Harvard Book Store; WGBH Forum Network; Ida Hattemer-Higgins: The History of History

And now I'm pleased to introduce i to how Tamar Hagen's is how the Reagans was born in Ohio but grew up right here in Boston. So in studying German and Chinese literature in New York she's become a consummate world traveler speaking six languages and having lived in Japan India Sweden China and West Africa for several years she's been a student of literature as well as a tour guide and translator in Berlin and she currently divides her time between Berlin and Moscow. The history of history her first novel developed from her interest in modern German culture and history. The story begins as a young woman stumbles out of the woods with no memory of the past few months as her story unfolds. Her personal amnesia becomes and twined with a national amnesia and how a nation must reckon with its sinister past. A review and book list concludes with unbridled imagination and exquisite command. How Tamar Higgins explores the concept of remembrance and confronts the spiritual aftershock of the Holocaust in a gloriously hellish and fiercely surreal dreamscape. So I do want to thank everyone who's here tonight.

I want to thank all of the many familiar faces I did and many of you are wonderful faces from my from my past and present of course. And then also I want to thank everyone who's here who I who I don't know because I know that coming to the reading of a debut author is a little like buying a I don't know a cat without actually getting to see it first. So I really want to thank you for taking a chance and coming out tonight. I also want to say that I had a really bad cold the week before last and I know last week. But in any case I have. I hope that my voice will hold out. It's all I'm trying to say I feel like it is getting a bit hoarse. So what. Was their water. A great tip. I may make use of this of this water.

I'm going to read to you the first chapter of the book which is only two and a half pages long and then I'll read a couple of excerpts from later in in the book. I've been to a lot of readings before and I mean never of my. Well I've done a couple of my own but not very many but I just want to say that often people are very timid about asking questions and there's a long pause when when the question and answer session began so I just want to invite you to you know if you want you could think of a question now. And then there wouldn't be this this awkwardness. But. You know it's fine in advance if there is. So I'll start with Chapter 1 which is called the persistence of documents. The oceans rose and the clouds washed over the sky. The tide of humanity

came revolving in love and betrayal in skyscrapers in ruins. Through Walls breeched and children contort and soon it was the year 2000 and to an early morning in September of that here in a forest outside Berlin a young woman woke from a short sleep not knowing where she was. Several months of her life had gone missing from her mind and she was as fresh as a child. She sat upright. Her hair was long her clothes made from man's stiff trousers the slouch hat and a long wool and overcoat although underneath she wore a pair of high heeled boots. South of her chin was the body of a harem go a luxurious body of moving life fully ripe with the knowledge of its strength. Youth and loping good health. Her face on the other hand was the face of a mandarin overcome with sensitivity and perpetual nervous fatigue. The dirty postcards of the French fantasy act I sometimes show women of this kind even while offering their bodies of the band and such females were faces charged with the pathless of intellect growing kittenish with Leary fragile world weary

grins all in all. Margaret looked like someone who would find trouble or in any case already had. The night hung low Margaret cast her eyes about and saw the birches. She reached for her bag a leather briefcase lying slack beside the tree she leaned against and noticed in the movement that her hand ached. Both her hands hurt and she did not know why. For want of a better idea she stood up and began to walk twigs cracked under her high heeled boots. The sound startled her. She came to a brook and put the bag on her shoulder and put her hands down on the stones and picked her way across on all fours. The woolen overcoat dragged in the water. She saw by the aging moonlight that came through a break in the young pines that her palms and fingers were rubbed deeply with dirt so deeply it looked as though they were tattooed with it although the skin of her wrists was clean and shining. Margaret found the edge of the forest as the day came as the air turned gray and smoky. The slash of bird call was shrill. It blotted out her thoughts for a while and she stopped wondering

what had happened in the night. She found a dirt road and then asphalt villas green awning slate roofs wheelbarrows and hibernating rose bushes and finally going to the station. By the time she was riding the train homeward into the city market was becoming afraid again. But after a new style no longer did the threat sit at her throat. Now it lay in the marrow of things. She saw a perfectly miniature eyes Beachley pasted with weapons on her sleeve and it seemed a souvenir of bad and mysterious things. She looked at her dirt printed palms and did not know why the dirt she shifted her body on the plastic seat and felt the drag of what fabric pulled aside the overcoat and heavy red scarf. She saw her clothes patched with bluish pine needle sticking to the wetness on the hem. A displaced ladybug made its slow way and she did not know why there was evidence of so much nature of so much disorder. The roofers the chimney sweeps the delivery men in the early morning train. They looked at Margaret's windswept face

and saw an expression rarely seen. There she was in her heavy wool. Her face with its broken parts even heavier and you could almost see it. She was crushing under the strain trying to modernize herself to match the day. Some find imp. had gone missing the S-Bahn train pulled into zoo station and paused. The cold air rushed through the open doors with heave of strength and puff screech an intercity train came to a halt on the neighboring track and the platform's clock struck six with an audible spasm of the minute hand. There was a chime over the loud speaker the announcement of departures to yest. Even Tom stared down and the crowd on the platform ship shifted like a hive. The door shut and the train slipped into motion. Margaret looked out through the milky graffiti scratched in the window. There was the glory of the morning city and soon intermittent through the trees gilded angel in the park called the light. A woman walked under the bridge in the tear gotten on cobblestones the same color as the automatic pigeons picking between them. She wore a narrow white scarf and pushed a

pram and her hair blew up toward the sky with the wind. Margaret looked away. She looked down at her knee. She saw the red and black insect crawling there. She frowned. Her lips turned under. She felt a fury and envy and a sense of starvation. She reached down and with two fingers she lifted the checkered insect and held it in her hand. She closed her eyes but there was no escape Sheol her eyes open again sleep frightened her as well. She looked out the window through smarting eyes. Her right hand cradling the crawling beetle. And then she saw but now in the far distance the woman with the white scarf and again the wind lifted the woman's hair toward the sky and it was like a scream. All it took was a tightening the red and black beetle became a streak of syrup on her hand. She could not help it. Margaret slapped sinking deeper toward the window. Her knees nudging the knees of the woman opposite the a member of her eyelids so pale they were translucent to the shock of the sun she dropped. Terrible dreams.

She woke up at the end of the line. And the grasses and trees again. But the morning was no longer in its early tooth and she was on the eastern edge of Perlin instead of the West. She had slept through her transfer at Friedrich Stasia. It was a train employee who woke her. He asked to see her ticket. Margaret jerked her head up. She reached into the breast pocket of a heavy man's overcoat and found an American passport soaked through and reeking. She fingered the pocket on the other side and found a laminated student ID with it semester train ticket. When she got home to her apartment and shown a bag she was so light that moving toward the bedroom she hardly had to walk. Lifted by a wave and thrown against the surf one Margaret then a more solid one pulled herself under the covers and slapped hungrily. Another one. The shadow of the sleeping girl went into the wardrobe and took everything out. She carried it all down to the courtyard and heaved the clumps of clothing indiscriminately into the trash. She came back up to the bedroom where she slipped in with the sleeping Margaret again and

they were one when their unified market awoke from the third sleep. It was a new planet on this new planet. She went back to her old life. And that's the end of chapter one. Which is really in some ways a lot more of prologue because then we move forward almost almost two years in. The novels time. So when we meet her again it's two years later. That's not really. I think you would understand the next part. Even without that information I thought I would let you know. And I am going to have a drink of water. So when next we meet Margaret tonight at least. She is at a doctor's office and this doctor's office

is a very strange place. The office is at the very top of a building in Margaret's neighborhood. And it's very musty very filled with bizarre antiques. And it doesn't look anything like what we commonly associate with the medical establishment. And Margaret has been called there or rather someone with a strange letter that appeared in her in her mailbox. And for a series of reasons she agrees to go to this appointment although she has no idea who this doctor is or why the doctor is so insistent that she must she must see her. Oh and she also discovers when she gets to this doctor's office that the woman is actually a

gynecologist a type of doctor that I think. It strikes fear into the hearts of many many women. Maybe I'm only speaking for myself but in any case you will see the nightmarish quality of the doctor hurdle to the table and began to adjust the stirrups to their full length legs spread feet in. She commanded. She turned around and went to the cabinets below the long counter bruited about searching for something with both hands. Margaret climbed up on the table. The doctor returned and gripped and gripped Margaret's knees to steady herself. Sighing melancholy she screwed the instrument tight. She seemed not to glance at the thing as she did so her hands working automatically. I know you're uncomfortable my idea but practically she said in a low voice. Yeah that really lucky. Her golf ball eyes seem to Mr over again and she gazed into some middle distance that was her eyes preferred resting point. Her hands went still and she again gripped Margaret's knees

the speculum of the nineteenth century presented a challenge to the nervous system of much greater consequence than the one you are enduring. It had a system of mirrors and lenses in the light source My idea was a lamp flame. These early specular burned a mixture of alcohol and tepid tine and I shudder at the thought of the burns that were occasionally the sad drawback to their use knowledge of the Internet in exchange for the beauty of the outer I'm afraid. Do you think you notice that I'm sparing you my German accent I could do this is a German doctor I could do a German accent. And I think you'll be glad that I'm spending it. Secondly I think my life throw problems actually very well suited to this to this character. My goodness Margaret said Hugh might well say the doctor sighed her head falling forward as though gone overripe. Tell me she said how do you become afraid of Dr. Oz.

In the meantime Margaret looked at her. She twitched. I'm uncomfortable with gynecologists she said having come to the realization only at that moment. The woman gave a wee of satisfaction and what might this discomfort be she asked sharply shrugging off her rasping on this young comrade. There are two categories of people who are afraid of hissing the doctor. Their family seem impressed. Identical but in fact has either the same cause nor the same effect. In the first case the individual never goes to the doctor at all. He saw it first from a generalized phobia fear of imperfection that is such mass so dark and disastrous to the auto phobia he thinks that he ducks out of sight of his personal emissary of malignant mortality. She chuckled. He might possibly escape the root cause. The second type of fear is much more complex. The doctor went on. And because it lacerates in waves rising and abating she drew up her hand in a trembling on the sufferer sees the doctor on occasion and can even develop a hippo

crack to Fyles hypochondria which brings him to the doctor regularly it is not easy to categorize but seems to be an unhappy conjoining of Jimena phobia I'll go Fabienne mixo phobia and fears of nudity pain and slime respectively. I may call you comrade my child you're a grown woman. She has a pretty bad time with this doctor. And then I'm going to read you. It's just a little bit further in the story time. Margaret comes out of this doctor's office and doesn't feel terribly well and then goes to sleep and the next morning she comes out of her apartment house and discovers the following. The next day something occurred which might tax the reader's imagination to believe but no more than Margaret's own faith and perception was stretched to the limit. But this thing that happened it

must be believed without belief. Margaret story will quickly blanche for us in the reality that the world morphed and contorted and slurred around still and then changing Margaret is cataclysmically as the body grows and ages and dies around its antique polymer codes. This will be misunderstood as nothing more than a fable. This is also a kind of tragedy crisis fixed and framed too early. Specifically then it was the city of Berlin. It rolled into a new phase all on its own. Well everyone slept except the taxi drivers loose on the sun smeared boulevards by eight o'clock. It was already done. City transformed into flash when my Twitter row awoke. There was no stucco or timber any longer only human flesh and bone. Pygmalion barely know the name of the lover who craved the city and wished for a living flesh. No one knew emerging from number 88. Margaret turned her head up to the sky and there before her eyes were the city apartment houses. All of them made flesh

and how severely the sun cut through the windows. What an effect of blush and glow of the sun Peart playing through the skin webbing as their diaphanous alabaster and late afternoon church windows the external walls of the building swelled and contracted so heavy with life that the skin stretching over the facades seemed a veil of giant fetus or set of opulent organs hushed lush and enormous. Was it not a single set of organs but many millions of individual quivering muscles. They're on the sidewalk. Margaret give a cry of the most injured surprise. She put her hand out to match the wall of number 88 and found the soft the house soft like a woman's cheek. There was a spectacular quiet all the natural sounds the rumble of trucks crosswalks clicking for the blind had gone mute. Instead out of the silence was a sound like distant thunder wide echoing sighs breeding themselves up from over the crest of the horizon in the West symphonic as fireworks going off on every New Year's street corner. But soft enough to be

nothing but the shivering anguish of six story houses. The city was suffering. It was pulp. It was breathing. Margaret touched the building a second time. Sure even now that the change would undo itself. But at the stroke the contrary the shattering of the flash rushed to the core of her all her emotions flashed into a loop with the dreaming sleep of the building flesh of her flesh body of her body. And she drew her hand away in reflex of pain. That's all I'm going to read to you from the book itself. I want to say that as the book unfurls. Think it becomes clear that these sorts of fantasies that Margaret is having are in no way whimsical. I was a little concerned about my selection of material tonight because I thought it made it sound as though it were kind of this lurid fantasy novel. Now I've nothing against lordships novels but you know it's not that it's a book that

tries to find the point where collective memory intersects with private personal memory. And I felt that the only way to do that was to have a character who has this type of hallucination for reasons that I think the book ultimately makes clear. So I hope that that gives you a good introduction to the book. And I think that we can proceed to Q&A if you guys are. In a lot of the press material that's gone out with a book so some of you might know this already. I my protagonist Margaret who you heard about. She's a walking tour guide in Berlin and I was a walking tour guide in Berlin. So certainly a lot of the things that I encountered while working as a guide in the city are things that that

inspire in the book. But there is a lot more I could say. Initially I wanted to write a modern retelling of good has Faust from the point of view of my Gilead. Who is that. Is the love interest of the great play. And. I sort of started writing this book really just I was going to write this modern retelling of just follows from the point of view of Margaret and I gave the character the name Margaret and then I was working this job being a tour guide. And that just sort of hijacked the entire process like I couldn't really imagine a modern Berlin where the Nazi past would not come into play. And I don't think that that's something that would be true in any instance. I think it has to do with the job that I had which was that

I had to face this history every single day and also I was sort of you know I had a lot of pride as a guide and I always wanted to be able to answer any question that was posed to me along the routes of these tours through the city. And so I did extensive reading and particularly I got really interested in the Holocaust history as a cultural legacy how it's used in. Film and Literature and just you know funny things that seem to keep coming up. You know just noticing funny news articles that Prince Harry dressed up as a Nazi for a Halloween party and then the way in which caused quite an uproar and just different aspects of how the history has been metabolized or are not metabolized and certainly my tours of the

concentration camp of Sachsenhausen which is just outside the city that led to very intense feelings. I found it too. It got more difficult to give the tours. As time went on and as I learned more and more about what had occurred and and also about what it occurred that doesnt get put into history books because there is. Parts of that story that for very clear reasons are not frequently told. And it wasn't that I wanted to revise history books. I think that there's pretty good reasons why some of these things aren't spoken about but it's really rich for literature I mean it. It provoked so much feeling in me. And that's that's really what you need to want to spend five years obsessing over a manuscript you need a lot of passionate feeling.

And that's where that came from. Yes I mean it's not the easiest question. The history of history is a phrase that that doctor that you met Did everybody hear the question. The question was about the title how I how I got this is why I chose this title and what it means. Yeah the doctor that you just heard about. She starts talking about the history of history as being the diagnosis of Margaret's illness. Now that's not something that I would invite people to just accept I you know this doctor is a it's a very strange and somewhat well she has certain issues of her own but she talks about the history of history as being a you know state of

historical you know having having an obsession with history that desiccate the history so that you're you're only able to understand the historical past as something that is dried out of all of its blood and flesh. And she claims that that is the history of history here that always historians are looking at something that has been desiccated but that's not necessarily why I called the book by that name. I want and want to telegraph that the book is. Coming from a matter of historical position so it's it's it's not for example about the Holocaust but rather about how the Holocaust and the terrible you know

these these this terrible regime that was in in Germany of the Third Reich how that has been processed over time. So the history of history rather than history itself and that you know more broadly that's that's what the book is really about. And then also I hope that it had a kind of nice ring to it. So I don't know that there's been you know sort of some people think it's a great title and others have been not so enthusiastic so. Well it would be much more likely that history would be memory metabolized at least in terms of how it's discussed in the novel. But I I do think that rather than coming up with elaborate answers to such questions it's more a story of.

It's more an attempt to display and and sort of expose what is happening with historical amnesia cultural amnesia and how that might resonate with forms of psychogenic amnesia. I mean just as we commonly think of it I don't think that that's such a great answer to your question because I do think that it's rather obvious what what happens in countries that undergo severe trauma is that there is a cultural amnesia that that sets in. So it's not as if that's the great revelation of this novel that that's. But but that is something that is brought to light and exposed I think.

What always bothers me when I go to readings literary readings not that anybody should have anything against coming to such meetings as this but I'm always bothered by the way the author is based on how they they read you would think that they had written. This is doesn't always happen but you see it sometimes that authors read as if as if they had sort of like scribbled the book in their spare time in terms of the amount of emotional intensity and I certainly I I I swear I did. I sweat blood. And this was like I just poured myself into this book in a way that I probably wasn't that healthy. But I've you know the pages that I read to I don't I don't think I even did justice to the kind of intensity with which it was written and how much you know I mean this is embarrassing to admit but I have I re read the book several times and I

was like crying over my own book. I. Probably should have told you that but it's it's true I mean I really have had very intense feelings about some of the things the things that the book describes. And I definitely only was able to finish the book because I I felt kind of like I think that it didn't have to do with me that it was something outside of me that wasn't you know it wasn't my book it was this sort of very emotional object that I owed a debt to the book itself that I that I must finish it I mean I think you get into these kinds of and slightly crazy mind games to keep yourself motivated. But no I don't I certainly think that you should read the book with that same level of intensity. If you possible. Well I've you know I've lived in all these different countries at this point and I certainly think that

Berlin inspired more intense feelings and that's why the first book that I wrote came out of that time. But I did have I was in Moscow in 2000 three and I sort of realized that I was having the same sort of intense responses and really wanted to read a lot about rel relatively recent Russian history and I did that. And so now that's why I'm spending so much time in Moscow because I'm writing another book that has to do with that. I sort of think that this kind of intensity of feeling isn't it. It's just a very useful tool for a writer to have you know to be so addicted to learning about a place because then you know certain things become much easier specifically

self-discipline. It's much easier. So I'm not in any way arguing that. If you didn't have that kind of feeling that you couldn't write a good book I think you probably could just good at that so. So Russia will be next. You should look for that in like five years or so. It's a very good question. How will the book be received in Berlin and by a German audience. I have had a number of German friends who have who have already read the book and I felt like with those people I was successful in. I wrote the book for a German public just as much as an American public I've been in Berlin now for almost eight years and so large you know my friends and and acquaintances and so on it and just you know teachers and so on

they're all there in Berlin and this is the people to whom I I want to be. With him I want to be in dialogue. And so I say certainly never. You know you'll notice that there is some references to things in the book that aren't explained for like an outsider and I hope that an American audience will have patience with that or even appreciation for that because I think that sometimes that can just to you won't necessarily know what the references but it will create a certain atmosphere of of authenticity or something like that so. So I've had these very good responses from German friends. But at the same time. The book doesn't have a German publisher and I think that that has to do. There's been a lot of good responses from German publishers

but they say how would we market this author. You know it's This American woman who writes about Berlin's history or indirectly about Berlin's history. And I think the best way to the best comparison would be you know if if I if a young energetic German woman came to the U.S. and decided to write a book about the US legacy the American legacy of slavery we would kind of be like Oh right well where's where's the story about Naziism flees. And certainly in Germany there's a lot of expectation that you can write something that would have something to do with global capitalism which is something that Germans very strongly associate with. Americans at least in my experience so I think it. I think that's

what the situation is related to and I think it is a difficult thing. I mean I do understand it. So the question has to do with whether or not the trouble with publishing in Germany might have something to do with differences in generational reactions to this historical period and certainly true I would say that there's differences in terms of how say Germans have have thought about this history versus my parents age versus my grandparents age. But I don't think that that would be the issue so much. Because actually in Germany today it's quite striking how the the big German film industry is for example regularly treat this history that's that's one of the favorite subjects for really big budget films in Germany and just a lot

of focus on it in the German income equivalent of like Time magazine. This is sort of a joke that the cover always features either Hitler or semi-naked woman. It's not you know it's not that German and it's not the German equivalent of Time magazine and I'm talking it down. It's a more maybe a little bit more tabloid but you know this is history in very interesting ways still sells. And I think that that's part of what I'm interested in and part of what this book is dealing with is why the continued fascination is that a good thing or a bad thing is that about you know never forgetting. Or is that about a certain kind of sensationalism and you know there's not really easy conclusions there.

The question is about my literary influences. I will I will confess that this novel was written very much as a sort of response to the Master and Margarita by the Kyle. If anybody knows it I think it's a marvelous novel and it was the novel that taught me that you can have a kind of a you know open wound like a heart that's bleeding in it and it kind of you know you might call it sentimentalism but I call it sort of emotional intensity I mean obviously I've given you already the impression that I'm I'm very susceptible to that sort of fiction. But at the same time that you could have fantastical very you know in some ways quite

experimental forms of expressionism where you know things are transforming into other shapes and that this doesn't have to be limited to to a type of book at that. You know is very different than than something that is looking in a serious way at historical events. The question is how long ago was my research period for the book and then how long did it take me to write it. It's hard to answer that because I I had been working as a guide as a tour guide in Berlin for a couple of years I guess or at least a year before I started writing the book. And that time of my life I was I was reading really quite obsessive way but more for this reason I mentioned earlier which was that I was I couldn't I couldn't ever not answer a question correctly on the two it was like an

obsession of mine. So when I started writing the book I already had just scads of information and you know I had read a whole lot so it wasn't like I was researching the book itself it was just what I had on hand. But I certainly kept researching and kept working as I then began writing and that all. But see I think I. So I wrote the rough draft in the winter of 2005 2006. Yeah and then I rewrote the book again and again and again. And then I really only stopped making significant changes to it. In September of this year. So it's been a very long process yeah. When I say that I only finished in September I'm talking about work that was already then obviously that would be very late if I were working on my own.

That was that was during the period when I was working with the editor. You know these days editors are not terribly hands on with their books what's happening is that acquisitions editors have a lot of other jobs other than editing books. And instead what's happening is that agents. Are taking over a lot of the duties that used to be the editor's duties and a lot of agents are actually former editors who have then become agents for that very reason that they wanted to go back to those types of duties and that's really how things were with me I started working with my agent Bill Clegg who is a wonderful wonderful man. I started working with him a full year before the book sold and he it wasn't that he that we were on the phone with each other all the time but he would get on the phone with me

and we'd sit there and he would go through the manuscript page by page over the phone and it would take four hours. And he's in New York and I was in Berlin and he'd be telling me you know everything from I think you should change the ending of the book you know giant macro revisions to like you know asking me if I didn't think I should probably change that sentence. Most of his that if so where were my favorite kind which is just saying. You can do better on this sentence. You know this paragraph is not your best work. I know you can do better. And you know sort of giving me that faith that he knew that I could do better but was saying that's that's not very good. That's a nice way to go about it now also then gives me the opportunity to apply myself to finding a solution to it rather than being told

you know why don't you make that character leave the room. Three pages earlier and you know that's the sort of over editing to my mind. So so that was wonderful with him and my editor also. She did send me a long letter with recommendations but that was pretty much the extent of it. I tried to start working on the new book while I was still working on this but I am not good at keeping them both in my head at once so it would be. I would start working on the new book and start thinking a lot about. You know the streets of Moscow and how they can be adequately described in that sort of thing. And then and then I would get a call from my agent or something saying I think you should work on this. And then I would go back into revising this and the the Moscow book would just be totally forgotten.

So it's unfortunate but that's just the way I work. So the question is about the. As I mentioned earlier this history is on the one hand there's there's continued interest because a lot of people recognize that this should never be forgotten. And then on the other hand there's a lot of sort of sensationalism just a kind of fascination with mass murder. What do you think. Right. Exactly. And so how how do I reconcile that or what's my what are my conclusions. I think as a guy I was trying to come to conclusions and make that reconciliation. Almost every day because I could see in the faces of the people who came on

these tours of Berlin how hungry they were for our in some cases how hungry they were for a sensation and sort of wanted to hear the most gruesome tales. And I worried about the part that I was playing in overemphasizing this history Berlin is a city that is so vibrant and there's so much going on in Berlin and it's such a great city for the arts and for music. And then to see again and again masses of tourists showing up who really don't have that much interest in the city outside of things related to the Nazi genocide. That of course that that hurts me I feel like there's there's something being terribly overlooked. But at the same time yeah as I said it's I think it's it's also wonderful that. There is unlike so

many other periods of human history that ends and so many other genocides that have taken place. This is something that I think most people know what happened and they sort of have it have this history straight in their minds and it's and it's something that despite all concerns that it's going to be forgotten. I don't think it is being forgotten at all. And and I think that that's that that's right. But as you can see I mean I absolutely see both sides of this and I see how it's both positive and negative and you know I could probably talk for another two hours about some of the strange sort of side effects of of people being both attracted for sensationalistic reasons but also having a certain reverence for it.

I will say just my basic position is that in secularized Europe and secularized parts of the US there is not. There aren't very many opportunities for people to. Have stories in which there is a clear evil and a clear good. But the second world war was a time when this was you know it's very easy for people to say who was on the good side and who was on the bad side. Unlike the way that we've processed say Vietnam and how we think about certain other periods in history and I think that that is extremely seductive to have a story that we can so quickly make it into almost a biblical tale with good and evil a devil.

And I I reckon I simply think that this is a human need and it often leads to very sick things as well. This this need for relatively simple stories with a black and white good and bad and so on. So that's about. I didn't get this this cover isn't it ingenious as everyone seen. I think I really like this cover. This is by the designer Chip Kidd. He's kind of he's kind of famous. I was very I was very flattered he apparently he won't he won't agree to do every book. And so he kind of you know took a look at it and then he agreed and my editor was so thrilled about this. And he found this this image. So it definitely wasn't mine. What I like about this cover is that you know I think that really one

of the central tropes in this story is a circularity that if anybody's here has read it the circular staircase. And and so then you have the history of history which is circular and you have. So I was saying this sort of met a historical position that the history of of ever returning history is a phrase that's often used in the in the novel so the sort of cyclical quality to it I think works very well. But yeah yeah. Anything else.