North Carolina People; Doris Betts, Novelist

Good evening ladies and gentlemen. You know our state populated with a wonderful group of writers poets short story tellers wonderful people very creative imaginative selves. Doris Betts is one of the finest she's a nationally known novelist chairman of the Chapel Hill and I think if I ask her the direct question she said she loves being a teacher to go meet and talk with her in just a few seconds. Funding for North Carolina people is made possible in part by. You're teaching us about what you're. The protective suits can be nurtured together via wealth management and by contributions from viewers

like you. Our side I should have said to the people too that you've won the North Carolina medal for litter tour the North Carolinian award the award of merit from the academy. And in October you're going to be taking in the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame. So everybody knows who you are where you come from. It's great to see you again. It's good to be here but what you're saying is that North Carolina is very good about rewarding its citizens especially its artists. I think that's wonderful and that we ought to stimulate more and more as we go along. It's often though you get asked this question of what is a suburb right or who is it. I think it's getting thinner. Most of the answers that you have used to be able to say a Southern writer lived in a certain area of the country and he had certain

habits and this was a place where we had a history and a sadness and a guilt. Perhaps we had more difficulties with race than the rest of the country. We had stronger families stronger religion. But I see fruit basket turnover in this country constantly. The people the man neighbors for instance most of them did not grow up in the South and many of the students I taught had had were not from the south and they weren't in a bit interested in the Civil War so I think the Southern writer now it's gotten to be a very the term it's not a Faulkner inheritor it's not a Thomas Wolfe copycat. It's a lot of the women now and they write about rather different things. They're good storytellers or they are good storytellers and we grew up talking about stories we answered questions with stories. I think somebody used to say about my father they had rather climb a tree to tell a lad and stand on the ground tell the truth what he really liked to do was just make life more interesting than it would be

without a little bit of revision. You know you never get it. So if you want to know a Southerner ask a question that would never be yes or no. That's right. They'll tell you about when it happened and who was they are and what her quirks were and you get a story. What you working on working on two novels a long one that people are tired of hearing about about my Bezler woman and a shorter one which is about much more. Ask a universal question now which is about how the young look after their seniors their parents as the years pass. So this is about a couple in Cary who's the mother of the wife comes to live with them with all of the attendant clashes and numerous experiences that just go with the mixture of generations after a long hiatus. Doris how much does discipline play in putting out a novel the way you way you go about it. Pretty high. You have to discipline yourself very rigorously. Yes and not a I don't do as well at that as I advise my students to do.

But you do have to kind of get in shape and think you're going to do it on a steady basis on the days when you feel like it. And on the days when you hate every word you have ever written I'm going to have just throw away some pages. It's persistence do a page some days feel like you've done the day's work. Actually I've said three to four pages is a day's work. I don't do it by the clock. If you say I'm going to write from 10 to 12 you might not have worked anything done few Salmaan do three pages. You do it whether it takes all day or not. Being a great novelist like you are you have to be a student of all that you see around you. Human reaction. Human nature. Human discipline no less. You write yourself a note when you see things happening. I do you don't forget sometimes even while I'm driving but don't pass that on if I don't write it down I found I would usually forget it. You used to say if it's important I will remember it I've quit saying Bad make a letter make a note that applied to scenery as well

as exchanges you were here when it comes to scenery what you're looking for is something that is on usual that is atypical you can do a blue sky and green grass till the cows come home. But what you're looking for is the distinctive moment that which is a typical And yet somehow stands for the whole. Well now how has technology invaded your life. Life for both rather. What's going all those speed transmission and accessing of the Library of Congress if you work with all the well-to-do with a pad the pencil asked Astill write with a pin and I carry it around that's my talisman. But our I don't how I ever got along without email you and fax and a computer I think these are marvelous developments. It however has changed some things for the good some for when I was teaching for instance it was wonderful that a student can send me a short story at midnight and I could have looked at it before the next day's class. Those things are very good. It's

hard to know what's true on the Internet when you're doing research there's a lot of stuff there there's just not true. People are now publishing their stories and poems on the internet with a smaller audience and sometimes it's gratifying and sometimes it's like dropping a feather into the Grand Canyon It seems lost on the other hand I couldn't do without it. I love technology. I would buy everything new that came out if I were rich. The whole question of the difference between writing a novel and writing poetry you address the other side of me. Adams lecture. When do you get the urge to be a poet. How does that come about. Well it doesn't come about very often for me. I think the different someone says it is prose is like walking in poetry is like dancing. I'm not a natural poet and I didn't teach poetry and I always declined to read and criticize poetry. I do think you have to have a greater love

of language and a willingness to wrestle even harder with one Latin at a time. Randall general said once that before you took your poetry writing class it might take you seven times SST words that you would try and try and try and they didn't work and family didn't get the right one but that after you took his class it might only take you three or four fall stores. He was quite a person who lives very much so when you were teaching creative writing. You had all these young people who were aspiring to tell stories. Great experience for you did you find young people could really develop the skill of telling it to you. I loved it and I miss it. Going to say I bet you miss him terribly you miss it terribly. I miss their enthusiasm. I miss their willingness to try something brand new and fail at it. Do it again. I miss their idealism. I think it is still there in the young and I miss their candor. Sometimes they'll tell you things you know want to hear but

they are quite true for them they're being honest and candid. I think there's a lot of talent out there but it's hard to publish. I know Max you used to tell them that most of the student writers he knew didn't publish anything until 10 years after they had been writing classes. And their hearts would sink because they thought 10 years was interminable you and I know it goes pretty fast. Many of your students write to you now. Oh yes. Thank goodness that is another blessing of e-mail I might not get long letters but I do get e-mail and so I know where the new babies are and who's getting married. And of course I know if they publish anything or if they get in if they get into our writing workshop you may be sure I will get a quick e-mail. You served a term as chairman of the faculty at the University of Chapel Hill. A woman in charge of all that but a group of individualists. You had quite an experience sir but share with our viewers what it's like faculty meeting at a

university these days. We have so many different projects but what really happens there. Well first of all nobody is in charge of that faculty as you very well know you're standing out of their light and smiling and saying if you can encourage or influence it is a group of great individualists and they are able to argue cogently for positions that you may think are just totally wrong headed. But I did enjoy it. I think i gave me a view of the university that you can't get if you are imbedded at the departmental level and also the relationship between the university and the state and its citizens. And I wouldn't trade anything for there. But we didn't solve any of the problems that concern me the most we didn't improve parking. We didn't solve sports and academics and their relationship. There were many things that we did not get done that they continue to wrestle with.

He left the important things to the next generation. You know as you go about the state I know you are a great ambassador to the public but that is truly a very important factor in the life of the University Chapel Hill it it is and the writers at Chapel Hill have taken it very seriously. They're the ones that get asked to the friends of the library need to be sent to a local book clubs and they usually speak well because they love words. I do think it's very important. And in fact the program that they have for sending faculty members out to speak at humanities gatherings and so on is good for the communities but it's very good for the university. For one thing it removes that sense of an ivory tower with elitists up there and and helps them see the professors are just people. You study the human scene all day long. What do you think of what you see going on in this country today as we try to get together to pick a new president or a governor whatever the

political infighting. What's happened here Doris. This is not a good this is not a good election. It's bad for the mutual sniping. The lowered standards of campaigning and of advertising for campaigning and even worse then I think the venom has Si down to individuals who are saying things like I can't talk about this at the dinner table with my brother in law. I can't talk about who I'm voting for or I don't tell anybody who I'm voting for I'm afraid we will have another election that's fairly evenly divided in the US nobody will be really content. However it turns out and we've already had four years of looking backwards and grumbling about that election and Florida and et cetera. And I suspect we may be in for the same thing no matter which candidate is victorious. Do you think this generation of young people as you visit with them are beginning to turn in their thinking at least that's my impression that once they become more public service

oriented they're more concerned about what they see happening. I think that's true. And there was a period when they say I'm only interested in government and in politics. I do think though the younger generation is more conservative than it was 10 years ago. Politically but they have those dozens of them going to register they're going to vote. They become bored or aggressive about this. And that's not bad. No that's a bad omen. That's good teaching. You teach all the time. You had some spectacular students in your day how do you keep up with their careers. Once I do keep up with them and I had the pleasure last semester of going down to Barton college in Wilson and teaching American literature again and that was fun. But these the young writers that I particularly follow and watch for their careers and read everything they have written and one of them in fact will be speaking at Weymouth on Sunday and that's Randall Keenan one of our best young African-American

writers and particularly Dear ex student of mine but he is he is a great talent. I have read very well putting it all together about going back to your experience at university. What you see the university doing in the life of the state. We're in a major change in North Carolina right now. We have the have not the vision seems to be more critical of we the tobacco industries moved away textiles moved away furniture. What do you think this is doing to the spirit of the state as you see it. But you know it to be here in North Carolinians are very aggressive about their state's reputation. They're rare they're resilient though. If our only went by what was in the newspapers or the television I would think we were in a kind of population depression. If I go by the people I talk with I think they're in better shape than they probably deserve to be especially after the hurricanes which have just

decimated whole populations and homes et cetera. So I think we will bounce back and tobacco buyout which is just been announced will be of help to the tobacco farmers. I don't know though are we going to have to do something new in this state those industries are not coming back textiles is not coming back. Furniture is only partially I think coming back. Technology is one of the areas which we've done well on in the Research Triangle area particularly we're going to have to do more and we're going to do more with its application. What do you think about the schools so you hear these debates have been going on. Pollack one politician trying to claim credit for this and this and this but do you have a sense that the schools are really getting better. Public street it seems to me it's very slow that it's a slow climb and it's measured in points on the S.A.T. scores or GPA. Out of what that really tells us I think the rating system by which you rate the schools as to whether they have improved or not

is a poor system. I don't have a better one but I don't think it is revealing or accurate. Everybody would have the chance of that got sit here talking with you would ask you this question what writers influenced you the most when you were beginning in your career. What did you read or did you study style or substance. What I heard you say the other day the Bible was a great influence in your life and Herbert's story of the Bible which my mother bought for me as I recall for six dollars and you paid a dollar a week. Tom I paid that off. And those are the stories that I read first and love the most. But I suppose the North Carolina writer who hit me strongest in about age 16 was certainly Thomas Wolfe. Even though I don't write like him newspapering made me take out adjectives and adverbs. But what I loved was the roll of his sentences you could taste them you can roll or move your tongue and I

think that you ought to fall in love with that kind of writer. When you're young you may turn out to be a taker out are like Fitzgerald or Hemingway but you probably start by someone who just makes you shiver in some good way because of the way he likes words. Is the publishing world. Or is it better for young writer or is it getting more competitive. Walter made it more foreign though my book is a terrible reading. What's wrong. Well you have say 300 plus writing programs so you have lots and lots of writers coming out of maybe two to five percent will ever publish which is a disheartening statistic to begin with. That's that is John Barth's estimate. Then you have the publishing which has become much more commercial. Everybody belongs to a conglomerate. Your publisher is one of Tahn maybe than there are TV stations in there and movie film studios and so on. You don't have much chance now for

what I would call the midlist kind of writer who only sells 5 to 25 thousand copies and the tax laws don't help you used to be able to put those books back in your warehouse and save them for better days. Now you're not given any tax credit for that so there's a tendency to sell your books in three weeks they don't sell you not only remainder them but you sometimes shred them which is a dreadful Laddie and think of books being destroyed. I think it's very hard for young people to get noticed and there are not many magazines not big magazines anymore. There are a lot of little magazines and they don't pay much and they're read by a very small audience. What does this do to your relationship then with your editor after dark. For example the youth are you free of all of that the relationship you have with your publisher I'll wait till I head in this manuscript and see because I know many people who have published three four five books who couldn't publish number six and so far so far so good I like my editor very much and I've had a

good relationship there. But I know I'm not a big money maker. Are sell well enough. But I'm not a best seller and so they're not waiting for me as they were maybe waiting for Hillary Clinton's new book. If you travel around with your books when these this new thing and I see authors doing when you publish it brings out a new book. You have to go to certain cities do this routine. People almost have to do that you didn't used to but now you're paid to go on with a tour at least Europe. You're given hotel rooms and airfare and it's an exhausting process I don't do as much of it as some people do and Tyler refuses to do any at all. But most of those writers and they do come through Raleigh and Pittsburgh and Chapel Hill and they send books and there are many bookstores now that were not here when I began publishing. Barnes Noble and Books-A-Million and borders they're all here now so somebody is reading these books and somebody is buying.

But I notice that Hugh Morton's book it's a book of photographs but he has a lot of editorial commentary in there. That book has attracted solid attention all over the state he saw his Saturday been run all over the state with that book. Well people like to have books autographed I had an email from my granddaughter this morning saying that Cokie Roberts is going to be in Raleigh and will autograph her book and I knew that was very important that she will keep that for the rest of her life. Now look ahead a little bit here. What do you see going to happen. In the book world I put it that way the next ten years with all the technology and the access you can get to printed pages. What do you see out there. Well the ebook has not been very successful but that technology will probably be perfected. They say I'm going to be able to walk into a bookstore and say I would like a copy of this new book and they will press a button and it will be printed out for me right there. And very quickly and thus you will

not have to carry the inventory that you do now so that all of that is possible what the trouble is with book publishing is that there's not a very good way to advertise books book pages can only cover so many television interviews can only cover so many so you get maybe now 60 70000 books published per a year of which very few get any published city whatsoever. That's driving writers crazy. And I don't know what to do about their distribution and publicity I think will continue to be a big problem. You see the threat of censorship anywhere. It happens every once in a while some book will come out and wonder and lightning will generate around it but you don't really fear that in this country. Not really and I think of censorship as defined and by government imposition of course there are people who boycott books in their stores and decide not to sell books. Those are just flashes in the play and I don't even call that censorship I

call that a temporary decision and moves on. When you and all your writing colleagues get together ever wants to know why it's a great storytelling session I sat in one of them one had though but will this energize each of you. I think so and increasingly Chapel Hill has long been a center for writers but not here also for is the hot spot I think a great many writers are moving there and I don't doubt that there are many stories I'm not hearing and I guess that when I get Pittsburgh a little more lavender do short stories still. Yes I have a story coming out in this new collection by Algonquin Christmas stories and that's due out this month I think and I've been just like my students I've been publishing short stories in the little magazines you've never heard of that come out at this universe at Cornell University for instance are out in Idaho. They will be read by maybe 500 people but I think of them as 500 fairy bright people.

Darcy you obviously thoroughly enjoy what you're doing but can you if you look back what's been the most one or two of the most memorable experiences you've had in producing novels or what caused you to sink it sink deeply into your memory book so to speak. I think you prefer of all things to be honored by your peers who know how difficult it is. So for me to get a medal from the American Academy was a half point because these were New York writers and that was a national recognition and meant a great deal and still does. But I also I've been grateful for recognition here in North Carolina because this is a state that has taken writing and music and theater and dance to quite seriously and continues to do so. They used to call the south the Sahara of the Mozart. But that's not true. This is the place where the arts are I think

most lively now. Even though we don't have the big vineyards that you would have in New York City the the major orchestra that we know for mass. The theaters all over the state outdoor and indoor The School of the arts. And since I'm there so many manifestations here that you and I both hope that people watching this program take full advantage of the opportunities are there they're enormous. What if you visit other southern states that's one of the things that they will say this that you are doing much more to encourage your writers I think also for the North Carolina writers network. We have things that other states you can see us follow. Well it's been wonderful to visit with you again my good friend and thank you for sitting down here and being on North Carolina people once again and ladies and gentlemen I know you've enjoyed this visit was one of North Carolina's Rio really famous people and we're just delighted to Darcy and come and visit

your home this evening. Thank you for that privilege. Til next week Goodnight funding for North Carolina people is made possible in part by the red like it Kitty. Just about unbiased wealth management exists really. Together we can explore uncommon possibilities for coffee wealth management and by contributions from UN see TV viewers like you.