WEBVTT 00:00:02.724 --> 00:00:06.502 Well, people often talk about the death of literature. 00:00:06.502 --> 00:00:09.021 People have been speaking about it since shortly 00:00:09.021 --> 00:00:11.880 after the first work of literature was ever made 00:00:11.880 --> 00:00:15.368 but there's more and more talk about it. 00:00:15.368 --> 00:00:19.136 It's been propelled by diminishing readership, 00:00:19.136 --> 00:00:23.213 by what feels like an increasing apathy, 00:00:23.213 --> 00:00:33.551 or even anxiety or even mistrust of literature 00:00:33.551 --> 00:00:36.135 and the movement towards screens, everything being 00:00:36.135 --> 00:00:40.476 on a screen and what would that mean for books which 00:00:40.476 --> 00:00:42.059 aren't very well served on a screen. 00:00:42.059 --> 00:00:43.352 It's not that you can't read a book on a screen 00:00:43.352 --> 00:00:45.475 perfectly well but you can't read a book on a screen 00:00:45.475 --> 00:00:50.494 that also has email and your calendar and texting. 00:00:50.494 --> 00:00:52.665 Books can't compete with those kinds of media. 00:00:52.665 --> 00:00:56.384 So we wonder will people read books? 00:00:56.384 --> 00:01:02.128 There are still things and there will always be things that 00:01:02.128 --> 00:01:06.060 only literature can do, only literature can communicate. 00:01:06.060 --> 00:01:10.510 I don't think that literature is necessarily any better, 00:01:10.510 --> 00:01:10.712 whatever than means, than film or dance or music. 00:01:10.712 --> 00:01:16.706 In fact, I'm often drawn personally more 00:01:16.706 --> 00:01:19.061 to film and dance than I am to literature 00:01:19.061 --> 00:01:21.056 but I know that there are moments in my life 00:01:21.056 --> 00:01:25.361 when I feel the need for literature and only for literature. 00:01:25.361 --> 00:01:28.419 So for example, the mother of my oldest friend 00:01:28.419 --> 00:01:30.721 passed away about week ago. 00:01:30.721 --> 00:01:32.156 And I went down to visit her in Washington DC. 00:01:32.156 --> 00:01:37.737 I live in New York. I was quite worried about what to say 00:01:37.737 --> 00:01:40.684 and how to fill what I thought might be very awkward, 00:01:40.684 --> 00:01:46.204 or even painful silences. And I brought poems, 00:01:46.204 --> 00:01:49.364 about 20 poems. I read them to her and we talked 00:01:49.364 --> 00:01:51.483 about them. And in that moment when we, together, 00:01:51.483 --> 00:01:57.684 mostly just her, of course, but together, were confronting 00:01:57.684 --> 00:02:05.678 this, the biggest moment of life which is death. 00:02:05.678 --> 00:02:07.608 We relied on poetry. 00:02:07.608 --> 00:02:12.920 Poems and stories and novels are very helpful 00:02:12.920 --> 00:02:18.207 exactly when we most need language the most, 00:02:18.207 --> 00:02:25.773 sort of dire, or urgent or existential moments of life. 00:02:25.773 --> 00:02:27.151 Novels are meant to be read over the course of many 00:02:27.151 --> 99:59:59.999 hours or many days. And even a story takes half an hour 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 to read. And I just wasn't sure, in this case, what her 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 energy level would be, so I wanted them to be quite 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 small, but even though that's the case, it's also true 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that poetry is the most condensed form of literature 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and in certain ways, it's the most pure form. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I don't think that novels are any less good than poetry 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 but novels has a lot to learn from poetry 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 in terms of what's possible, how direct one can be, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 how concentrated language can be, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and how evocative and resonant. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Sometimes I think novels make the mistake 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 of being too much like their own description. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Somebody says, ''What is this book about?'' 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 My dream is to write a novel where somebody would 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 have to say, "I could tell you, I suppose, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 but that would really miss the point. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 You'd just have to read it." 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 That, to my mind, is a good novel. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 A novel that is its own synopsis, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 just an expanded version of its synopsis, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 comes awfully close to television actually. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Novels can still do something that poetry 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 does in terms of being kind of ineffable or mysterious 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 or not quite graspeable, just on a much larger scale. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 All of my life, I have been more drawn to the visual arts 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 than to literature. And even still, when I'm feeling like 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I can't remember why I wanted to be a writer, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I don't go to books, I actually go to paintings 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 or to sculpture. To me, the distinctions have been drawn 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 too sharply. The difference between a musician, a writer, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 an artist, a dancer. We've categorized them, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 segregated them, so that there's very , very little overlap 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 but in fact they're all just people who want to make 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 things that you could say have no use. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Everything in life has a use. The person who made 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 the camera that this is being shot with, made it 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 so that it could record something like this. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And a television or a computer that someone's watching 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 it on was made with specific functions in mind. A bridge 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 is made so that people can get from one land mass to 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 another. But novels and paintings and songs really ... 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 They might have effects in the world -- 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 they might be political, they might be entertaining, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 they might be objects of commerce, but they're not really 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 really made for any of those reasons. They're just made 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 for their own sake. Anyone who makes something 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 for its own sake, whether you try to have it published 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 or whether you're just rearranging twigs 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 on the ground because it pleases you, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 people who do that are artists. And because we live 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 in a world in which you have to have a job and in which 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 it's expected that you will grow within your job 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and because we like to have an answer to the question 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 'What is it that you do?' 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 You meet someone at a party. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 They say ''What do you do?'' 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It makes us uncomfortable not to have an answer. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But the truth is, the different art forms are much, much 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 more similar than they are different. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 When I'm not working on a book, I am somebody 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 who just moves through the world and sees nice things 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and tries to remember them, but usually doesn't, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and hears jokes and tries to remember them but usually 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 doesn't and so on and has ideas that disappear, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But when I'm writing, I save those things 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 so that I can use them, rearrange them. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Nothing comes from nothing. I think that there's an 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 impression that books or art, making art is a much more 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 romantically creative act than it is, as if inspiration 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 strikes and suddenly, something appears 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 but that hasn't been my experience at all. It's much more 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 about being attentive to what's around and starting to 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 get to know what you like and what you find useful 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and then collecting those things instead of everything. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Collecting those things and then figuring out what 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 what the most pleasing arrangement of them is for you. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 There's nothing objective about it. It's not the case that 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 someone else will necessarily like it 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 but it really does feel like making collages with the 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 whole world as your cupboard of things to arrange. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Certainly in art, the most important things happen 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 on a subconscious level. When I approach a writing 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 project, I don't think of it like that. In fact, and I say this 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 not as a joke or to disparage myself, I really don't think about much at all. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 about much at all. I'm just very open to what do I feel like 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 working on, what's interesting to me right now, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 what am I curious about? But I never think about 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 what the potential use of something would be. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Like I was saying before, there's a quality of art 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that is useless in the very, very best way. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 That is the very highest compliment I can pay. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And if I started thinking about what I would achieve 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 for myself psychologically or in search of meaning 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 or in search of meaning or catharsis, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that's just another kind of use. Just in almost the same 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 way that trying to make something you could sell 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 for money is a kind of use. It's not to say that those two 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 thing might wouldn't be good in your life but I don't think 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that they make a good work of art. They're not a good 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 starting point. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 John [Delulo?] once said,"Nobody writes his first book. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It just happens. At a certain point, you find 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that a printer is ... all these pages are coming out. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Oh my God, I can't believe I did this! I believe that. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Maybe it's a little different if you start late in life 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 incubating an idea for a long time but most people 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 when they write their first book, at a certain point, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 they realize they have a book on their hands. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And the second book is different because then, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 you have something that you're responding to, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 you have your own expectations -- 'if you published 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 your first book, you have the world' expectations. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So I found the second book somewhat more difficult 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 because of that but I started the second book 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 before my first book was published so in a way, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I was able to escape some of those traps. But 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 then after I have written two novels, I wrote a work 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 of non-fiction about eating animals,about animal 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 farming. I think this is not a coincidence 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that I decided to move in a different direction 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 because I was starting to feel the weight 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 of momentum. I didn't want to do a third thing 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 because I've done two previous things. I didn't want 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 to make a choice about tomorrow because of what 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I did yesterday. So maybe even to a fault, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I resisted that and decided to move off 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and try something else. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 There are a lot of ways of talking about 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 choices in art. It's a mistake to think that 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 the way we talk about it retrospectively 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 as critics, which is very useful and interesting 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 but it's a mistake that that's the same language 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 of creation. Somebody once said, I can't remember 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 who, maybe it was Oscar Wilde, I can't remember. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 He said, "There are only two kinds of objects 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 in the world: those that charm us and those that don't 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 charm us." Something can be charming in the most 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 completely simple way and for whatever reason, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 it speaks to us. We like it. It is for us. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 If it isn't charming, it's mundane. It's not that 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 we hate it, it's just that it has no great effect on us. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And each person, of course, has his own or her own 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 sense of what is charming. In a way, writing just 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 boils down to asking that question again and again 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 because it's charming or not. Something charming 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 can mean that it's very painful. It doesn't mean 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that it's happy and beautiful. It can mean it's very 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 ugly, that it is funny. It can mean that it is serious. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It can be tragic. It can be comic. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Charming just means in a certain way, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that it's authentic and exceptional to you. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 People often ask me, why don't I write about family 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 so often. I find that such a weird question. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I don't even know how to answer because the answer 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 feels so obvious to me. Nobody asks J.K. Rowling 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 why she writes about wizards so much. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 That, to me, is weird. That's a weird choice she made 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that requires some explanation because nobody 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 knows wizards. Nobody interacts with wizards. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Nobody can't fall asleep at night because of their 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 relationship to wizards but everyone has a family. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Even people whose families are absent. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Maybe especially people whose families are absent. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 These are the main themes of life 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and the main themes of literature since Genesis 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 so I assume I will always write about family. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Families is also especially important to me but 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 whatever will take the form of fathers 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and sons-in-laws. Or it will take the form of 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 a married couple in a comedy. That I don't know.