The Whole World Over | Julia Glass | Talks at Google

Good afternoon everyone. Thank you for joining us for authors at Google. Today it is my sincere pleasure to welcome Julia Glass. She won the National Book Award for her wonderful novel Three Junes. And she's here today to give us a brief reading and a talk about her new novel, the Whole World Over. So please welcome me. Please join me in giving her a warm welcome. Julie Glass.

Hi everybody.

Sorry I was so indecisive about my menu of choices here for where to speak from. I have to say this is quite an adventure for me. It's both more exciting and scarier to be here than to go to the White House. Especially because I'm just going to confess it right now. I'm probably the most unplugged in person you're ever going to meet. I used to be proud of the fact that not only did I have no website or BlackBerry, but that I didn't even have a cell phone. But I'm getting to the point where I'm going to start losing friends, possibly even the respect of my children. So I. I have to correct all of that. I'm going to read a scene from the Whole World over. And I guess first I'll say that this is a novel about a very original subject, which is the search for true love. And I think most realistic novelists come to a point where they want to tackle their love and marriage novel, whether it's Middle March or even Anna Karenina. And so there are some very high standards out there for those of us who want to tackle that subject. But one thing I realized when I started this novel is that Three Junes, my first novel, although there's love and heartbreak in it, is really more of a novel about vertical relationships, which is to say sort of intergenerational. I was especially interested in how our relationships with our parents change when we become adults in their eyes and they become imperfect people in our eyes. But in this novel, I've put a marriage at the very center. And like all the fiction I write, it started with a single character in a situation which is a woman named Greenie Duquette, who's a very successful pastry chef in the West Village of New York City, who is someone who has just about everything she wants in life. She has this successful business and the things she's always wanted to do. She has a husband she loves very much, to whom she's been married for 10 years. And she also has a very precocious and charming four year old son. But. And there always has to be a but in every work of fiction. Her husband has become very withdrawn and distant and she doesn't know why. And it's a problem she can't readily solve. So rather impulsively, she accepts a job as the private chef to the governor of New Mexico, who is not Bill Richardson. And I owe an apology to Bill Richardson because he's actually a.

He's what I call a thinking Republican.

I get some people in the audience who will tell me that that doesn't exist, but I think it probably does. But I am not going to read any of the scenes from the point of view of Greenie Duquette or her husband because there are two other major characters in this novel. And what happens to me when I'm writing is that I start with this main character who's like the trunk of a tree and all these other characters sprout forth from that character. And eventually I have to do a lot of pruning because there's. To me, there's sort of no such thing as a novel with too many characters or too many plot lines. And for me, in this novel, the two other characters who emerged were young woman named Saga, who is recovering from a head injury she had a couple of years ago and is living with a lot of memory difficulties as a result of it, and a charming, very outgoing restaurateur who is Greenie's main client in the West Village named Walter Kinderman. And I'm going to read from some scenes concerning Walter now. At the beginning of this novel, Walter has been involved in a very torrid affair with, I guess what you could call a virtually married man, a man who has been in a committed gay relationship for 13 or 14 years, named Gordy. But Gordy breaks it off with Walter. So Walter is recovering from a broken heart because he's really in search of the perfect mate. And what he does to distract himself.

As he decides to take on as.

A kind of apprentice, his 18 year old nephew from San Francisco, whose name is Scott. And it's partly a challenge to Walter's brother, who's a kind of a conservative money tree guy who lives in Marin county, who kind of looks down on his gay brother in New York City. So Walter decides that since Scott doesn't.

Want to accept the place in Stanford.

That he's been offered, but would rather be a rock musician, he will allow Scott to spend the year off with him, living and working with him at the restaurant in New York. And so the scene I'm going to read starts when Scott arrives in New York City to stay with Walter. And I think the Only other thing you need to know is that Walter has a bulldog named the Bruce, who is also nicknamed tb. Now try to do this without spilling my water. I think it's the poet Billy Collins, at an event I saw, said that he wishes very much that the person who had the genius to combine the suitcase with wheels would please combine the podium with a coaster.

This is your room, and this, more significantly, is your door. Any bedlam in which you care to live ends there, and you close it so so that I do not have to share the scenery. Walter swung the door to and fro.

As if demonstrating a revolutionary product.

You may strew clothing every which way in here, as long as I can't smell it. But no food. Food attracts roaches. You may not know about roaches in Swanky Corte Madeira, but they are repulsive, dirty, and look like creatures out of.

Japanese sci fi movies, a genre I do not care for. He led Scott to the kitchen, the.

Fridge basically empty because I let other people feed me. That's why I do what I do. If you prefer to feed yourself, that's fine. Only please keep an eye on the science projects. Ditto my caution about those Japanese films. Sponges, by the way, are in that drawer to the left of the sink. We encourage the use of sponges. He crossed the room and opened the pantry door.

Because this is New York, where closets are about as common as Tasmanian devils.

You will find clean sheets and towels up there. He pointed to a high shelf above the jarred spices he never used. And laundry, by the way, gets done on the other side of the playground. I'll give you a neighborhood tour on the way to the restaurant. Speaking of the neighborhood, I will say this only once, because your mother would have my hide, but the closest and most varied source of inexpensive condoms is the chain pharmacy at the end of the block. Go out the front door and turn right. As for nightly visitors, all I ask is that you remember about the door, about noise, and by the way, no drugs, period.

Nancy Reagan was right about that.

And speaking of thin Republican women, your mom asked that I try to ensure you you pierce no further body parts while under my roof, nor deface them with permanent illustrations. I don't see how I could practically prevent such actions were you to suspend. What I have a hunch is your generally decent judgment. But if you consider my generosity in other areas, I'm hoping that may count for something.

Sort of like Mafia protection. Think of me as your personal Don.

Corleone without the hitmen. Like, don't you mean Tony Soprano. This was the first evidence that Scott was actually listening for most of Walter's speech, which he had rehearsed silently on.

The bus to Newark Airport.

The expression on Scott's face was disturbingly akin to blank. It did not help that he arrived wearing a T shirt which read in a font you'd expect to see on a law firm's letterhead grabber Booty. And do it honestly now. If you wanted vulgar, you could execute it with far more verve than that. So you're with me, said Walter.

Scott smiled.

All sounds cool to me, Uncle Walt.

You're the man.

You may call me Walter.

I think that will go over better.

At work, don't you? Hey, it's Kopa.

Whatever suits.

Am I supposed to, like, not be your nephew? Of course you're my nephew. I can be as nepotistic as I darn well please. I'm the boss, said Walter.

As you say, I am the man.

Scott sat down on the leather couch. Could sitting and sprawling be a single action right next to the Bruce? TB had been feigning relaxation throughout Walter's tour. His eyes had never left Scott. Scott started petting him now, and TB accepted the affection with wary pleasure. You know, said Walter. If you don't mind, I was thinking.

You could also walk this guy a.

Couple of mornings, which would permit me to get to the gym before work. It much improves my mood, the two of them Sorry, now that Scott was actually in Walter's home, complete with grotty duffel bag, guitar case covered with holographic stickers, and a gaudy medallion that looked like something Prince Charles had worn at his Duke of Earl coronation. Walter did see him as a prototypical teenager, but after all, this was part of the adventure, like hosting an ambassador from one of those brand new African countries that kept cartographers on their toes.

Unpack, have a beer, whatever, said Walter.

And why don't you call your mom? I put a phone in your room. I'll take you over to the restaurant in an hour. Hugo's got his hands on the first truly fabulous corn of the season. Back in early June, Walter had had a moment's hesitation, waiting, wishing he could.

Take back his offer to Scott when.

He discovered that Gordy had broken up with Stephen and moved into a place of his own. Walter found this out from his trainer at the gym, who was the trainer of every important homosexual man between 14th and Canal, and the only person Walter knew who seemed to get the dish before Ben overheard it at the bar in the restaurant the first few days after hearing this news, he. He was constantly alert for the phone.

Sure that Gordy would call.

Walter imagined their reunion in various locations. Perhaps Gordy would summon Walter to his office, now inconceivable to Walter as a place in which to do business. Or perhaps they would meet somewhere public at the restaurant or in the park by the playground, all their mutual longing inflamed by their inability to act it out there and then. The public scenario was sexier, but either would be fine. So Walter dressed each morning, prepared for Gordy's summons, choosing clothes that were silky or crisp, fine to the touch and easy to remove after the third or fourth day without a call, Walter told himself Gordy needed to settle in first. He imagined Gordy unpacking possessions, not many, because the one who is left is the one who gets to keep the goodies. And carefully lining up. Books in a new bookcase, plates in a new cupboard, shirts in a new closet. Walter tried to dream up the perfect house gift. Maybe an antique Pendleton blanket to acknowledge Gordy's nostalgia for his Western roots.

No, those were passe.

A bowl? Too formulaic, Too passive. One day Walter went into an ethnic goods shop run by a fellow whose eye for beauty made up for his infuriating ennui towards customers. With lessons from Walter, or maybe just a good dose of Paxil, the man could have had a chain of successful shops, a far more sophisticated version of Pier 1. There he found a shirt from India. Ivory linen, embroidered almost invisibly with elephants and monkeys. It had the same collarless neckline that Gordy seemed to favor when he didn't have to wear a tie. Walter wrapped it himself in orange rice paper tied with chartreuse ribbon. This cheerful present sat on Walter's neglected dining table for two weeks before he realized that Gordy was never going to call. The indifferent shopkeeper took the shirt back in exchange for a huge black basket that Walter placed in a corner of his spare room. Scott could use it for dirty laundry. One of Walter's waitresses fixed him up with a flutist. Except for mild middle age spread, the guy was handsome and quite enduring in the sack. But during their third week, he confessed to a slight anxiety that Walter's astrological sign was generally not a good match for his. Would Walter go to the flutist astrologer and let her take a look at their moons and other mitigating factors? It's on me, of course, said the flutist. I would not, said Walter, though he smiled as he said it. I do not think in purple. I'M sorry. They lasted another week and then the flutist went on tour. At least the ending was easy. No fuss, no muss.

And then, of course it happened. Was it's okay. I usually say that if cell phones go off in my readings, you have to answer them. And you have to say, I I'm listening to the fabulously brilliant Julia Glass read from her incredible new novel the Whole World over, so in case that happens again. And then, of course, it happened.

In the pharmacy, in the toothpaste section, Walter was searching for the mint flavored dental tape he liked best. When the hand touched his shoulder.

Okay. He jumped, as New Yorkers will at.

Any unexpected touch in public. Oh, I never meant to scare you.

I'm sorry. How are you?

Walter knew desperate phony cheer a mile away. Gordy, he said smoothly, I thought you must have moved to Argentina. I'm just so busy now, and I've been spending my weekends out in Sag Harbor. But I've been wanting to call. Walter smiled at Gordy and held his gaze, but said nothing. He wanted Gordy to falter. You heard I moved to Chelsea.

I imagine everyone has.

Yes, I heard that. I've been wanting meeting time alone for a while. Poor Stephen, said Walter.

Gordy frowned.

That sounds odd coming from you, don't you think? Walter sighed. I guess I have to empathize with him at some point, wouldn't you say? Now Gordy looked angry. Well, I do too. In fact, you don't even know what went on between us. And actually we still see each other and talk. It's not like I don't know what a schmuck I've been, but I still hope we're going to be friends.

It's hard.

Harder than you can guess. Walter put a hand on Gordy's shoulder. You're right.

I'm not in your life anymore, so.

I'm in no place to judge. We're also in no place to talk about this. I mean, at the dental floss display as he gestured at the legions of little white boxes suspended in midair, he saw it, the one he wanted. He took it down. Gordy, said Walter, Someday I'm going to call you.

You know, it's not like I think.

It'S over between us.

But this is not my finest hour.

And I I know, said Walter. You have to go it alone. Gordie stared at him, perhaps searching for any hint of sarcasm. He in truth, there was none. Walter did not want to understand. He did not want Gordy to seem anything other than ignoble yellow bellied, glib yet understand. He did. He wanted to tell Gordy that his.

Heart was still broken, though that would.

Never be wise, least of all in the CBS within reach of a placard on gum disease, complete with graphic photos. You know exactly where to find me, he said, and did something unexpected to both of them. He kissed Gordy on one of his lovely clean shaven cheeks. Just one. Well and graciously done, said the spirit of Walter's endearingly Teutonic grandmother when he left.

When he left the store by himself.

And welcomed for just an instant, the.

Onslaught of midsummer air.

Two days later, Scott arrived. At least to begin with, Scott was elaborately thoughtful. He seemed to pad through rooms like a cat walking through broken glass. He closed doors with extreme tact. He left not a single dirty mug or sweatshirt lying around the apartment. He also took the Bruce on walks far longer than Walter did. Scott would come back with reports of the places he'd discovered. Tompkins Square park, the concrete Picasso's off LaGuardia Place, the building painted with parachuting pigs, the block where the Hell's Angels parked. TB began to seem both more rested and more alert. His eczema faded. At the restaurant, Scott was responsible for collecting and tallying receipts from the bartender and for running the chef's errands. Though Ben and Hugo already liked their jobs, they liked them better than ever now. Walter was indeed the man. Late at night, Walter would sometimes wake to a muffled wailing. The first time it alarmed him so deeply that he crept out into the dark living room, carrying a glass paperweight he kept on his bedside table. The next few times he lay awake, fighting the urge to get prissy. But then he became accustomed to the sound of teenage angst in musical form, accompanied by instruments that sounded like colliding trains. He would go back to sleep thinking how proud Granna would be. Tolerance, his grandmother had told him once, was also next to godliness. It was like a cleanliness of temper, she explained. A much younger Walter had wanted to ask her just how tolerant she thought God was, but he kept that to himself, along with the void where his piety ought to have been. He could not help seeking parallels now between himself as Scott's generous uncle and Granna as his own kind hearted warrior angel. There was a pretty significant difference, however. Werner and Tippie might be many deplorable things.

Werner and Tippy are Scott's parents.

Werner and Tippie might be many deplorable things, but unlike Walter and Werner's parents, they were not a pair of drunken, selfish losers deluded by a lethal mix of narcissism and cultural indignation.

Okay, perhaps a little war trauma, too.

Thanks to Grana, Werner and Walter had grown up to be highly functioning, productive citizens. But if you were to ask Walter, Werner had a far easier time of it and lived his life with the sanctified nonchalance of those who will do anything to to avoid dissecting their souls. Walter and Werner's father, August Kinderman, ha as if there'd been a grain of nobility or summary splendor in the man. Had the bad fortune to fight in Vietnam, though he did so by choice. This was followed by the more ambiguous fortune of being shot clean through the center of his right palm so that he did not come close to dying but did require prolonged therapy to regain the use of his dominant hand. Despite a nearly complete recovery, he returned home to his wife and children a political cynic and grade A drinker. He was predictably unpredictable and around home too much for everyone's comfort. Werner, who was five years older than Walter, retained earlier, kinder memories of their father. He could even recall the bowling alley where August is had kept the long runways polished, the the soda pop stocked, the rental shoes lined up on their shelves like soldiers awaiting deployment. But Walter had been too young to remember those days. All he could remember now was the impossibility of knowing whether the dad he.

Would see at the end of a.

School day would help him with his homework or complain in an escalating rant about the injustice of the world. When the bowling alley closed, August Kinderman had enlisted and his wife and two sons had moved from Boston to the small town in western Massachusetts where August's mother lived. Granna was still vigorous, recently widowed, and happy to help with her grandsons. Walter noticed that she was a little bossy with his mother, but she treated her grandsons with pure adoration. She would sing Bing Crosby songs, and as she washed and pressed their little shirts for school, as she baked them strudel and kugel, or would you like to sing on a star? Carry moonbeams home in a jar or be better off Zen you are, or would you rather be a fish? She papered her kitchen walls with their paintings and let them run freely about until dark to play with other children down her nice little street of matchbox houses and beds of striped petunias. Best of all, moving into Granna's house meant that Walter got a separate room from Werner, even if his was the smallest. It was the only room on the third floor with a view over chimneys and roofs, toward hills that blushed brilliant red in the fall. Greylock, tallest mountain in the state, said Granna, pointing out the wide, lofty hill. It looked too tame to be a real mountain, but its superior status compelled respect. Looming to the west, it hastened sunset, lengthening the longest of winter nights. Walter would look out his window sometimes and whisper that name, the name of.

A magician or mythological trickster or a.

Horse ridden by a knight in King Arthur's court. After nearly two years away, August returned. He moved Rose, Walter, and Werner to an apartment over a Woolworths just a few blocks from Granna's house, but he.

Had trouble finding work.

Walter supposed that there simply weren't many bowling alleys out in the country. Granna suggested that what August needed to do was finish college. In retrospect, it didn't take brains to figure out that August's inability to find employment had little to do with the supply of jobs, and that choosing to stay in the country made it easy for him to use that fiction as an excuse. Commitment to booze, all its rituals and the changes it wreaks on grownups. First the hour to hour changes and then, more subtly, the long term changes is a confounding thing for a child to observe, let alone understand. After their dad came home, Werner and Walter were often split between their parents. Many evenings Werner went out with their mother because he was the older one and could entertain himself during evenings of.

Sorority sister bridge, reading a Hardy Boys.

Book or rearranging his stamp collection, while Walter stayed home with their dad. Father and son would sit side by side on the couch watching Hogan's Heroes or Get Smart or Saturday Night at the Movies. This was not an unpleasant way to pass the time, but along with those hours in front of the tv, one of Walter's earliest serial memories was of being hustled into the car by his dad after dark and cruising from town to town in search of a bottle. It was such an important bottle, no doubt about that, and you couldn't get it at just any store. Walter did not need to be told that he wasn't to tell his mother about these trips. Once in a while, however, she would come home while they were out on their mission. That's what August called it, and she would be waiting and angry. Walter and Werner would go straight to their room and lie awake listening to the uproar. The two brothers never spoke about it, perhaps because it always happened in the dark before they fell asleep and when they woke up, the tumult felt unreal or diminished by intervening dreams, dreams that for Walter were often more dramatic, more highly colored, than any of the accusations his parents made in the dark. And then one day, very early, Granna dropped by with a cake for Werner's birthday. It was a Saturday and Walter was the only one up watching cartoons. Granna walked into the living room in her shiny snub nosed high heels and stood between him and the tv, white gloves on hips, her head turning this.

Way and that like the head of an owl. Devas a party?

She asked him. Walter told her no, there had been no party, as he saw her gaze travel from the coffee table to the floor beside the armchair to the top of a glass front bookcase that had belonged to her hard working book loving husband, a publisher of hymnals and prayer books in Germany, and then in the immigrants trade off a typesetter at a newspaper plant in Pittsfield.

All these surfaces were occupied haphazardly by.

Bottles, glasses, ashtrays, matchbooks, and pretzel shards. No party, she repeated with soft spoken furor. Walter had been 11 years old. He knew the subtle emotions by then as well as the obvious ones. Within weeks he and Werner and their mother went to live at Granas again.

While their father went away.

It's a special kind of vacation, their mother said brightly, but you could see she was angry, not at her husband but at Granna. At dinner time she and Granna worked around each other, never touching and almost never speaking. They reminded Walter of those black and white Scotty dog magnets that repelled each other when held in contradiction to their polarity.

Where did he go?

Walter asked his brother, wondering if their father could have sneaked off to Disneyland without them like any normal 11 year old. In 1967 Walter dreamed of going to Disneyland.

16 year old Werner had said he went to dry out.

Any dope could figure that one out. He went to what? Said Walter. Granna wants him off the booze.

She says it's why he can't get.

A job or be a good father, said Werner. Geez, are you a knucklehead? Werner had reached the age when he couldn't tell his little brother much of anything without throwing in a pinch of contempt. When their dad returned from his vacation, about which he had no stories and of which he had no snapshots, they did not move back to their own house but stayed at Granas. August drank a lot of Coca Cola and coffee, smoked more cigarettes, and often went to bed by 10 o'.

Clock.

Another difference was that it began to seem as if the parents were in cahoots, they went out after dinner sometimes to take walks together. When August turned in early, so would Rose. Walter longed to band together with Werner, but by then Werner had thrown himself into school, sports, and girls. He had also worked his tail off.

As a lifeguard to buy himself a rattletrap Impala. He would come home after one kind.

Of practice or another to drop off half his books, shower and change clothes, contemplate his important self in the mirror, eat something right out of the fridge, and declare that he was off to the public library. No one other than Walter seemed to wonder whether that's where Werner really went. Granna, who'd be at the stove preparing a stew or pot roast, would scold Werner. Dinner was time for family. Eating while standing was the habit of beasts. Werner would get intestinal cramps and risk driving off the road. Werner, who stood a foot taller than Granna by then, would bend down and kiss her on the forehead. He'd say something like, beasts don't have.

Algebra and a buttload of Norman Melville to read.

Walter, setting the table, would watch his brother saunter out the door, listen to.

The Impala roar away toward freedom.

August would be in the living room, supposedly checking the paper for new job listings, but when he came to the table, what he'd talk about was the news. Reciting story after story with derision, he'd rant about the stupidity of the war, the stupidity of the president, the stupidity of the first lady and her stupid, stupid obsession with flowers, the stupidity of the gooks and how, ironically, it might.

Just help them win.

Hey, what's another fricasseed village or two when the Mouseketeers are beating down your door? Man, but the world is full of jerks. Granna's sacred tolerance began to crack. One night she told her son to show some respect and native pride for a president who would not give up.

On a difficult fight, for a First.

Lady who knew that to love the beauty of nature was to love God. And more pointedly, for a country that would continue to send good money to a man so determined never to make a living like you've ever had to.

Support a family, august said to his mother. Granna stared hard at him and seemed.

To consider whether she ought to reply at all. But she did. I am doing this now, this very past year and more. There was a pause, like a quick inhaling, and then August laughed, loud and.

Short, a gunshot laugh.

Touche, Mother, he said, raising his glass of Coke. The only catch being that whatever money you're using here comes from Dad's fat pension. Granna stood up almost demurely and carried her plate to the sink. She came back to her place, sat down, and stared once again at her son. Perhaps you and Rose might go down the street for ice cream. Volter will help me clean the dishes. Perhaps you will bring him a chocolate sundae. Walter, who always helped with the dishes anyway, watched his father turn to his.

Mother and say, hear that, Rose?

We are being shown the door. As he waited, without much real optimism for his chocolate sundae to arrive, Walter finished his homework and went to bed. He was awakened by a car screeching into the driveway, radio blaring.

Boy, is Werner going to get it.

Now, he thought, until he heard his parents voices. They were singing. They were singing Blue Moon, warbling the chorus like third string opera singers. Next morning they were not at the breakfast table. Granna looked as if she had been crying. But one thing you did not ask Granna about was her emotional state. If you did, she would say something like, if she seemed sad, I am bearing up as we all must do.

Or if she seemed light on her feet.

Joys. They are butterflies. Never should you try to hold them. Not even so much as touch the wings. Seventh grade was a year of retreat for Walter. Retreat to his attic room, retreat into reading. Retreat from the realization that spin the bottle and gym dances left him feeling as if everyone around him had shared a special drug. When he wasn't looking, he became aware that the reason he loved to watch Lost in Space had nothing to do.

With sci fi, which he generally hated.

And everything to do with the actor who played Major West. Then came the summer that would stand out forever as a uniquely vivid, turbulent.

Summer in Walter's life.

It was the summer he met beautiful, nervous Joel, his first requited crush. The summer he read in cold blood and every night for weeks locked all the doors and windows. The summer of Manson's rampage. The summer his father, having sold his own car, crashed Granna's Buick into a phone pole the next town over, killing his wife then and there, his himself. After nearly a month in a coma along with Granna, Walter and Werner visited their father and his machines every day. He lay there in limbo, and not once did Walter wish for the man's recovery. Though at his grandmother's side he went through the motions of stoic prayer, she.

Was the one he felt bad for.

He knew she was convinced she had failed in the gravest way a person can as a parent. August died fittingly, at the end of August. In September, a week late, Werner went off to start college at UMass. The idea was that he'd be near enough to come back on weekends, though he might as well have gone to ucla. He came back at Thanksgiving, but Christmas he spent with a girlfriend in New York City. The following year he did go to California, transferring to UC Santa Cruz. Hate Ashbury, here I come. He said to Walter. How he'd evolved from a would be flower child to a Republican money man would always be a bit of a mystery to Walter. But people, no matter how well you knew them, never ceased to surprise.

Thank you. So I'd be. I love answering questions. If anybody has questions about this book, my previous book, my personal life, if anybody wants to design my website. Any questions?

Yes.

That I captured Scottish culture. Well, you know, early on with Three Dunes, I was paired with another author named Margot Livesey to do an event. And she's actually Scottish. She's lived in this country for a long time and she had read Three Dunes and she said. And I could not possibly duplicate her lovely Scottish accent, but she told me that I got everything just exactly right. Now, that could be because she's Scottish and extremely polite. But you know, the funny thing is that except for. Except for some general British character characteristics of British people in general, in other words, being sort of fairly uptight and polite and some speech idiosyncrasies and some vocabulary differences, you know, the scenes that are set at that family house in Scotland, in my mind, could be set in Greenwich, Connecticut. I mean, there's a little bit of marking the territory, But I had really not been to Scotland in 20 years, and I've never lived there. I've only. The longest I've been there for was two and a half weeks when I was 17 years old. But it was my first trip abroad and it made a very huge impression on me. And I think really my use of Scotland was more symbolic because to me, Scotland is a country whose history is deeply entwined with. With both family loyalty and betrayal. And Scotland has quite a violent history. If you go back to the clans fighting one another for territory. And that was a novel about family. So in a funny way, even though Scotland is an important place of my heart, partly because my mother is so proud of her Scottish heritage, my use of Scotland was as much metaphorical as it was something that I had a familiar with.

Yes.

What kind of research do I do? Well, let me tell you, you folks make everything a whole lot easier. I'm a pretty lazy researcher, actually, but I will Say in all seriousness that when you're writing fiction, and this is true for me and a number of other writers I know, not everybody, it's actually better to do your research as late as possible.

In other words, to pretend.

Pretend you know a whole lot more than you do and just kind of right your way off a cliff. And in three Junes. That was, for instance, about border collies. The training of border collies was something I kind of faked in the beginning, and then I did research. And also there's a fair amount about one of the characters is basically dying of AIDS in the late 1980s. And I wrote it in the late 1990s, by which time the treatment and pathology of AIDS had changed quite a bit. I mean, in this country, we're not talking about Africa, but for gay men in New York City. And although I had done volunteer work in that community in the late 1980s, I needed to do some research, and I had. My internist was someone very involved in that community. But I didn't do it until I finished the book. And then I went back. And in this book, some of the things I researched were pastry making and what it's like to work in the governor's mansion in Santa Fe, New Mexico. But again, I wrote my way through the book first, because the danger of doing the research first is that.

You.

Become so enthralled with all the wonderful trivia that you find out about something. For instance, there's a very important wedding cake to. Toward the end of this book, and I was very lucky to be given a huge, beautiful textbook that's used at the American Culinary Institute for Pastry Chefs. And the section on wedding cakes is about that long. And there are the most incredible stories about wedding cake lore from Europe. And if I had read that before I wrote the book, I would have just felt like I had to share those stories and I had to wedge them in there somehow. I mean, as it is, I've definitely got a problem with clutter control. I mean, I have to do a lot of paring down. After I write this book was actually, I turned it into my publisher, 800 pages and feeling incredibly sheepish about it. But I have a great editor who helped me cut it by about 300 pages. So research is important, but it's kind of the last part of writing. And, you know, one of the wonderful things about being a fiction writer is, you know, there's this adage about actors. Like, you should only be an actor if that's the only thing you want to be. And what I say about being a fiction writer is you should only be a fiction writer if there are too many things you want to be because.

You get to try on professions.

You know, if you think, gosh, I wonder what it would be like to.

Be a pastry chef or an oncologist.

I'm going to have an oncologist in my next novel, or a librarian or a bookseller, or somebody who trains border collies. You get to sort of be that person when you enter that character. And my favorite kind of research is when I get to interview somebody. I really like to do face to face research and hear stories from somebody who does what one of my characters does. That's my favorite way of doing research. But if I'm lazy, I can just hit Google. You know, it's funny, my older son, he's entering sixth grade and when I was his age, if I could just live in a library, I would be in heaven. And I did actually work in my local public library. And, you know, he's starting to write papers. Well, you hardly ever go to the library now. You do it all online. And of course, I have two feelings about this because I know how amazing.

It is that you can find stuff.

But the first time that he googled his research, he was supposed to be writing a little paper for science about black holes. And I said, well, honey, you just, you know, you don't know if what.

You'Re going to find online is reliable.

He Googled it. And he goes, mom, I'm on the NASA website and I'm at the University of California in Berkeley, and I'm like, oh, well, I guess that's reliable information. So, you know, I think, you know, I'm sort of shedding my older generation suspicion. Suspicion of, you just never know. You know, it's sort of like when your child picks something up off the street and you say, put that down.

You don't know where it's been.

It's like, you know, don't listen. You don't know where that comes from. But I still would like him to have that wonderful experience of browsing in a library, which is something that doing research online doesn't quite. I mean, you can hit up against fun things, but you're not going to hit up against something that's just totally unrelated. Likewise, using a dictionary. I mean, using a dictionary. You know, like, I think all fiction writers, I love words, they're like toys. And when you look up a word in the dictionary, you're going to see.

Some other word that you've never seen.

Before. And I jot down some of those words and think, you know, I'd love to use that word sometime.

Yes.

Thank you. I was wondering the rank of inspiration, Where my inspiration came from. Now I detect a British accent. Did you find that. Did you find it fairly accurate? Oh, thank you. As I said, all my fiction starts with one character. And then, you know, creating the life of that character leads to other characters in other settings. And I don't. You know what, I work very. I work really from the hip. I mean, I don't plot my novels in advance. I think I have a general idea.

Of how my major.

My main characters are going to, what the feeling of the ending of the book is going to be like for each of those characters. You know, whether they're going to triumph or find love or have a comeuppance or something like that. But I don't really know exactly what it's going to be.

But if I look back at 3.

Junes, I think I had a retrospective realization that this book was my way of working through, in a parallel universe, the toughest time I've ever had in my life. You know, my 30s. It's funny how I'd always hear from older, wiser people, you know, your 20s are when you sort of work things out, and your 30s are just fabulous and your 40s are okay. And, you know, so when you hear these things, well, my 30s just sucked. They sucked. And my 40s were, you know, were just great. And I. Now I'm 51, so I'm hoping to, you know, keep up the energy. Of course, what happens is the morning after your 50th birthday. Birthday, you wake up with this huge hangover, and the first piece of mail you open is from AARP saying, congratulations. And you're like, no.

So.

But anyway, I had. I had gone through. I mean, actually, it's funny I should say that this is how I was introduced to the. I remember exactly where I was when the word Google first came into the center of my focus. And that's a couple of weeks before.

3 Junes came out.

My publisher said, oh, you're gonna. They're gonna profile you in this magazine called Book Page. And I. So this guy called me and he asked me some questions about the book. And then about 10 minutes into the. Into the interview, he said, okay, so could we talk about how your breast cancer and your sister's suicide figured in this book? And I thought I was going to faint. And I said, well, how do you.

Know about those things?

And he said, well, I googled you.

I said, you what? I googled you.

And I'm like, well.

And so.

So first I didn't even know what that meant. I'd heard of Google, but I had never heard it used as a verb. A friend of mine told me, we're not supposed to use it as a verb. But, you know, it turns out that an essay that I won a prize for that was about this. You know, I did have breast cancer, and I lost my sister within the same couple of months. So I went through a lot of very. And that was right in my mid-30s, and I'd also just been divorced, so it was a terrible time. And I wrote an essay about that and I won a little prize. And it was in this very obscure kind of tabloid like quarterly that you could pick up at Starbucks. But it had been published a few.

Years before, and I had no idea.

That it was actually online and had been for a few years at the.

Website of this journal.

And so after I got through the confusion and then I said, well, do.

We have to talk about this because.

It isn't really relevant?

And he said, well, you know, my.

Editor will be pretty unhappy if he knows that that information about you is out there and we don't cover it. So I just have to at least have a couple sentences.

So we did that.

Well, you know, you're going to wonder where the story is going, but I think that actually what I realized over a few months of watching the way that readers responded to Three Junes was to realize that, in fact, that's really what 3 Junes came out of, that I created three characters who had to find a way in three separate situations to get past the kind of heartbreak that is never. That you never get over. In other words, how. How do you go on? How do you go on and live a fruitful, happy life after you've been stopped in your tracks by. Because, you know, divorce, even if it's, you know, I mean, that's a sadness that's always inside me. The loss of my sister and even, you know, my worries about my health. So without getting too talk showish, I realized that that's, I think, what Three Dunes grew out of and this and this novel. It's funny, I have to sort of digest it for a little while longer maybe, but I think it comes out of seeing how things change when you become a parent. A lot of things change. The way in which you see love and your expectations and your priorities and what's at risk in your life. Life, even though only you know, a couple of these characters are parents. I mean, Walter here is kind of playing at being a parent. He discovers that it's much more difficult than he realized as the book goes on. But did that answer your question? Any other questions?

Yes.

Oh, my writing regimen. You know, I've come to the conclusion that the only people and I could be shown to be wrong, but the only fiction writers who really have a hard and fast routine are morning people. You know, those people who get up when it's still dark, the birds aren't even singing, and they don't even need.

Caffeine or cheese Danish, and they just write, and then they write 10 pages.

And the rest of the world wakes up. And I am so not a morning person. I mean, I actually think that constitutionally, my juices flow most creatively in the afternoon, which is a very tricky time, especially. Especially when you have kids coming home from school. And that's when all your friends want to call or email you because they're kind of rewarding themselves for having worked so hard up to that point. And I have no willpower.

I'm just.

You know, it's funny that I should do something as hermetic as fiction writing because I'm actually a very social person. But for me, the most important work that I do is just walking around in the world and daydreaming. Really, all the major events that happen in my novels and all the creation of character pretty much takes place when I'm standing in line walking to the grocery store. Then I keep telling people, this is why I don't have a cell phone. Because I have to have a lot of time in my life and I'm inaccessible and I don't have the willpower to turn the phone off. And then I go to the keyboard and dis download it all. And the only. Not completely, but the writing that does take place at the keyboard is dialogue. Dialogue is something I can't really retain from my perambulations in the world. So the actual time that I sit at the keyboard and write fiction probably is never more than 10 or 12 hours a week. And I might go for a couple of weeks without doing it at all. But I'm always thinking, thinking about my characters. They're always living their lives in my head. And then I might have a spate of a couple of weeks where maybe I even get to work more than that. But it's kind of scandalous how I.

Look at the two books I've written.

Which are pretty long, and I think I don't even really know when those.

Got written, but they did. And also.

Two thirds of most writing sessions, if you call it that, that I have, are revision. I always warm up by just kind of screwing, scrolling down and arbitrarily stopping somewhere. And I begin to. And I revise. And then, you know, when I see that I've only got an hour or two left, then I'll go and go to the end and write some new material. So it's kind of like two steps back and three steps forward every time I work. And revision is actually a kind of work I can do in the morning. But I've also learned not to be guilty about email. I think I had a very hard time because I used to be a real letter writer. And I'm one of those people who writes these really long emails to people. And I. And I actually have a couple of wonderful correspondence, particularly out here, because time zones can be difficult, talking on the phone. So I have some very rich letter like correspondences by email. And what I've learned is that just to stop feeling guilty about email and see it as a way of warming up. So that's the first thing I do every day on the computer is I do email. And I might spend as much as an hour and a half or two hours emailing. And if I'm writing those letters, it's sort of. It's kind of getting the juices flowing verbally. I really had a, you know, a tussle about coming to the computer, you know, which I did with a desktop Mac years ago, I guess, in the mid-1980s. And I recently had a conversation with my father, who's also. He writes. He's an ethno historian and he works on. We had the sort of PC Mac duel at one point. You know, he's PC on Mac, but he. We had an argument about whether the computer. Writing on a computer has made the process of writing better or worse. And I maintain that it makes it better. And he says worse. He says it's worse because when you delete things that you haven't, you know, when you delete things as you revise that you've lost them forever. Unless you have some persnickety way of keeping them in a file. But so that if you rephrase and rephrase a paragraph and then you say, darn, I'd like to go back to the way I had it. Well, you've lost it. But for me, I find that that's true. And yet you can revise endlessly.

You don't get to a point.

I mean, I can actually remember the stage in the early 1980s when I was doing some journalism, and where I had this big, clunky IBM Selectric that my dad had given me from his office. And, you know, I type it, and then you'd read it over and you'd revise it and retype it again, and read it over and revise it and retype it again.

And you'd get to some point where.

You'D see things you wanted to change, and you'd go, oh, forget it. It's fine. But you can always keep, you know, working deeper and deeper and deeper. So that's important to my process, too. Other questions?

Well, thank you.

Thank you all very much. And I'd be happy to sign books. Any of you would like that.