[ Music ]
>> Carla Hayden:
Hello, everyone.
Just a quick welcome, and I hope
you are enjoying the National
Book Festival.
I'm Carla Hayden the Librarian
of Congress and you are
in for a treat with
Colson Whitehead.
He is the recipient of the
Library of Congress' award
for American fiction, and you
will hear him in conversation
with the library's literary
director and a person
who has helped make
this possible
that we are all here
together: Marie Arana.
>> Rob Casper: Thank
you, Dr. Hayden.
Hello and welcome to the
National Book Festival.
My name is Rob Casper from
the Library of Congress.
I'm here with the 2020
Library of Congress Prize
for American Fiction
winner Colson Whitehead,
whose featured book at the
festival is The Nickel Boys.
If you would like to see
Colson's presentation
at the festival with
Marie Arana,
log in to
nationalbookfestival.com.
You'll find it on
the fiction stage.
We're so excited to
have you here, Colson.
Welcome to the National
Book Festival!
>> Colson Whitehead: Howdy!
Nice to be with all y'all
in this virtual space.
Hope everyone's snug at
home and happy and going
to have a nice day
at the festival.
>> Rob Casper: Yeah, yeah!
We're excited to start
things out right with you.
So please, if you have
questions, send them in.
They will be voted for content,
and I'll do my best to get
as many to them --
many of your questions
to Mr. Whitehead as I can.
Let's just start by talking
about how one begins
a historical novel
such as Nickel Boys.
How you work with research
and with the discoveries
of the facts therein to
build a fictional world.
>> Colson Whitehead: Yeah, well,
in terms of building a world
it's like any other book.
My first novel, it sounds a bit
ill advised, was about a group
of elevator inspectors, and I
had to make elevator inspectors
into a really important
force in this big city.
And so that means, you know,
marshaling information,
revealing the world,
building the rules
of how the department
works and the city works.
And it's the same thing with
a novelist based in history.
How much of a historical
fact do you want to keep in?
Where do you want
to depart from it?
How are you creating realistic
world for elevator inspectors?
How are you creating realistic
world of the plantation
of a reform school in the 1960s?
And so, you know, for me, like
the first quarter of the book
where I'm introducing the
characters and the rules
and the language is
really important,
and it's the same whether it's a
historical novel or totally made
up like the intuitionist or
my zombie novel Zone One.
>> Rob Casper: Interesting thing
you brought up a couple of books
in addition to the Nickel Boys.
Fran asks: what has been
your most challenging writing
project, by which
I take or mean,
what's been the most challenging
book you've taken on in writing?
>> Colson Whitehead:
They're all pretty hard.
You know, this book is
hard because you're broke,
this book is hard because you're
depressed, so next book is hard
because you're broke
and depressed.
So [inaudible] to have
to whatever conditions
are on the ground.
And because I switch genres
a lot, I'm trying to figure
out how to write a
historical novel,
how to write a apocalyptic
novel with Zone One,
how to write a realistic
autobiographical novel
with my book Sag Harbor.
I'm just trying to plug my whole
backlist so you guys pick up
and [inaudible] Yeah, so.
>> Rob Casper: That's funny.
>> Colson Whitehead: So they're
all hard in their own way.
>> Rob Casper: Yeah, yeah.
Is there a genre that you
feel most comfortable in?
That's Kitty's question, and
I wonder, you've done so much
in these different genres.
Or is there one that you
enjoy more than others?
>> Colson Whitehead: It's
always the last, the last book.
And so I finished the book in
June, it's coming out next year.
Again, I'm plugging
all the books.
Everything I've written,
I'm plugging here.
And it takes place
in Harlem in the 60s.
And so because I live with that
voice for a year and a half,
it's very comfortable to me, and
I know how the narrator talks,
I know how the characters act.
And so, you know, when
people ask me, you know,
what's my favorite book,
it's always the one I've just
finished or the one I'm thinking
about starting because that's
where most of my interests are.
Will it work?
Did it work?
I'm glad I didn't screw it up,
and I can just sort of bask
in the fine accomplishment
of finishing a book.
>> Rob Casper: Well, I
want to get to talking
about the Nickel Boys,
although I know you've worked
on a new project since then,
but two of our audience members,
Rona and, let's see, Serena
basically asked questions
about how you deal with
writing a very difficult scenes
and how you take care of
yourself after doing so.
And I know this is part of the
conversation you had with Marie,
maybe you could go talk
a little bit about that.
>> Colson Whitehead:
Yeah, well, I mean,
I usually write a
more serious book
and then a lighter
book with more jokes.
You know, both those directions
I talk about, you know --
both the serious and the
humorous address different parts
of my personality.
I followed up the Nickel Boys --
I followed up the Underground
Railroad with the Nickel Boys,
and those are two sort of books
that deal with heavy topics.
So that was new for me, and
definitely towards the end
of Nickel Boys I
felt very depleted.
I think if I was angry
or sad every day,
I couldn't create art.
And so the subject of slavery,
the subject of the abuse
in a reform school had to be
held at a distance on a day
to day, you know, basis.
Other -- and then
weird things happen.
With Underground Railroad, I can
write about the abuse every day
and the plantation brutality,
and then one day I thought, oh,
I'll watch Twelve Years a Slave.
I hadn't seen it.
Maybe I'll get some
slang or a period detail,
and I couldn't watch it.
I could put it on
the page every day
but couldn't see actors going
through what I was
describing, it was too painful.
So I've never finished
that movie
and it will be a while
before I [inaudible]
in the time of slavery.
And with the Nickel
Boys, you know,
the last six weeks
were very hard.
I think just I was so invested
in the boys and I set them
on this course two years before,
and as I approached the
end I felt very bad.
I felt a duty to the real life
survivors of the school not
to mess up their story.
It's not a direct historical
representation, but I want to,
you know, address the truth
of what happened to them.
And I did feel, you know,
very exhausted and depressed.
And in that case, my form
of self-care was playing
video games for six weeks,
and cooking, grilling and
smoking meat, big hunks of meat
for the rest of the summer.
So we all find our
ways to decompress.
For me it's video games,
goofing off and cooking.
>> Rob Casper: Well, speaking
of cooking, right now,
the most popular question
with 17 votes is from Nikki,
which is: knowing you love
to cook, is there meal
or favorite recipe you would
pair with any of your books?
Which I have to say is one
of the most unique
questions I have ever,
I've ever encountered
for a fiction writer.
>> Colson Whitehead: Pair?
Yeah, well, I think
in Sag Harbor --
I guess the last couple
of books have had a lot
of grilling in them.
So Sag Harbor, there's
a very traumatic scene
where the dad is
grilling chicken wings
and being sort of a jerk.
So I think overcooked chicken
wings go with Sag Harbor.
There's a barbecue scene
in Underground Railroad.
So if you have a backyard,
I would dig a fire
pit and roast a pig.
Just get a pig from your
local, you know, pork sourcer,
make a fire pit, and do
a slow cook on a big,
on a big piece of pork.
>> Rob Casper: That
sounds great and yummy.
>> Colson Whitehead: I
probably need more vegetables.
I'm trying to, you know, be more
part of a vegetarian, you know.
>> Rob Casper: Well, it's time
to write a book that, you know,
incorporates more
vegetables or vegetarianism.
So let's talk about
just the beginning
of your writing career.
How you how you started out.
I know there was a
question that I saw.
Let's see, where is it?
I'm not sure who it was from.
We have so many questions
right now.
But just about sort
of how you got,
how you got the Intuitionist
published, you know,
your road to becoming
a novelist.
>> Colson Whitehead: Sure, yeah.
I mean, you know, from the
time I was really young,
I wanted to write.
I was a big Marvel Comics
fan and a Stephen King fan.
You know, my mom would buy the
latest Stephen King every year.
I would make the rounds of the
house, and I remember being
in fifth grade reading
Night Shift, his big book
of short stories and thinking:
wouldn't it be cool just
to write stories about
vampires and werewolves?
My apprenticeship as
a writer was working
at The Village Voice, being
a journalist, a critic,
and writing every
day -- every week.
Writing to different editors.
Writing as my own boss.
You know, if I don't
write my article,
no one cares, I just don't eat.
And so I learned how to sit
down for five hours
and be productive.
And all those lessons of
collaboration of editors
and time management
that I learned
as a journalist still
served me now.
And so I was freelance.
I had time to work
on my own stuff.
I was working on a novel,
and everyone hated it.
I got an agent, sent out to 25
editors, they all passed on it,
and I was very depressed.
And I think that's when I became
a writer because I was like,
I'm not going to get a
straight job, I'm not going
to become a lawyer or a doctor.
I don't like lawyers.
I'm not going to become
a vet, I hate animals.
So I'm stuck with writing.
I'm just going to
write another book,
and maybe this one will
take off or maybe it won't.
And maybe it'll take four
books before they're published,
but each time I'll get a
little better at writing.
And so my first book that
everyone hated was first person,
so I thought, oh, what
about a third person novel?
I'll learn how to write
a third person narrator.
A female protagonist, I
had not done that before.
I'll be forced to step out
of my comfort zone of sort
of New York, 20-something
hipster,
and that became the
Intuitionist.
It takes off from detective
fictions, there's a linear plot,
and I thought, well, maybe
I'll try a book with plot.
People seem to like that because
no one liked my first book.
Certainly it can't hurt
to write a book with plot.
And so I set up challenges for
myself: a female protagonist,
the third person narrator,
a more linear novel,
and that became the
Intuitionist.
And my agent dumped me
after my book didn't sell,
and I found another
woman named Nicole Aragi
who was just starting out.
She was representing a lot
of young writers of color,
like Junot Diaz,
Edwidge Danticat,
and she got the book immediately
and that was a start.
And so, basically, you've got to
stick with it because no one --
no one cares, basically.
No one cares if you're not going
to write your book,
so you have to do it.
No one else is going
to do it for you.
So write the first page
and you're one page
closer to the end.
Write five more pages,
you have six pages,
you're that much
closer to the end.
Whether -- if I can
see the end in sight,
I'm making progress, I'm happy.
So whether it's like a
children's birthday party
or a novel, if I'm making
progress towards the end,
I feel good.
>> Rob Casper: I just want
to follow with a question
from Catalina that's
related to this.
She asks: can you speak
of the role of discipline
and organization into your
writing process for a book?
>> Colson Whitehead:
Right, I mean, you know,
people have their own processes,
some people have
to right every day.
That seems like a big
imposition on my time.
I don't want to write every
day, but if I can do, you know,
eight pages a week, it could
be Monday, Tuesday and Saturday
and Sunday, I'm pretty happy.
Eight pages after a
month, that's 30-something,
after a year that's
300-something,
and that's like a novel.
So, again, you know, every
paragraph is bringing it closer
to your realized vision.
Other strategies
-- I outline a lot.
I think in sixth grade my
English teacher said, you know,
have a topic sentence
and organize your
paper before you start.
And so I organize my books
before I start in this,
you know, sort of dorky way.
And I have to know the
beginning and the ends.
The middle can be, you
know, not as realized.
I might not know all the
names of the characters
or how they talk, but I know
the beginning and the end.
And things change as
I get further along,
and the book changes,
the characters change,
but I have to know the ending.
And so for me, outlining
is very important.
For some people, they
just write every day
and like the muse
comes and, you know,
is like whispering plot
points in your ear and dialog.
The [inaudible] are
talking to you.
Doesn't happen to me.
There's no muse in New York.
You know, the muse is
trapped on the seven train,
there's a trash fire,
can't get to my house,
so I have to have an outline.
And each day when I
start it's, you know,
Introduce Superintendent
Spencer,
describe the school
grounds, introduce Turner,
the Christmas pageant.
And those are like
one or two page --
one to three page
daily assignments.
And I'm just going linear --
in a linear fashion
through my outline.
But again, you know,
everyone works their own way.
So whatever works for
you, you should do.
>> Rob Casper: As a followup,
Brenda asks about
the editing process.
And, you know, it's
be interesting to talk
about in terms of how
you've worked with Nicole
and the editors at your presses,
but also if you've ever been
asked to change something,
a line or a paragraph, that
you felt strongly about,
how you negotiated that.
>> Colson Whitehead: You see,
it's a collaboration, you know.
I trust my editors' talents.
I trust my vision for the book,
and if there's something
I want to keep, I keep it.
If there's something my
editor feels strongly about,
we'll discuss it
and I'll change it.
You know, nothing I do is so
precious that it can't benefit
by other people's input.
And so -- and I think being a
journalist helped me with that.
You know, the music editor has
this type of stuff they like,
the book editor has this type
of thing, the TV editor likes it
if you drop like highbrow terms
because this is the early 90s.
So like if you're talking
about TV in a highfalutin way
in '93, he really liked that.
And so each editor had
their own sort of shtick,
and I became aware of the
first person who's going
to read my article, and that's
a good, I think, way to be.
Like not just out there
performing for yourself.
I mean, you are, but
someone is going to see it,
and you should be aware
of the reader's passage
through the article,
through the book.
You're massaging their travel
through your manuscript,
and I think it helps to be
aware that it's not just you,
other people are
going to see it.
>> Rob Casper: Here's a really
interesting question that's
specific to historic
fiction from Rebecca.
She says: on language, how
do you think about getting
into speech patterns that ring
true to us as modern readers
but are also true to
the historical time?
>> Colson Whitehead: Yeah,
I mean, I read a lot of,
read a lot of primary sources,
and so the cadences and rhythms
of speech and slave
narratives were very helpful
for Underground Railroad.
I think I've always
been good at slang
and like impersonating people,
so it's not as hard with a book
that takes place in the 60s.
You know, I was born in
'69, but obviously a lot
of the pop culture I encountered
in my early years
was from the 60s.
But, you know, Negro
versus Afro-American
versus African-American, where
color versus color, where --
in 1963, when the Nickel Boys
takes place, where are we
on that journey through
black identifiers.
With the Underground Railroad,
I was reading slave narratives
and keeping vocabulary lists.
The word scourge, for example.
Scourge in contemporary
vocabulary is a sort
of hated person object,
despised.
It kept coming up as a verb
in these slave narratives,
so I look it up and
scourge in the 1850s means
to flog or beat somebody.
And so scourge starts to enter
the vocabulary of the book
as a synonym for
beating and flogging.
It's sort of grim
work, but, you know,
why do they call the highway
-- you call it a road,
a highway, a -- you know.
So language changes
and if you --
for me going through primary
sources gets me acquainted
with how speech has
changed over time,
and then how can I
use it for my book.
>> Rob Casper: Thanks.
>> Colson Whitehead: Oh, I
guess there's one more thing.
Like I think I did okay
with Underground Railroad.
I got a letter five
years later from somebody
who said they were doing
the Times crossword puzzle
and it said that the word
blizzard came into being
like in the 1880s, which is
sort of after the timeframe
of Underground Railroad.
But I was not gonna change it
because it was too
late and who cares?
So, there you go.
>> Rob Casper: Totally.
Mimi asked a question that is
sort of the opposite, which is:
as you write, how influential
is your present day situation
in your writing?
What do you do to shut it out
since you've been a journalist?
And I think this is
especially relevant
to the language you're hearing,
the topics you're hearing,
the tensions in the air.
>> Colson Whitehead:
Well, I really --
I'm really in character
when I'm writing a book,
and I'm really concerned
with this narrator I've
created and the world.
And sometimes the world,
the real world is intruding
on the reality of the
book, and sometimes not.
And so Underground
Railroad had nothing to do
with what was going
on in America.
There are resonances
between slave patrols
and contemporary
law enforcement,
but that's just there.
I didn't have to stress that.
I wasn't thinking about law
enforcement in 2014, 2015.
The parallels between those
two different periods were
just there.
I didn't have to
elaborate upon them.
With the Nickel Boys,
I was thinking about --
it takes place in '63,
but I was just in a place.
I was writing in 2017,
2018 and wondering if we're
on the right path as a
country, should be pessimistic
or optimistic about the
direction the country is
going in.
And that problem I was wrestling
with is in the book in terms
of the main characters,
Elwood and Turner,
with their optimistic and
pessimistic views of the world.
And so there's a bit
of contemporary America
in this book, [inaudible] 1963.
So it really depends on
the particular project
and whether contemporary
concerns are important to it
or whether it's in
a weird bubble.
You know, my book about New
York is a series of essays
about the city and definitely
the specter of 9/11 is in there.
I wrote it in 2003.
But there's no sort of real --
there's emotional
emanation of 9/11 in there,
but there's nothing really
about contemporary times
that informs the book.
And so sometimes it's there
and sometimes it's not.
>> Rob Casper: Yeah.
Edward says that his book club
will be reading the Nickel Boys
in October, and he asks:
what would you like to say
to us about your book?
>> Colson Whitehead:
It speaks for itself.
I think if I tried to pick it up
if there is something I wanted
to add, I would have
put it in the book.
I hope you enjoy it.
If I could summarize, you
know, sometimes I'm asked,
what was I trying to say?
And if I could have said
it, you know, in four lines,
it would have been a
tweet or, you know,
it would've been an essay
if it took four paragraphs.
So thanks for picking it
up, and I hope you enjoy it.
>> Rob Casper: Yeah.
There have been a
couple of questions
about the Underground Railroad
being made into a film.
People are eager to
hear if that's happening
and what's happening with that.
Do you have any news
on that front?
>> Colson Whitehead: Yeah!
It's been a crazy journey.
You know, it's the first
time I had a book adapted.
Usually my books have too many
black people to be attempted
by Hollywood, but
things are changing.
And, you know, it was out for
a month, and Barry Jenkins,
who did Moonlight,
wanted to adapt it
and Moonlight hadn't
come out yet.
So I just saw like on my --
I got a link on my computer to
watch Moonlight on like a four
by four inch window on my
computer and I was blown away.
And he had a really
great vision for it.
And so it's being done by Amazon
Studios, it's 10 episodes.
They shot 113 days and then had
to stop because of the pandemic.
And then just in the last
month, they went back
and got [inaudible]
last three days.
So it's done, they're
editing, and it will come
out next year, supposedly.
So it's very exciting.
I've seen some footage.
I went down to the set
right before it shut down,
and it was just amazing to
see 150 people, you know,
running around filming, trying
to be faithful to something
that I wrote five years
before like in my underwear,
in my office, depressed.
And then like suddenly it
just becomes this huge thing.
So I didn't work on it.
People sort of asked, you
know, if I'd worked on it,
I would not have
written the Nickel Boys.
So I think I use my time well.
I had one suggestion that
they did not pick up on.
I, you know, there's an
actor named Walton Goggins
who usually plays like the
sort of redneck white guy,
and I suggested that Barry --
to Barry on Twitter that he
should play all the white people
in the novel, like old lady,
young boy, sort of like
with makeup or CGI like Eddie
Murphy, and like Doctor Dolittle
or the Klumps, just have Walton
Goggins play every single
white person.
And I never heard back.
I'm not sure it happened.
Maybe he didn't see the tweets.
Maybe he didn't -- or
maybe, I haven't seen it.
Maybe he did put Walton Goggins
and we'll all be surprised.
>> Rob Casper: We'll
have to wait and see.
So we have two questions which
are in essence the same thing.
They have the most votes.
One is: what are the two
or three books you
consider essential writing?
And as a kind of compliment,
what books are you
reading right now?
Any favorite authors?
>> Colson Whitehead: Sorry,
the first question was --
>> Rob Casper: Two or
three books you consider,
I'm sorry, essential reading.
>> Colson Whitehead:
Essential reading.
I don't know, I mean
for me A Hundred Years
of Solitude was very important.
As I mentioned, I grew up
reading fantasy fiction
like Stephen King and Ursula
K. Le Guin and Peter Straub.
You know, a lot of 70s horror
and fantasy, science fiction.
And so senior year
of high school
when I read Gabriel
Garcia Marquez
and here was a so-called
highbrow writer using the
elements of fantasy.
You know, I made this link
between the stuff I liked
and the stuff that was
being taught in school.
And definitely for the
Underground Railroad,
when I was looking for a
model of how to use fantasy
in the book, I went back to A
Hundred Years of Solitude after,
you know, 25 years
and was still in awe
of what Gabriel Garcia
Marquez did there.
So, you know, I think that's
a book I can recommend
without reservation to anyone.
What I'm reading now?
Well, you know, I think the
pandemic has affected different
people in different ways.
Some people can't write.
I was able to, you know,
finish a book, so I was glad.
Unfortunately, I can only
read stuff for research.
I can't read for fun, really,
since the last six months.
I get really distracted.
I'm just like on my phone
like did Trump do something
crazy in the last hour?
Like and so social media
is really distracting.
So but for Nickel Boys, you
know, I was trying to study how
to write a short novel,
novella, because I knew
that the Nickel Boys would
be compact and concise.
So I was trying to see how other
people deal with the problem
of what to keep in,
what to take out.
And so Julie Otsuka
has two great books,
The Buddha in the Attic and
When the Emporer was Divine.
They're, you know, they're
really sort of slim and perfect.
Mohsin Hamid throughout
the years has
within a few short novels.
Last one was Exit West.
Has an affinity with
Underground Railroad
and its use of magic realism.
Denis Johnson -- I'm
the kind of person
when someone passes
away I'm like, oh,
I should go back
and revisit them.
So whether it's like
the guy from AC/DC,
I'll listen to AC/DC for a week.
In the case of Denis
Johnson to honor his memory,
I went back to his short
novels, short books.
So Train Dreams was
really great and --
-- Jesus' Son, went
back to that book.
So -- and again, I guess
maybe that counts as research
because I was really
studying how people deal
with the short novel form and
what can I learn from them.
>> Rob Casper: Jumping
on, you mentioned Marquez.
I'm going to combine two
quick questions to fit
in before the end
of the session.
Linda asks: how do you decide
where to include elements
of magical realism
in your novels?
And the other question I want
to add to that is a comment
by John saying: John Henry Days
is a criminally underrated book,
but that novel [inaudible].
Can you speak to the
importance of myth
in contemporary literature?
So myth and magical realism.
>> Colson Whitehead: Sure.
Yeah, I think he, you know,
used the right tool for the job,
and so I knew from
its conception
that the Underground Railroad,
I'm making this metaphore
into a literal train, and each
state is a alternative America
like Gulliver's Travels.
From its very conception, it
was fantastic, and I was going
to mix and match different parts
of history using a
fantastic structure.
With the Nickel Boys I knew I
wanted to concentrate on this,
you know, friendship
between these two boys,
it would be slim,
compact, realistic,
no need for a fantastic
structure.
And so, you know, realism is
a tool, fantasy is a tool.
The fantastic of Zone One,
which is a zombie novel,
is different -- uses the
fantastic differently
than Underground Railroad.
And so, you know, you calibrate
your fantastic flourishes
depending on what the project is
and whether you use them at all.
So returning to John
Henry Days, thanks a lot.
You know, it was my second novel
and, you know, it got a lot
of attention so I
was really glad.
It was a very, you know, for
me at the time, very ambitious
in terms of structure
and dealing
with American myth, as you say.
So, you know, the metaphor
"the steel driving
man" was very limber.
You know, I was able to apply
it to the steel workers,
the steel drivers in 1870,
to the contemporary journalist
Jay Sutter [phonetic] in 1995
who was sort of fighting
against the information machine.
And it allowed me to find
different ways to talk
about different professions
and people
and different time periods
in the last 150 years.
So John Henry is a
great homegrown myth.
But also, you know, I
think a lot of the stories
that have lasted,
like The Odyssey --
we relate to The Odyssey still.
You know, each day is a journey.
And so, you know, Ulysses,
James Joyce used the structure
of the Odyssey to chart out the
progress of his two characters.
And even the Underground
Railroad, as Cora moves
from state to state predicaments
to allegorical predicament,
she's on an Odyssey type --
on an Odyssey type journey.
She has to solve the problem
of this island, this state,
before she goes the next one.
And so those structures
as ways of thinking
about the world endure and stay
with us over the centuries.
And, you know, with those
two books, John Henry Days
and Underground Railroad, I was
borrowing from mythic structures
and folklore to try to
find a different way
of talking about America.
>> Rob Casper: Well, that
is the perfect place to end.
Colson, thank you so much
for being here with us today.
We've been speaking with Colson
Whitehead, the 2020 Library
of Congress Prize for
American Fiction winner.
His latest book is
The Nickel Boys.
You can find his presentation
on the fiction stage
of the National Book Festival
at nationalbookfestival.com.
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