>> Mark Sweeney:
This is inspiration.
A thousand people here, book
lovers and a wonderful program.
So welcome to the Inspiration
Stage at the Library of Congress
National Book Festival.
I'm Mark Sweeney, the principal
deputy librarian of Congress.
The festival's theme
Everyone Has a Story
celebrates the
story in all of us.
It's especially relevant
to this stage, which
begins with a road novel
and ends with this year's
Library of Congress Prize
for American fiction Winner.
In between, you'll learn about
nature, poetry and found
families. Discover how horror
helps us understand real world
problems. Understand the costs
of poverty and how the discovery
of cells helped
revolutionize science.
In other words, you'll
experience the vibrant range of
knowledge and creativity
today's writers offer.
The work that the Library of
Congress supports, collects and
celebrates. And welcome to
everyone who's joining us
online. We're glad
you're with us today.
I want to give a special
thanks to this year's
James Madison Council at
the Library of Congress,
which is supporting this stage.
The Madison Council is
comprised of public minded
philanthropists who advance the
library's effort to make our
vast collections more
accessible and dynamic.
As visionaries, champions
and ambassadors,
the Madison Council is a truly
a crown jewel of
our national library.
Our first event,
On "The Lincoln Highway:"
Historical Fiction
with Amor Towles
features the beloved
writer in conversation
with Crosby Kemper,
the director of the Institute of
Museum and Library Services,
which is a charter
sponsor of the festival.
Please join me
in welcoming both,
and I wish you
all a wonderful day
at the Library of Congress
National Book Festival.
Thank you.
[Applause]
>> Crosby Kemper: Good
morning. Thank you for coming.
So we thought since this is
the Inspiration stage,
that Amor would give you some
inspirational words
to start things off.
[Laughing]
>> Amor Towles:
I did want to open
with a little bit
of housekeeping.
Crosby and I are going
to have a conversation.
We hope to have time for
questions from the audience
as well. If we don't cover your
question today, you can always
go to AmorTowls.com.
And if you go to the contact
page, your questions and
comments come right to me.
Now, that's an amazing thing
about the modern era that's
possible. It has its drawbacks.
[Laughing]
So to give you sort of a
flavor, some of the comments
that come in are helpful,
some are not so helpful.
I want to give you
a flavor for that.
I wanted to share with you some
examples of some of the outreach
that I get now.
Importantly, at this stage,
when a novel of mine comes out
like the Lincoln Highway,
usually it takes about a week
for the corrections
to start rolling in.
[Laughing]
So to give you a sense of that,
here's an example.
Excuse me.
I received this about ten days
after the book came out.
Dear Mr. Towles, you start too
many sentences with I-N-G words.
[Laughing]
Now, that's not very helpful.
But the best part about
this email is how it ends.
Looking--
[Laughing]
Looking forward
to your next book.
[Laughing]
So here's one I like.
So in "The Lincoln Highway" late
in the novel, Emmett and his
friends are sort of gathered
in a fancy home in New York
for a fancy dinner.
Things go awry so late at night,
Emmett is alone in the kitchen,
a cleaning up sort of as an act
of penance.
And this is the email that
I received from Karen of
Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Karen writes.
On page 477, you describe how
Emmett was doing the dishes
saying that Emmett first washed
the plates, then the crystal,
then the pots.
As the winner of the 1973 Betty
Crocker Future Homemaker Award
[Laughing]
At my high school, I can tell
you with some authority that the
proper way to wash dishes
is first the crystal, then the
plates and finally the pots.
Thank you, Karen from Wisconsin.
[Laughing]
[Applause]
Yeah, exactly.
So here's a favorite.
So earlier in the novel,
Duchess and Wooly borrow
Emmett's car and
they're driving east on
the Lincoln Highway
through Iowa.
And when they get to Ames,
it's early in the morning.
They're just outside of Ames,
Iowa, and they run out of gas.
So Duchess gets out of the car
and he's looking up and down the
road and in the near distance,
he sees a liquor store and he
thinks, okay, at this hour
it's probably closed.
If I break in, I may find
some money in the till.
Failing that, I could at least
take some bottles of
whiskey and give them to a gas
station attendant in exchange
for gas. This is Duchess's plan.
And so here is the email
I received from Jane.
Pequot Lake, Minnesota.
There were no liquor stores
in Ames, Iowa, in 1954.
[Laughing]
Hard liquor and wine could only
be purchased at the county seat.
This meant that my parents,
who were heavy drinkers, had to
drive all the way to Boone.
Every week my mother and I
would drive to Boone to buy a
case of Gallo Wine, some Gallo
vermouth and a no name bourbon.
When you paid, the clerk would
produce a large ledger where you
had to write down your
purchases and sign it.
Now, the best part of this
email is the P.S.
P.S., I lived across
the street from Ms. Evans,
my fourth grade teacher.
She told my mom that
Mr. Harlan, our principal,
would review the
liquor store log
every week to see how much and
what his teachers were drinking.
[Laughing]
Now, Lincoln Highway has been
out for about a year and three
quarters, so we're wrapping
up the corrections phase,
everybody. But if you want to
let me know about your parents
drinking habits, you
are welcome to do so.
All right. Well, thank you.
Let's get started.
[Applause]
>> Crosby Kemper: So this
was something I was going to
ask you about later on.
But it does strike me
that it's appropriate after
reading the corrections.
And there's a lot about
WASP culture, maybe even a
particularly Episcopalian WASP
culture in your books,
particularly the Rules of
Civility and the Lincoln
Highway. And, you know, the
proper way to mix a cocktail
does make an appearance.
And the way you ornament the
rooms and grand and the
character and in rules of
civility and the decoration
of the Adirondack House that is
a destination in the book.
Is WASP culture
a target of yours?
Is it a background of yours?
Do you see it as a subject
of your of your books?
>> Amor Towles:
It's interesting.
So for those of you, for the
one person out there who doesn't
know, WASP stands for white
Anglo-Saxon Protestant, which is
sort of a tradition going back.
And I grew up in New England,
and so I do come from WASP
background, as it were. So I
suppose, yes, I am interested in
that culture and how it
operates, but I'm really
interested in all the various
threads of American life.
I think for many novelists
that's the case.
I'm interested in how, for
instance, in the case of the
Lincoln Highway, in thinking
about the book and designing the
book, you have the main hero,
Emmett, who is raised in the
Midwest on a farm.
You then have his two friends
from New York who have hidden in
the trunk of the warden's car
and who then suddenly appear at
Emmett's farm the day that he's
released from the juvenile
prison. And those two
characters, while both coming
from Manhattan, come from very
different parts of Manhattan.
One comes from sort of the
Upper East Side, a wealthier
background, a
cultured background.
He is a WASP with a long
sort of family heritage.
And then you have Dutchess, who
comes from a tougher part of
town from the Lower East Side,
raised by a father who was a
drinker and a bit of a con man
and surrounded by performers,
drinkers and con
men in his youth.
And so part of the nature of
the Lincoln Highway is an
examination of how these
different upbringings change,
the shape, who these
individuals are, these people
who are all born basically
within 12 months of each other
and have been raised sort of
side, not side by side, but have
been raised through the same
era, yet are very different
people. And an aspect of that
is their personalities, of
course. But a part of that
certainly is their upbringing
and the regions from which they
come and the way they've been
raised. And sort of the last
thing I'll say about this,
because I think it's a good
example, is I was speaking in
London and trying to give them
a flavor for this difference.
And because it doesn't, they're
not as aware of some of these
differences that most American
readers might be.
And so to make it clear, my
point was that if you look at
Emmett, he's raised in this
Midwestern tradition.
And one aspect of the
Midwestern tradition,
particularly on the plains, the
prairies, that those families
who moved out to the plains in
the mid 19th century and began
to establish those communities,
that was hard living.
These are empty land.
You're trying to build farms.
You had hard winters.
There were no services
anywhere near you.
You might be a mile
from your neighbor.
You might be five miles from
town when you were sort of
building your farm. And now
what that meant was, is that in
the Midwest, in that region,
you had to have a very good
relationship with your neighbor
because your neighbor may be
someone that you would rely on
and your life or a member of
your family's life may depend
upon you having a good
relationship with your neighbor
in a moment of crisis.
So there is this tradition in
the Midwest of sort of this
neighborliness, which is very
thoughtful and has been handed
down over the generations. And
you can see it in a character
like Emmett. Now, that's very
different from if you were
raised in New York City at the
same time, whether in the mid
19th century, the early 20th
century, where everybody's
packed in, there's immigrants
from all around the world,
there's a lot of poverty,
there's risk of crime.
You're living in
tenement houses,
In that environment,
your life may depend upon
distrusting your
neighbor, right?
When there's a knock on the
door at night, you don't open it
immediately and
say, Who's there?
Right. You'd say, Who is it and
why are you here and what are
you doing? And so that's a very
different kind of upbringing.
And so for me, yes, I am very
interested in the intricacy of
WASP culture and the sort of
the way in which it has ethics
and the way those are handed
down, the way the
shortcomings and advantages of
being a part of a culture like
that. But I'm equally
interested in these other ones.
What are the advantages and
disadvantages of being raised in
a religious family in the
Midwest? What are the advantages
and disadvantages of being
raised in a rough and tumble
family on the Lower East Side?
>> Crosby Kemper: It
does seem to me that rules
play a big role in the
characters lives,
whether they're WASP rules or
other kind of rules. So Emmett
has his own sense of paying
debt, of paying his debts off,
also of the rules around his
ownership, his
car, for instance.
Duchess also has a sense
of repaying debts.
There's a great scene
where he asked to be hit.
He asked to be beaten
up by townhouse,
who has his own set of rules.
Who's essentially a sort of
gang leader in New York.
So rules are something--
everyone has to live
by their own rules.
>> Amor Towles: Yes. Yeah.
And that's exactly right.
And that's sort of an extension
of that first part of
our conversation and
a central theme of
the Lincoln Highway.
And if you look at it, I
think a way of thinking about
this topic, a lens, an
important one in the case of the
book, is through the lens of
what it means to be a teen.
I think if you look back over
history anywhere in the world at
any time basically, the moment
between sometime between the age
of 16 and 19, let's say, is
this universal moment of
awakening, because wherever
you're from, between the age of
zero and 16, you
are being raised.
And as a result, you are
constantly being told what to do
and how the world works by
your parents, by the church,
by schools, by your
community at large.
That's the nature of being
raised as a young person.
And for the most part,
as young people,
we receive all of that
input pretty passively.
I mean, we take it at
face value, we assume it's
correct. And now the reason
that our parents and the church
and the schools are shaping us
are telling us these things when
we're young is to shape us.
They're trying to give us a
sense of how the world works and
what we should expect of
others, what we should demand of
ourselves, and ultimately
what is right and wrong.
This is all being communicated
to us on an ongoing basis.
Sometime around 16, 17, 18, 19,
we all have this moment of
recognition where we say, you
know, actually all these things
I've been told I don't have to
accept any of it.
Right? It may or
may not be true.
And in fact, I have both the
liberty and the responsibility
to make decisions about all
those things myself.
I can decide what America means.
I can decide how to think about
my involvement in religion.
I can ultimately decide
what I'm capable of,
who I want to spend
my time with.
And very importantly, I can
decide what is right and wrong.
And so this is a very central
part of this novel because as
you've pointed out, yes, you do
have Willy and Duchess and
Emmett, but you have Sally and
you have Townhouse and they're
all around 18 years old.
They're all going through this
transition where they're
beginning to look back and
deciding what have I been told,
what I've been handed down that
I want to keep consciously or
unconsciously. What do I want
to reject, consciously or
unconsciously, that I've been
told. And how do I begin to
start to shape my own sense of
the world and very importantly,
around these topics of
what is right and wrong?
>> Crosby Kemper: Interesting.
I think it's Katie and the rules
of civility who says
you create a world around
yourself by discovering who
shares your sense of right and
wrong. And in Lincoln
Highway, one of the
things that seems true is that
there's this sort of faded clash
of a sense of right and wrong
that duchess ultimately and
Willy, to some extent
don't have the same.
Willi is lost what he thought
was right in the world.
Might be one way
of describing it.
And Duchess has a very
different sense of right and
wrong than, say, Emmett
and Sally and Billy.
Okay. Glad we got
that question answered.
And so but, you know,
the interesting thing is,
you described the book.
It could be described as, you
know, it's a growing up
story. It's people learning
about themselves and learning
about right and wrong, learning
about the world buildings,
Roman, whatever you want
to call it, a road novel, etc.
But the one person who
always seems centered and
seems to know everything he
needs to know about the world,
even though he is continually
discovering and measuring what
the world does against what
he knows is Billy the youngest,
who's learned a lot of this,
obviously from reading,
particularly reading
a particular book by
a particular author whom
they go to visit.
And so the character of Billy
is, Does Billy represent you?
>> Amor Towles:
Oh, no. Oh, my God.
[Laughing]
I mean, I wish in many ways,
but no, I wasn't really like
Billy. I love the
character Billy.
Billy is Emmett's
younger brother.
Emmett is 18.
Their father has died.
Their mother is long gone.
And but he has an eight year
old brother who he cares for,
And so I think in imagining
the book and let me
take a quick step back, because
I think this would be
instructive and that's to give
you a flavor for how I work.
Usually I start with
a very simple notion.
In a book for me, I've been
writing since I was a kid.
I wrote fiction in high school
and college and graduate school.
And throughout my life I'll
have ideas for stories like
Guy gets trapped in a hotel
for a long period of time.
That's interesting.
[Applause]
So when I have a
notion like that, I'm like,
Yeah, that could be a book
That's interesting. Usually
it comes very quickly with I can
see aspects of it very quickly.
So and I mean like in
a matter of minutes.
So in that case, within a
matter of minutes I was like,
Oh yeah, it could
be set in Russia.
He could be an aristocrat
sentenced to house arrest in a
fancy hotel across the street
from the Kremlin.
And the story could span from
the revolution to the Cold War.
All that I knew within a matter
of minutes. In the case of the
Lincoln Highway, similarly, I
had this idea of two kids hidden
in the trunk of the warden's
car when the warden drives a
honorable young man home to.
And as soon as I had that idea,
I thought, Oh, great,
could be in the 50s.
He could be going to a home to a
farm that's in bankruptcy in the
Midwest. They could be from
New York, but from
different parts of the city. The
whole story could be ten days.
That comes very quickly.
Now, once I have that sense of
it, then what'll happen is I'll
just start to dwell on it.
And the dwelling process,
which I kind of call design,
it'll last a couple of years.
So I'll spend a couple of years
imagining the story in every
detail. I'll imagine everything
that happens, the settings,
the people and their backgrounds
slowly getting more intricate
and bigger picture of what the
novel will be in its entirety.
And only when I really know the
book from beginning to end,
would I consider starting
to write chapter one.
So I have this long
design process.
Now, in that process,
going back to Billy,
I start with these three boys.
You have the kid who's
returning to the farm, you have
the two kids in the trunk.
They're all 18, they've all
just done some time in a
juvenile prison is then you
start to imagine who else is in
this story. And for whatever
reason, immediately I was like,
Oh, yeah, Emmett's going to
have a younger brother.
And, you know, for any, I
think, writer, any storyteller,
there's a little bit of sort of
subconscious dynamic where as
you're populating a story with
either events or people or
spaces, there's this sort of
unspoken, unconscious sense of
balance that you're constantly
trying to create, trying to
create oppositions and balances
that will bring the story to
life. So it felt very natural
that this sibling would be eight
years old, and I didn't think
about that too much.
But in retrospect, I think the
reason I wanted to have this
eight year old is because of as
an opposition to what we were
talking about a minute ago,
this dynamic of being a teen
that I've gone on at some
length about sort of this
fashioning of the self,
becoming an adult, making
decisions for yourself,
defining the world on your own,
regardless of what
you've been told.
That's such a center point of
the story that it's nice to have
this counterpoint, which is
that a sibling who's still only
eight, where none of that is on
the table, where you have
instead sort of that
dynamic of youth, which is
very wide eyed and open and
assumes sort of the best in
people, has not been jaded.
It's not become suspicious,
is full of wonder.
And it just felt right that
that's going to be a part of the
story too is that if we're
going to have an opposition, two
siblings, it should be almost
those two parts of our lives
being put side by side.
And I do think that one of the
nice things about that, when you
meet siblings who are, say, ten
years apart is you can see how
the 18 year old is sort of
maybe raising the eight year
old, but the eight year old is
having great effect on the 18
year old at the same time,
reminding the 18 year old of
kind of sort of this
innocent, wide eyed, honest
viewpoint that a child can have.
>> Crosby Kemper:
That viewpoint actually,
the wild eyed wonder.
Wonder, is it a really
important ingredient
I think in your books,
you have magicians
wandering through the through
the book and they're they're
wonderful stories and stories
about the wonder that
that magic can do.
But but Billy actually controls
the motion of the story.
He convinces his brother and
his brother goes through this
elaborate analysis of
Texas versus California.
The population growth, etc.
But Billy nonetheless
convinces him
to go to California on the
Lincoln Highway, which of
course, they never get to. But
Billy is a kind of Vedic
character in the novel.
>> Amor Towles: I mean, for
those of you who read it,
part of the aspect
of the story is that
while he's a very sort
of quiet, thoughtful kid,
he has sort of an outsized
impact on those he meets.
So not only on Emmet,
but on Willie,
on Sally, on Ulysses, the black
American veteran who's middle
aged, on Abernathy,
Professor Abernathy.
The old writer that
Billy's sort of view of the
world reminds them all of
certain things which they have
forgotten and so therefore
shapes them all in an
important way.
>> Crosby Kemper: Yeah.
And the story of Ulysses.
There's the Ulysses in the book
who has his own odyssean
journey going on.
And he encounters this author
Young Billy who has had no,
you know, he's at the beginning
of his journey, but he's read
Abernathy's books.
And Abernathy is sitting in the
Empire State Building just being
surrounded by books
and writing books.
But then Ulysses comes into
this midst of the story,
and all of a sudden,
everybody's on an odyssey.
I mean, so I told Amory
that I wanted to talk about his
reading because in the Lincoln
Highway and other books,
there are lots and lots of
references to books and authors.
Emerson seems
particularly important.
And Thoreau, they
recur in the books.
What inspired you
to be a writer?
Are there other writers that
inspired you to be a writer?
Did you know this at
an early stage of life?
>> Amor Towles: I did. I decided
I wanted to be a writer
in first grade when
I started reading.
So and we had just been
learning how to read whatever
and actually what happened.
This is true. I
was in first grade.
Mrs. Gorme, our teacher,
invited a poet who was a friend
of hers to come and read to us.
He was a juvenile poet, meaning
he wrote poetry for the
young, and he was probably 60
years old and named David
McCord. And he read his poems
and he had the books.
We could buy his books
at the end of this day or
whatever. And I just remember
thinking, this is so cool.
I mean, this is amazing,
this guy and the poems.
And and so I went home and
you know, got some of his
poetry and I was reading it.
And then, like, within a day or
two, I began trying to write
poems like his poems.
And that was it. From that
point on, it was kind of read,
write, read, write and repeat.
And and my whole life has
been like that ever since.
Reading, and writing
have always been
like that for me.
Bound. Now I think one thing
that's interesting in terms of--
So as a result the history
of literature is very
interesting to me and it
definitely infuses my work and
maybe, maybe I overdo that.
But but in the case of the
Lincoln Highway, I think one of
the interesting things about it
in this context is that,
you know, some people
say, oh, it's a road book.
I really think of it as a
journey novel.
And the reason I make that or a
journey story, the reason I make
that distinction is that if we
look at Western culture,
at least the journey narrative
is one of the oldest and most
important narratives in the
Western tradition.
And so if we go back to the
beginning of the Western
tradition, Greece, you know,
classical Greece, the peak of
narrative writing in classical
Greece is Homer's odyssey when
Ulysses, having won the Trojan
War, is trying to get home to
his kingdom, and it takes him
ten years to make the journey
home. That is sort of the
peak of writing in Greece.
In the Roman Empire,
the peak of narrative writing
is the Aeneid, Virgil's epic,
which is Aeneas having lost the
Trojan War, having had his city
destroyed, much of his culture
destroyed, sets out on a journey
to go find a new home for the
last remaining members of his
tribe, as it were.
But again, it's a journey story.
In the beginning of English
literature, you have Chaucer's
Canterbury Tales with the
Pilgrims on their walk, trading
stories and observations, in
Spanish history, the beginning
of serious narrative
writing in Spain.
And really many think it's the
beginning of the novel is
Cervantes "Don Quixote,"
which is a journey story.
And in English and
American English.
Excuse me. Right at the
beginning, as the American
vernacular is becoming a
serious language for literary
writing. We begin with Melville
writing Moby Dick, which is a
journey story because as soon
as Ishmael gets on the Pequod
early in the book, he never
gets off again until the final
page. So what is it about this?
Why do writers throughout the
Western tradition over centuries
continue to return again and
again to the journey story?
And I think it's a
pretty basic thing.
I think it's what any of us
would assume, which is that.
Narrative writing is really
about the transformation of
individuals. It's about how an
individual or a few individuals
face obstacles, how they
overcome those obstacles by
making decisions
and taking actions.
Their actions then have
repercussions which then has an
ethical component.
And because of all this, they
themselves undergo a
transformation. This is at the
heart of most storytelling
in one form or another.
And so the journey was a very
natural story to take because
it's sort of a metaphor for the
whole internal transformation.
We take that internal journey
and then we stretch it out
across space and we see the
obstacles and we do the
overcoming. And so it's sort of
a natural thing to turn to. Now
as the novel evolved, what
ended up happening is that you
get to like Henry James or
Edith Wharton, and it's still
the same thing. It's just the
journey is from like the bedroom
to the parlor, you know, that's
the journey, you know.
And there's this
many like crises
and monsters and discoveries
along that road,
as there would be for, you
know, Ahab crossing the ocean.
>> Crosby Kemper: So I
want to go back to Emerson
to relate it to
what you just said.
One of his famous essays,
of course, is Fate and your
character, Some of your
characters seem particularly
Duchess and Wooly.
I would say, are fated
or tinker in rules of
civility. Their their character
becomes their fate.
And they can't overcome it.
And on the other hand, there
are other characters who seem to
be able to do that. Is that is
that the lesson
that we're meant to learn?
>> Amor Towles:
Well, I think wrestling--
I'm not trying to give any
lessons, but I am interested in
describing the human
experience. And and so I think
that we all are wrestling
to some degree with that
dynamic. To what degree
are we stuck in a rut which
defines how we're
going to end up?
To what degree can
we change things?
To what degree
suddenly are we fated?
Do we feel that we're fated to
end up in a certain way?
We're all wrestling
with where are we going?
How how successfully can we
shape our own experience?
How can we change the
outcomes in our lives?
And what are the forces that
are kind of getting in the way
of our efforts to do so?
Do we have the wisdom to even
make the right decisions to
begin with? You know, these are
things that we're all wrestling
with. And so I think that both
in my writing, but I think in
the novel in general, that
tends to be a core topic.
>> Crosby Kemper: And so another
notion that's kind of in the
middle of the book, though
it starts out expressing
it earlier on is Billy's been
told at some point I guess by
reading the book that we
have to find the middle of the
journey. We have to know the
middle of the journey.
And here's this eight year old
kid who's wondering, how do I
find the middle of the journey?
And I wonder if in your life,
having been a really
major change, which you don't
want to talk about, you told me
so we won't talk about it.
[Laughing]
A huge change
in the middle of your life.
Are your characters
experiencing the same thing you
experienced this middle
of the journey thing?
Dante esque. You
know what I mean?
>> Amor Towles: What he's
talking about is I was in the
investment business
for 20 years,
and so I wanted to
be a writer as a kid.
I was in the investment
business for 20 years.
I wrote Rules of Civility
while still on the job.
And then when that book
came out, I retired from the
investment business, and I've
been a writer full time ever
since. And I just said, I've
talked about that before.
I don't need to talk about that
again. So yeah, I didn't want
you to think that some
incredible thing had happened.
[Laughing]
But yeah, you know,
I'm 58 years old, so.
So, yeah. Midlife
or I'm past midlife.
But, of course, as you age,
you're thinking about
the world from your own angle
and sort of thinking about
how do these different sort of
moments of transformation occur
in your life. And, you know, I
feel very lucky to have had the
transformation that I have had.
>> Crosby Kemper: Another
sense you get from the books is
that our past is our fate,
that the past is always with us.
Each of these characters again,
even Billie has it in
the sense that his fate is
driven by this book he's read by
the author. Ultimately,
instead of going to
California, they go to an
office building and
called the Empire
State Building.
And so fate in that
sense plays a role.
It's also interesting to me
that the books are full of
monuments and special places,
the Statue of Liberty,
Times Square, places that
to go to on the journey
are really important
icons, if you will.
Is that something you
consciously do or these things
have been important
in your life?
>> Amor Towles: I haven't really
thought about that very much.
I think it is true when you're
kind of imagining a story and
I'm going through the
design process and you're
sort of asking yourself, where
are they going to end up?
It's sort of natural to have
sort of aspects of the--
Of, in essence, the national
architecture start to appear as
a part of the story
because again, there's a
balanced dynamic. You know that
a portion of story is going to
be in a very intimate
private space.
In this case, they end up at
this family home in the
Adirondacks and which is sort
of defined by a very particular
family's tradition.
And as I say, it's very intimate
in that way that a home
can be with its own photographs
and its own furniture and
they own sort of tradition of
the family visiting there.
So you have that kind of thing,
but then you sort of have
but out there is the Empire
State Building, right?
And that even though most of us
have never been in it, we all
know what it is. And somehow it
defines a whole array of things
for us. It defines New York
City, yes, but it also defines
sort of a sense of
American aspiration.
You know, it built in
the depression
around that time.
It sort of comes out of that
tradition and this sort of
beautiful architecturally and
then inside it are thousands of
people doing 1000 different
jobs all packed into that one
building. So, as I say,
it's very natural.
I think as you're designing
something is to sort of have
this dynamic where you're
you're interested in comparing
these different kinds of spaces,
those which are national
in shape and that have
intricate built in metaphors
against those which are
going to be very private.
And no one would know what
they look like until they're
described for the reader
for the first time.
>> Crosby Kemper: I get a sense
that getting outside of your
own past into a larger past, the
world's past in whether it's
Times Square, the
Statue of Liberty,
the Empire State Building, or
going to Lincoln Park on the
Lincoln Highway that Billy wants
to do, that sets them off on
this journey, sort of
versus what Willie and the
duchess are involved in.
Duchess has to take-- His
journey has to go back to
the orphanage.
He has to go back to the past
and somehow try to correct
the past. And Willie can
never correct his past.
There's a sense of-- he's the
most faded character
in the book. So
getting out of your past
also seems to be a big part
of the journey.
>> Amor Towles:
Yeah, that's true.
And I think that's you know,
we live in a generation where
a lot of young people grow up
or move you know, you think
about for 1000 years if you
were born in a town, you
probably stayed in that town
and you did what your father or
mother did for a living, and
you raised children among their
cousins and you stayed
there from you were born there,
you died there. And we've
become a society where
we're very mobile.
And we have three children.
And you're lucky if one stays
in your state, you know,
two go drift out. And that's a
wonderful thing, of course,
about the modern era in many
ways as individuals kind of
go out and carve their own path.
But it does create this sort of
very interesting tension in
modern life, which is I have
the freedom to go out and start
entirely fresh.
But on the other hand, I have
some strengths that I gain from
my family and from my tradition
and do I put those at risk
when I go out and
forge my own path?
Or if you have individuals who
are like, get me out of here,
this is killing me, this town
or this or what my parents
expect of me or the mores
of where I was raised.
And I want to go and do
something different.
And so both of these things are
happening in modern American
society and have been
dominating our lives for about
100 years. And I find that
very interesting topic as well.
>> Crosby Kemper:
So you have a child or children?
>> Amor Towles: I have a son
and daughter, both college age.
>> Crosby Kemper: Because the
journey is so important
in your books and
we've talked about
the nature of that journey.
Do you think about your
children when you're writing?
Do you think about telling a
story to them that tells them
something about life?
>> Amor Towles: I never
think about my children
while I'm writing.
[Laughing]
I know. It's terrible.
I know it's terrible.
But that's true.
It's true. You know,
part of the writing process.
And I think this is
true for many, is that
you get lost in it, you know,
that's part of what happens.
It's not a very
friendly practice,
you know, because you're like,
I'm not thinking about
anybody or the world or
readers or commerce or family or
anything. At its best,
you immerse yourself into
the world that you're
inventing, and that takes over
100% of your consciousness.
And and that's when
things are going well.
And, you know, I'm an outliner.
I outline in great detail
before I write my books.
I know everything that's going
to happen, chapter by chapter,
scene by scene,
setting by setting.
And there's a reason for that.
And it's a little
counterintuitive, so I'll share
that. And the reason I'm such a
serious outliner.
It's because I'm particularly
interested in how the
imagination and the
subconscious can infuse the
language of my storytelling to
make the work more rich.
And the counterintuitive part
here is that if I am about to
write a chapter and I don't
know what's going to happen,
what's going to happen is, is
that the left side of my
brain, which is the decision
making, problem solving part of
the brain is going to have to
take over because I'm going to
have to sit there and figure
out, okay, who's in the scene?
Where are they from? What
does the room look like?
What happens next?
Why does it happen?
What do they mean by that?
And it kind of dominates
the writing process
suddenly, that kind of thought
process, which is not ideal from
an artistic standpoint for me.
So if I can figure all that out
in advance, what that means is
that when I go into the
writing, I can allow my
subconscious to take over.
Since I know what's going to
happen, I know what the room
looks like, I know
who the people are.
Then I can really just sort of
follow what are my whims are in
terms of how I express
the different moments.
And I can allow the characters
themselves to sort of come more
to life. I can be
surprised by what they do.
I can be surprised
by what they say.
I can be surprised by the
phrasing that suddenly presents
itself into my imagination.
And so there is this
counterintuitive dynamic, which
is that I do the outlining in
order to maximize the unexpected
aspect of the poetic process.
And I do not think about my
children while I'm doing that.
[Laughing]
Now, believe it or not, we're
down to like 3 or 4 minutes
here. This is like
a train station.
I know. I did want to share one
thing with you before we have to
go. And that is, I want
to talk to you a little bit
about the role of history in my
work, which is partly what
I guess the headline is today.
But more broadly, I think
it's an interesting and
important topic.
And to give you a sense
of the role of history in my
work, an analogy is
the best way, I think.
So what I want you to imagine
is that you're at a play.
You're sitting in the
audience at a theater.
Let's say it's Chekhov.
Let's say it's the Cherry
Orchard, which is going to be
performed. And you're sitting
there in the audience. Now,
when you look out from the
audience across the stage,
what you're seeing on the
stage is the living room
of a wealthy Russian estate.
Nice furniture, mahogany, etc.
And at the back of the
room are some French doors.
And through the French doors in
the distance, you can actually
see the cherry orchard, which
is in bloom because it's spring.
So you can see the white and
pink petals in the distance.
Now, when you're in a theater
and you're looking across the
stage and you see the cherry
orchard through the French doors
at the back of the stage, of
course, what you are actually
looking at is a painted canvas,
because that's the way we do it
in the theater. We might have
an actual French doors, but
behind that we're going to drop
a canvas, which we've painted
the Cherry Orchard.
So that's what we're going to
be witnessing now when the team
paints the cherry Orchard
so you can see it.
They're not going to paint it
in a hyper realistic style
because that would
look weird to the eye.
Instead, they'll use probably
an impressionist style.
They'll paint it as Monet might
have or Renoir might have,
in such that it's a little hazy
and by doing so, that looks
natural because it's in the far
distance, but also it gives that
feeling of the afternoon light.
We can almost see the petals on
the trees moving in the breeze
because of that painting style.
Now in front of that, you have
the French doors on either side
of the French doors on the
stage, you have a mahogany
bookcases over here,
which are built out of
plywood and painted
to look like mahogany.
And over here you have
a stairway that goes
nowhere. And over here you've
got a doorway that goes nowhere.
That's a part of the set.
But now in front of the stage is
an actual table surrounded by
actual chairs on which there is
an actual China Tea Service.
And it's very important that
these things be actual because
let's say the scene is a young
woman is sitting having tea by
herself and her brother comes
through the door and you can see
that he's in high emotion.
And when he sits with his
sister intending to speak with
her, we want to hear him
dragging, pulling back
the chair, the legs, the wooden
legs scraping across the wooden
surface of the stage.
And as he pulls himself up and
when he starts to describe what
he's thinking and sharing
his opinions with his sister and
he smacks the table with his
palm for emphasis, we want to
hear the physicality of that
palm hitting the wood of the
table and the sister when she
has been listening very
patiently to her brother when
she sets down her tea cup before
responding, we want to hear
that delicate clink of the China
Cup on the China saucer, which
is almost an expression of her
patience with her brother.
This is all very important
to the theatricality
of the stage to bring the scene
to life for us as members of the
audience. Now, this is exactly
the way that my work is layered
and constructed.
History for me is
the painted backdrop.
It's way back there.
It is not painted
in a realistic style.
It's painted in an
impressionist style because
history is only there
to give you a sense of
mood, a sense of time,
a sense of place.
But really, that's it.
Now, in front of that, in my
work is a lot of mahogany
painted, sorry, a lot of plywood
painted to look like mahogany.
You know, it's stuff where you
read it, you can't tell,
is this thing real
or is this fake?
I can't quite tell, you know,
and I love that.
That's a great thing that in my
work that you might have that
moment where you're not sure,
but in front of all that
is the table and chairs.
And that has to feel
very real to you.
I want it to feel
very real to you.
So real that as the brother and
sister to begin to talk, I want
you to feel like you are
sitting at that table, that you
are close enough and attentive
enough that you can hear the
slight variations in their tone
of voice, and you can see the
slight shifts in the expression
of their faces as they exchange
their sentiments
and their ideas.
And I want that to be
very real to you, because
that's where the action is.
Thank you.
[Applause]
Thank you. Thank you very much.
[Music]
[Music]