there. I mean all different kinds of narrative techniques I intentionally threw into that. >> Yes. >> On purpose in order to have fun. This book was so much fun to write. >> Was it? >> Yes. Oh, my God. >> That's good to hear. >> It was great. It was lovely. I enjoyed the heck out of it. But, and the second half, I was really relying on a lot of the mid-century French writers, like [foreign name] and [foreign name] and a lot of the writers of the [foreign word], because I really, I think that the way that they write is very feminine in a lot of ways. >> Yes. >> With a lot of leaps and a lot of fragments, and different ways of writing than what we've seen in the past, with the very romantic sort of long sentences and lushness. >> Right. >> Yeah. >> That's fascinating. How do you know when you're done? [inaudible] >> Oh, you don't. Yeah, no, you never know if you're done. >> Until the deadline comes? >> You just get really tired. Yeah. I got to the point where, you know, I think it was I had to pay for health insurance, and I was like, what am I going to do? I guess I better give my agent these books. ^M00:26:17 [ Laughter ] ^M00:26:20 So yeah, that's what happens, right? The pressures of the capitalism on creativity. >> But you must have a sense, this chapter -- I was just talking to Joyce Carol Oates, and she does not revise the whole novel, she revises each chapter until it's perfect, and then she moves to the next chapter, and the next chapter. >> Yeah, different people have different ways of working, right? And my friend, Kevin Brockmeier will only fix a sentence for as long as it takes, and then move onto the next sentence, right? >> Very incremental. >> It's super incremental, and what that means, though, is at the end, when he gives it to his editor, the editor has one or two things to say, because it's perfect. Whereas my poor editor, she wrote me 30 single-spaced pages. >> Oh, that's a -- >> Yeah, well, she's good. And it was after I had, I had probably five or six other readers in between, too, including my agent, who is also a very good editor, so, I mean, I'm not as perfect as Kevin Brockmeier. >> And do you accept all 30 single-spaced pages? >> Oh, God, no. No, no, no, because a lot of it is, you know, tracing what would happen if, right? So she's like well, in the first chapter this happens, what would happen if? And she would go through the rest of the book saying then these things would be changed, too. >> Right. >> So I don't always. I take maybe 50%, yeah. >> Okay, yeah. And I thought as I was reading it, had you written plays before? >> Well, I tried. I'm not very good at it. So, yeah, I really, I love plays. And I especially love operas. I just love operas, because they're so colorful, and it's [inaudible], you know, it's the synthesis of many, many different kinds of artwork. It's the -- it's music, and it's singing, and it's acting, and it's costume, and it's light. I mean, every kind of art on the stage happening in the moment as the audience is reacting to it, and I love that. >> Yes. >> That sort of -- the feeling of just temporality, and the idea that the story is passing by, and all you have to do is just reach out and grab it, right? >> Yes. >> And I love plays, too, and particularly my favorite recently has been Annie Baker, whom I think is just a mega, mega genius. She's so good. But I've tried to write them, but my sensibility's really novelistic. So I end up putting in way too much. >> Oh, yeah. >> It's very sad. >> Well, it's interesting, because you've read novels about great poets, but you never read any poetry in the novel. The novel always just sort of points to the poetry that is somehow, we have to imagine. >> Well, [inaudible] did. She did a really good job. Yeah. >> It was bold of you to include actual pages of dialogue from the plays that we are told are classics. >> Bold or stupid. >> I thought it was bold. It was a fantastic novel. I know people want to ask you questions, too. So, would you take some questions from the audience? >> I will take any questions. >> Okay. >> About anything. >> There's a microphone here and here. Come to the mic and ask away. >> Thank you in advance for being whoever is the first person to ask a question. ^M00:29:21 ^M00:29:26 >> Here comes -- there are people coming toward the mics. >> There are. Thank you. Yes. >> Hi. >> Hi. >> A couple of thoughts and questions. Did you set out to write a book about their marriage? I think one of things that resonates, everybody I know who read it, somewhere lurking in that story is a bit about your own marriage, and we read it for our book club. And when, you know, word got out that it was the President's favorite book, one of my friends would say, "Oh, my God. I cannot believe that that was his favorite book! What is it telling us about their marriage?" ^M00:30:03 >> We all had that thought. >> So I was sort of wondering about that, because, you know, you never know anyone's marriage, but I thought it was a wonderful book and one of the books that, as soon as I read it, I put it on my husband's side of the bed and said, you must read this book. >> Thank you. >> And the other thing I thought that was interesting about it was that it was a modern, you know, it was placed in modern times. It wasn't really set in any specific time, so in that sense, it made me -- it felt like it was evergreen. >> Okay. >> In a way that, like, I don't know if you've read "A Little Life," but "A Little Life," I don't know, was it set in post-9/11 New York, or was it set in somewhere else? Because it's just very internal, and I think that that is also the secret of its success, because, you know, you could be in your 70s and have been married for ages and read it, but it's not set in a time outside. So did you intentionally want to make it so internal? >> Well, the first question about the marriage, the way that I was envisioning this book, the books, when I was writing them, is I wanted to write a book that was about marriage the way that a bomb casing is about the bomb inside, right? So it's not about the casing, it's about the explosion in a certain way. And I think the book is set in a particular specific time, but if you didn't think that, that's totally fine, and your reading is superior to mine. I would say any reader out there. >> Well, I think in a sense that -- it was so internal in that it was so about them that if some catastrophic something happened in the world that they live in, whether they live in 2005 or, you know, 1995 or whatever, that I didn't think it would have a dramatic -- >> Oh, yeah. >> It wasn't reliant on what was happening in the world outside. >> Oh, yeah. They're very ingrown. >> That's what I mean by -- >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you. >> Being timeless. >> Yeah. They're deeply in love, yes. >> Right. >> And when you are, you look at the person, and their face is in front of you no matter where you are in the world, so, yeah, yeah, thank you. >> It was a great book. >> Thank you for reading it. I appreciate it. >> Well done. >> Hi. >> Hi. So this is just a kind of generic author question, but what's one book you've read recently and loved? >> Oh, darn! You're doing this one! I always forget. Okay, okay, okay. I can do it. I can do this. Okay, "The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony." I think that's right. Yes, "The Marriage of Cadmus," by Roberto Calasso. It's an extraordinary, extraordinary book that says it's a novel, but it's not really, it's about Greek mythology, but it's not really. I mean, it's like amazing. It's a classic, classic, classic, yeah. Yeah. I don't know if it's recent. I don't think so, but it's really good. Thank you. Yeah. >> You speak so passionately -- you speak so passionately about your characters and, like, you spend so much time with them. When the book is done, someone else tells you it's done, do you still think about them? Do you think about what they're doing? What comes next for them, and how do you deal with that if they're still in your brain, and you're trying to write something else? >> So it's really hard. So there's an expanse between when you finish a book and when it comes out in the world, and for me that's always a period of just tremendous grieving, actually. So, and then when it comes out in the world, it becomes other people's book, and it's not mine to grieve anymore, which is really healthy, right? But in those few months, I actually get pretty depressed about it. I mean, especially with "Arcadia," because it was so deeply personal, that book. I was so sad that I was never going to see Bit again in my life. And this book, you know, I know Mathilde is tough, she'll be fine without me. She doesn't need me. But Bit does. I just want to go back and protect him, because, you know, I based him on what I projected my son to be like. And he's not at all like him, but that character is almost his ghost, is a different person, so, yeah, it's really hard. >> Hi. I have a really random question. >> Great. >> I'm from Gainesville, Florida, actually. I'm sure we know a lot of the same people. And I was reading The New Yorker, and I came across your story that was published like a year ago, I think it was. But I didn't look at the -- your name or the title, I just saw the photo that was with the story, and I recognized the street actually. And I was wondering if you could just tell me where that photo was taken, because I knew -- I said, oh, this is Gainesville when I saw the photo, and then I read the story and it was clearly about, like, the duck pond, and -- >> Yeah, yeah. >> And neighborhoods I used to live in, so I was just wondering if you could tell me if you knew. Did you choose that photo? >> No, we have no decision making abilities at all in terms of the artwork with our stories in The New Yorker. In fact, you don't even see them until it gets published and you're like, oh, that's perfect. So I have no idea, no. But it really is about the duck pond. And the funny thing about this is that I put the story out kind of cringingly, because I'm talking not incredibly positively about the duck pond and the way that we treat homeless people in particular. And my mailman rang my doorbell, and I always get The New Yorker about a week later than everyone else, I think you might be reading it. But he did read the story, and he goes, "I read your story. I didn't like it." And I was like, okay, like every fear I've ever had like crashing down on my head. And he goes, "I didn't like it, because I wasn't in it." ^M00:35:57 [ Laughter ] ^M00:35:59 >> That's Gainesville. >> That's Gainesville, I know. Yes. Go Gators. >> I really loved your book. It was one of the first books to really consume me in my adulthood, and there were a few moments that I truly found myself resetting and absorbing the book, and those were the moments of text in between the brackets, as well as the characters' interactions with their dog. And I was wondering if you could share a little bit about how you utilized the brackets, and the character of God. >> Sure. The dog, his name is God. So I thought it was funny. It wasn't funny, but. The brackets. They came out of my obsessive re-reading of "To the Lighthouse," by Virginia Woolf, which is one of the best books of all times, and if you haven't read it, run to get it. But "To the Lighthouse" is so extraordinary, because it's three parts, and the first and the third part are this stream of consciousness in and out of people's minds. The first part, in particular, sort of centered around the figure of the mother, right? Mrs. Ramsey. So beautiful, so loving. And the second part is this part called Time Passes, and in itself, it's just, basically a short story, and what happens with this is it's one of the most extraordinary literary feats I've ever read. The human is leeched out, and what comes in in its place is sort of elemental time. The time of wind, and the time of the sea, and the time of the house that's slowly disintegrating without the people in it. And then when the people come into it, it's in the brackets. And it's devastating. It's like a nail in your heart, because the best death of all times in literature, is the death of Mrs. Ramsey. And it's really short. It's in brackets, and it's something like, and I'm not going to get it right, because I can never quote things right. It's something like "Mr. Ramsey coming into the hall in the morning reached out his arms for Mrs. Ramsey, but she, having died in the night, is not there." And it's like the worst thing ever. But it's so wonderful. So what I wanted to do is, I read it and I read it, and I read it, and what I loved about it, is that it's a way to bring what I was talking about earlier, the Greek sort of sense of larger time and smaller time at the same time into the same book. And so I have this granular human time with Lotto and Mathilde, and then this larger, almost elemental time in the voices of whatever you read it to be. I am, it's very specific to me what the voice is, but coming in almost like a hawk, and then swooping up the rabbit and going away, right? So that's the way I saw this voice as. Also, it serves to stitch the two books into one. Yeah. >> Great. >> Thank you for your question. Hi. >> May I ask a question about "Arcadia?" >> Yeah. >> First of all, it's such a lovely book. It's -- the language in it, your writing is so beautiful. I had to hand it over to friends to read whole passages. One of things I wanted to know was how you captured the communal life so vividly, and your descriptions of it were so -- what I imagined are true to life, and I was wondering what your process was in capturing that whole lifestyle and everything like that. >> Sure. So I have never been in a community like that. I've lived in one for three days, or a week or something. It was a very short amount of time. But when I write, I try to write out of longing, and at the time that I was writing that book, I was really isolated in Gainesville, Florida. I was pregnant and I had my son in a place where I didn't really know anybody but my mother-in-law and my husband, and I work alone, right? I am a hermit, basically, and I go outside to exercise, but that involves no people. So I was super, super disassociated from the rest of the world, and I longed to have a community of people who could take care of me, right? ^M00:40:04 And could take care of my kid when I needed a break. And so out of that longing, I guess, and out of my research -- I did a great deal of research for that book, particularly in terms of the farm, which is this commune in Tennessee that was amazingly successful for a long time. And Oneida, which was this other utopian-esque community in Upstate New York, super nuts. If you want to read about a really crazy commune, you, I mean, it's awesome. They did everything right and wrong. The right things they did were women were equal to men in the, you know, mid to late 19th century. The wrong things they did were eugenics, and, you know. And spiritual elders, men, having sex with 12-year-olds. So all of that. That's really wrong. So it collapsed under its own weight. I'm sorry. I went off course. But it's really fascinating. So I did a ton of research, and I imagined through longing my way into a community, which, in a way, is what I did with "Monsters," too, because I wanted to be home, I wanted to be in Cooperstown, and all I wanted to do was spend hours a day there. So, yeah, imagination, basically. Yeah, thank you. >> One more question. >> Oh, okay. >> Hi. I feel so privileged. So what I really loved about "The Fates and the Furies" was how you read it, and then you read it again, and there's just this total shift in perspective. And obviously every character is a facet of oneself. But how did you manage to make such distinguished characters with such different personalities, and how are you able to tap into that? >> Thank you. I wish I knew, if it were true, too. But I think it might have something to do with the way I write, because through writing layer after layer after layer, what I feel like I'm doing is actually creating this world that's almost three-dimensional. Almost like a 3D printer, right? So what happens then is that because you have this three-dimensional world, you can choose your path through it. And the path usually doesn't involve a lot of the side stories that I threw out, right? But those side stories are really important for the side characters in a lot of ways, and they're really important to sort of give information to the main characters, too. And eventually, if you do that enough, if you write enough layers, you believe these people are actually human beings. I mean, I remember once, I was in the middle of both "Arcadia" and "Fates and Furies," because I was writing them at the same time, and I was at the dinner table with my family, and I started laughing. My husband was like, what? And I was like, something that Lotto said today. And then I was like, wait a minute. He doesn't exist, this is crazy. But, like I said, it's hard to be married to me. But I guess that's, you know, I don't know, but I hope that that's why. >> Thank you so much for coming. >> Thank you. >> It's such a pleasure to talk to you. >> Thank you for having me. Thank you. >> This has been a presentation of The Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov.