An hour with Jim Lehrer

From the River City Reading Festival at the Lawrence Arts Center, KPR presents an hour with Jim Lehrer. I'm Kay McIntyre. Jim Lehrer is the host and executive editor of the news hour on public television. He is also the author of 17 novels, including his latest Urika, which is setting Kansas. Lehrer was the keynote speaker at the first ever River City Reading Festival, sponsored by Altrusa International, a service organization that promotes literacy. And now here is Jim Lehrer. Nothing could give me more pleasure than keynoting this first River City Reading Festival. And I even think it's most appropriate for me to do it. I am a real cancun. And I bleed, I bleed sunflowers, not blood. I was born in Wesley Hospital in Wichita. I lived in Sedgwick, little town 750 people, just northwest of Wichita.

I lived in Marion, in Central Kansas, and then finally in Independence, Kansas, when my parents finally blew it and moved all of us to Texas, and was 12, 13 years old. But the Kansas blood and the Kansas sunflowers within my blood remain very thick and fast and important. One of the most important things that ever happened to me as a little boy in Kansas and to my family was my father was a busman, worked in the bus business. His first job in a bus business was with a bus company in Wichita called the Southern Kansas Stage Lines, which ran all over Kansas, obviously. And then it became Santa Fe Trailways and all of that. And then he started his own bus company in 1946, and it was called Kansas Central Lines, patterned after the title of the New York Central Railroad. My dad had great, great plans, but his plans didn't work out.

He had three old buses and a root structure started in 1946, went bankrupt a year later, 1947 literally, and to file bankruptcy, it was a most embarrassing thing. My dad never quite ever got over it. But the bus thing for my brother and me, I was 12 years old, my brother was 14. This was a very exciting thing for us because we would ride the buses and we would put, in those days you had to put water in the radiators, we would do all those kinds of things, help with the baggage. It was a very exciting thing for us, lousy for my dad and my mother, but terrific for us. The root structure, those I'm sure everybody knows these towns, we would go, we went up Highway 81, the old Highway 81, and then went over to Valley Center, and then on a gravel road from Valley Center to Sedgwick, and then on another gravel road to the Highway 50 South into Newton, and then Highway 15 to North Newton, where Bethel College is, and we went to Gossel, to Lehigh, and to Hillsboro, then Canada Corner, Marion, through the Flint

Hills. In fact, dad called the bus company, the root of the Flint Hills, and I had it written on things that nobody ever saw it, but he had it written on things. And then finally, a strong city, and into Emporia, and what he would put on the destination sign, the front of the bus, he had three old buses, one of them was a stretched out car, and the other two actually had destination signs, where you'd roll the name of the town and black and white on the front. And dad would sometimes put Chicago on there, on the grounds that you go to Emporia, and you get on the Santa Fe Trail, it's bus, and you go on to Emporia, from Emporia, you go to Ottawa, and to Olathe, and to Kansas City, and Hannibal, and Quincy, and Peoria, and Joley Atte, and finally you go to Chicago. And my dad, as I say, my dad really, really, really thought big. And a couple of times, well, more than a couple of times, our bus depot in Wichita, was

the Eaton Hotel, which, as you know, has been, in the last several years, was restored, now turned into condos, not condos, actually, well, it's been turned into a lot of things, but it's a place to live. And one of the really neat things that, when they had the dedication, when they opened it, they were refurbishing it, and all of that, they had a big ceremony, the black tide dinner, under a tent, closed the street off to the side, between that, and the Union Station, and Wichita Hall, and I was the speaker for that event. And it had pictures of my dad's old buses, and all that sort of stuff. But it's a big deal to me, and Kansas, because of all of these things, you know, these things that happen that are important to you, particularly when you're young, they never leave you. And as far as Kansas and my writing is concerned, it is right there on the tip of my face. I, maybe some of you watch me on television will verify this. I think more with my fingers, sometimes than I do with my mind, the Kansas is always

in the tip of my fingers, as well, as my mind. And this new book, is my 17th novel, it's called Eureka. And Eureka, there is really a town in Kansas, named Eureka. In fact, if you draw a line straight south from Emporia, and a line straight east from Wichita Hall, you come to Eureka, it's on Highway 54. It has about 3,000 people in it, but that's not the town I'm writing about. Eureka is made up, made up, fictional city of about 80,000. A lot of people, real Kansas have asked me, well, what do you, what city are you patterning in after, and no particular city? I've got to say, about 80,000 people, and I intentionally did not leave any clues, because I didn't have a particular city in mind, although everybody knows what 80,000 Kansas would be like if they lived in one city, right? Right.

Anyhow, the best way to tell you about it is I'm just going to read very briefly the opening of the book, and then I'll tell you more. This is literally the opening couple of pages. A toy fire truck set off the series of events that changed the life of Otis Halsted, CEO of Kansas Central Fire and Casualty. The small cast iron vehicle was for sale at the Great Prairie Antique Show at the Marriott Eureka East on a Saturday afternoon in March. Otis's wife Sally had pretty much forced him to attend the show's kickoff luncheon, because as one of the leading businessmen and citizens here in Eureka, Kansas, he should be seen supporting such a good cause, the battered women's shelter run by the Ashland Clinic. Also, their good friend Mary Gidney was the co-chair of the whole thing. Sally then insisted that Otis go with her on a quick walk through the show in the hotel's large exhibition hall. Why not at least take a look at what's being offered for sale, she said.

More than 500 antiques dealers from more than 30 states had set up. That's it, Otis shouted. I found it. He aimed an index finger at something in the stall of a dealer from Connecticut. He seemed to be pointing toward an expensive chippendale dining room chest. That cabinet doesn't fit with our decor, and it's probably a fortune anyhow, Sally said. What's the matter with you, Otis, lower your voice. The fire engine, not the cabinet, at Redwyn, with the white rubber tires and the firemen sitting in the seats in front and standing on both sides of the rear running board. The words came rushing out loudly. I wanted one of those for Christmas when I was five years old, I wanted it so, I wanted it so badly it gave me diarrhea. All right now, people, people are beginning to stare, said Sally. You're no longer five, Otis. I still believe in Santa Claus, and I had written him a note at the North Pole about it. I went to the live Santa at Bucks in Wichita, and here are the other places I could find one.

He moved a step closer to the truck. Sally grabbed his right arm and held it tight. Here they were, a well-dressed couple of substance. He and a blue blazer and matching outfit, she and a light pink suit ensemble. They stood fast, rigidly facing a 10-inch toy in a cabinet five feet away. Everybody knew I wanted that fire engine, and only that fire engine, but I didn't get it. I raced out to see what was under the tree, and that fire engine wasn't there. Time to go now, Otis, my darling. I really do appreciate you're coming with me today, giving up your Saturday afternoon. She looked into his face. Are those tears? Please now. This is so unlike you. This, still staring at the toy, said, I cried and I pouted the rest of Christmas day for weeks afterward. Mom said Santa must have run out of those fire engines before he got to our house. Dad said Santa must have decided it was too expensive.

We're too heavy to cart all the way to Kansas from the North Pole. It cost $14 and weighed a pound and a half at most. Sally released her grip on his arm and raised her hands in an act of surrender. I can't believe this is happening, she said. They went over to the cabinet together, Otis picked up the toy, two minutes your firemen on the front seat and the two on the back and the four on the sides were looking straight ahead with their painted eyes. All were wearing firemen's helmets and coats and boots that had been stamped onto them. A young salesman, Tweety and Eager joined Otis and Sally, mint condition all the way, he said. No restoration, everything on it is original, even the paint. So is the price, inked in small numbers and a white tag hanging around the firemen's driver's neck, $12,350. Sally was stunned for a toy and take toys like this. This was made by the arcade company, one of the finest cast iron toy manufacturers in history

are going for astronomical prices these days, said the young man. He extended his hands about two and a half feet apart and added, we sold a cast iron pick quick nightcoach sleeper bus, early 30s vintage, about this size last month for $22,000 if you can believe it. Sally said she preferred not to believe it. Otis said, do you take American Express? Otis, Sally exclaimed, $12,000 for a toy? He said, it's fine, it just took 54 years for Santa to make delivery. Otis Hallstead, did something ring with that in ring in you when you heard Otis Hallstead? There is a town in Kansas named Otis and there is a town in Kansas named Hallstead.

As you go through reading this book and I'm sure every one of you will, at the library, if not on your own, every character in the novels, last name is a town in Kansas. The doctor who ends up treating Otis for a problem he develops is named Tonganoxi. Some guy asked me, I was in Chicago a couple of days ago and it was one of the Q&A things that, is there really a person named Tonganoxi? And I said no, but there is a town named Tonganoxi between Lawrence and Kansas City. Oh great, thanks. I'm glad to hear that, but anyhow, let me continue. Otis successful, he's 59 years old, he's about to become 60. And he's had some problems with his success, his business success, his family, he's got

some family things that haven't quite worked as well as he had hoped. A lot of things about his life have not worked as well as he had hoped and he has a kind of feeling is this all there is and turning 60 has kind of raised the issue and then he goes to that antique show and he sees that toy truck, toy a fire engine. And then the next thing he does is he buys a daisy red rider BB gun because that was also something he wanted when he was a little boy growing up in Sedgwick town, Kansas by the way, little town near Wichita. And then the one thing, this little town who he lived in, lived in when he was a little boy, his brother, well he actually, I've gotten mixed up here, this actually happened to my brother, forget it, this in the book, so you got to be careful, and Otis was played on

the football team, but they didn't have enough money to buy, the school didn't have enough money to have helmets for everybody, they don't have 11 helmets, so if you're on the field in a game, you can put on a helmet, but you could sit on the bench, but you couldn't, there's no helmet for you, but the coach said if you, if your family could buy you a helmet, you could wear it, well his family obviously couldn't, any more than they could buy him a fire engine, they couldn't buy him a football helmet, and he also wanted to re, so he, I already told you about the BB gun anyhow, Otis, 59 years old, after the first two things, he then goes to the mall in Eureka, goes to a sporting goods store, and buys an official Kansas City Chiefs football helmet, and the one thing he wanted more than anything else when he was a little boy in this little town in Kansas was a Cushman motor scooter, so he finds, he goes to a place called Cushman Heaven, a little town, a little town in Nebraska

where there's a guy who collects Cushman motor scooters, and now antique motor scooters, and Otis buys one, so now he's got the fire truck, he's got the BB gun, he's got the football helmet, and then he's got a Cushman motor scooter, and I'm not going to tell you much more than that, other than the fact that he runs away from home with all this stuff on that motor scooter. The other thing that is relevant about Otis is that when he was a little boy growing up in Sedricktown, he was a big Johnny Mercer fan, and he liked to sing and liked to sing like he was Johnny Mercer, he could mimic his voice, Johnny Mercer's kind of Georgian voice, and he memorized Otis, Johnny Mercer wrote 1200 songs, and Otis memorized the lyrics of 600 of them, then he kind of put it away, he went on to school, he went to KU as a matter of fact, and he went into business, and now he's CEO of this insurance company,

but now he's has all this stuff, and now he's back getting the things that he had when he was a little boy, suddenly all these lyrics come back. So he goes away on his Cushman motor scooter, singing Johnny Mercer songs, for all kinds of reasons. Now I'm not going to tell you more about it than that, other than the fact you'll laugh, you'll cry, what is it they say about all this stuff anyhow? But Kansas, the important thing for you all is that Kansas is the in me and my right writing, I'm finishing and I'm working on a almost finishing a novel that is also set in Kansas. I go to Kansas all, I go to Wichita, and write all the time, sometimes I write about Kansas, sometimes I write about other things, a lot of people go to the beach or go to the mountains and feel the breezes and all that, I go to Wichita. I don't know why, it just nourishes me, there's a place I stay in Old Town and walk around

and work around the clock and do whatever I want, by myself, I don't know anybody in Wichita anymore, I don't want to know anybody in Wichita, it's not that, it's just something, I go to a fly to Kansas City and then drive around, sometimes takes me four or five hours, I go back roads and all that sort of stuff, it's just a nourishing part of my life. I was there writing another book, it had nothing to do with Kansas and I was at a restaurant called, it was called the Martini Steakhouse and I was having a Martini and a steak and I was looking out the window, it's right across the alley or it's a little street there now, the Old Union Station, which is still there, it's now headquarters for a cable television thing in Wichita and I looked out the window, I was sitting by the window toward the facing the Union Station and I looked up, it's elevated, those of you all know Wichita, you know the old railroad tracks are still there, trains go, not passenger trains, what other kinds of trains go by and I looked up and I saw the exact spot

where in 1944 I stood down below with my brother and my dad and waved to a bunch of Marines who had been on a troop train going to the Pacific and they had given him a stop and they let everybody get off and smoke and all that sort of stuff and at any rate we waved at the Marines, my dad had been a Marine so it was a big thing for me and my brother and anyhow I was sitting in that steakhouse window, looking at that steakhouse window my thought, anyhow, gave me an idea for a novel, had involving a stopover at the Wichita Union Station, a troop train stopover in 1944 and the novel is called O'Johnny and as I say I'm almost finished with it, took me you know a couple of years to do it but that's where it all began and every one of my 17 novels begins something like that, for instance this book Eureka, for some reason I had a glimpse of somebody going to an antique show and seeing a, because when I was a little boy in Wichita I did want a toy, a cast iron toy

fire instant that they had in a store called Goldsmiths right in downtown Wichita and I never got it. For some reason I saw the scene and I literally, the book now begins as you know with that particular scene that was the glimpse of that that caused me, when I started I had no idea who the person was going to be, I certainly didn't know he was going to be a 59-year-old CEO of an insurance company, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. You notice the name of the insurance company, Kansas Central Fire and Casualty, like Kansas Central Lines, my dad's bus company, but every one of my novels has something like that and no two of them begin the same way, I very seldom ever know whether they are going when I start and that's the most exciting thing about my wife Kate is also a novelist as you know, most of you know, and she says that I write myself a story, I get an idea and then I think about it and then I write myself a story and that's exactly what I do. By the way, just for the record, my wife's last novel was called Confessions of a Bigamist.

It's about a woman just hold on to your camp stool a minute here. So a woman who has a husband in New York and a husband in Texas and when her book came out, I had one, I timed it, make sure I had one come out at the same time, so we went on book tour together and at every place I would say, now, if you don't remember anything else I say to you, you remember one thing, Kate's book is fiction, 100% fiction. She has never been a bigamist, never will be a bigamist because she doesn't have a need to be a bigamist anyway, need to be a bigamist anyhow. But anyhow, for instance, I wrote a book once about a novel, all these are novels I'm talking about, based on the Battle of Antietam, Civil War Battle. Kate and I have a house, it's not far about 20 minutes from Antietam, I never was a fan or a student of the Civil War, but this Antietam battlefield marvel, how many of you all

bend to the Antietam battlefield, I bet you would agree with me, you go there, it's not like Gettysburg or some of these others, it's not build up in any way whatsoever, you have the feeling you could still smell the gunpowder and hear the screaming and the hollering. It was the bloodiest day in the US military ever and it remains after this day, 26,000 young men killed or seriously wounded in one less than 24 hour period. And anyhow, I never thought about, we'd go over there and walk or ride bikes, because it's a very close, I say, 20 minutes from our house. And I began to, you have to take my word for this, I normally don't hear voices, but I started hearing them here, because they had big plaques and about, this is a site where this particular regiment did this and this and this and I got very curious about what had happened on this ground. So anyhow, it triggered a novel and about finding some remains of a civil war, of a union officer having, finding them now and then finding out, looked like it was mysterious circumstances

to his death and so an archaeologist, National Park Service looks into that now. Benjamin Franklin, I wrote a novel about Benjamin Franklin, why? Because I was just in Benjamin Franklin. And so it gave me a reason, and I played jurism and all kinds of other issues got involved before it was over, it's called the Franklin affair. But I won't go through, well, the one you have must tell you about, flying crows, which takes place, I'm big on train stations, this one takes place at the Union Station in Kansas City. Am I pointing in the right direction? Kansas City's, that way, right, no, that way. I know where Kansas City is, I just don't, I just don't know where I am, right? Which direction I'm facing. Anyhow, I went to the Kansas City train station all the time when I was a little boy, because my uncle and cousins lived in Kansas City. I grew up in fact thinking Kansas City was the biggest city in the world. I didn't know about all these other places when I was in Kansas, but anyway, I went there several years ago, you know, it's been restored and I was just taken by the place.

And also the Kansas City massacre, you know, with a long interval story, which I will not go into. I wrote a novel about that, and part of it's set at the Union Station, some part of it is set at a mental hospital, based on Ocelotomy. I moved it over to Missouri for my fictional purposes, but it was Ocelotomy that I, you know, where I did most of my research and when I went to Ocelotomy, the big old building, although rundown was still there, anyhow, but that's the bottom line here, all of my novels are about different things, and they're not, except for, there's six of them are about a one-eyed lieutenant governor named Mack, one-eyed Mack. In fact, the next book that's coming out in the spring is the seventh of these that you will, no con, you don't have to comment on this, but their Mack is the one-eyed, he's the lieutenant governor, and the governor, he works for, more or less, is named Buffalo Joe,

because he's from Buffalo, Oklahoma, and he looks like a Buffalo, but anyhow, he, Buffalo Joe is on a radio calling show in Oklahoma, and somebody says, well, you know, you say you want to privatize the government of Oklahoma, but how serious a privatizer are you, Joe, and he says, I'm going to privatize the entire government of Oklahoma. It's just going to be me and a secretary when it's over with. That novel's called Mack to the Rescue, that's the one that's coming in the spring because Mack tries to keep that from happening anyhow. The, why am I a writer, why do I write fiction? Well, I was 16 years old, I was living, in fact, we moved from independent Kansas to Beaumont Texas, because my dad was in the bus business, when the bus line folded, we moved to independence, there was a bus company called Kansas Trails, the old UER, Union Electric Railroad, which

is an inner urban, it went from coffeeville to independence over to Parsons and Pittsburgh. No, it didn't go as far as Pittsburgh, but it went south to New Water and all that. Anyhow, then it was a bus company, they merged with a bus company, went south from Topeka to H Center, and then over to Pittsburgh, and anyhow, my dad went to work for them after we lost the bus line, and he worked as a traffic man, that's how we went to independence. Then we went, he went to work for another bus company in Beaumont, and he managed the bus depot there and whatever. Anyhow, I went to the, I was going to high school, but then I was a huge baseball person. In fact, I had decided to dedicate my life to baseball, and I was going to play shortstop for the Brooklyn Dodgers. I was going to take a place of a felony, P.W. Reese, some of you may remember him. P.W. he wasn't in on it, and God knows neither was the coach who said, you're a good boy, Jimmy. You really know baseball, but you don't hit very well, you don't catch very well, and God knows you can't throw, so I had to give up my career, and there were sports riders

who came to our games in Beaumont. I like these guys very much. I thought, now that, what about that for a way to make a living? To go around, to have a kind of ball game and write stories about it, and I had an experience. I'm sure everyone, I'm sure there's some teachers in this room, and if you're not a teacher, you've been taught by a teacher, and you probably had a similar experience. At that same time the baseball thing happened, I wrote a, what was used to be called themes, then we're called theme, now they're called papers or whatever they're called now. I wrote a paper, a theme, about Charles Dickens' tale of two cities, and the teacher was a brilliant, brilliant English teacher. She gave me an A on the theme, but more importantly, she wrote up in the left hand corner, Jimmy, you're a very good writer. I was 16, I just had to give up the baseball, I decided to be a sports writer, so I decided. I went home to my mother that afternoon from school, and I told my mother, I am going

to be a writer. She patted my mother, it was a huge reader, and as a consequence, we were all, because my mother never, ever, let a moment go by without reading a book. This was her thing, and you know you do, patterns tend to set examples, and children tend to follow examples, so books in reading, and then now writing were very quickly a part of my life. After I told my mother, next day I went back to high school, went back to school, and I found the faculty advisor to the newspaper, and essentially said, here I am. And with the exception of the three years I was in a Marine Corps, I have been doing this very thing that I'm doing right now with my life, which is, I decided at that point I wanted to be a quote, they didn't call them journalists then, they called them newspaper men.

I wanted to be a newspaper man, and I wanted to write novels and short stories and all that sort of stuff, and I bought an eventually to the Hemingway School, which is, Hemingway said, you want to be a writer, get a job on a newspaper, keeps food on the table, forces you to deal with the English language in some semi coherent way, and if you pay attention as a reporter, you will find people, and you will find situations that you can later adapt in your fiction writing, and I'm still doing that as well. One of my novels, for instance, is called The Last Debate, is about a presidential debate. There are things like that throughout my, and there are characters like that, and situations like that that I've picked up, that just, by osmosis, more than anything else, as just part of the process of my fiction writing, coming from my experiences as a journalist. As a practical matter, how do I do this? How in the world can you be the anchor and executive editor of a nightly news program,

and write novels, write 17 novels, and do all these other things? Well, it's a very simple explanation, I'm sure every one of you will perfectly understand when I say this, I discovered, because I got sick 25 years ago, I had a bad heart attack, and when I was recovering, the doctor said to me, you ought to really stop and think about how you want to spend the rest of your time. And why don't you make a list of all the things you do that cost stress, that eat up time, and eat up energy, and so I did. And then he said, why don't you eliminate half of them, so I did. And I ended up, the book remained, with the things that mattered to me, my family, my job, and my writing, and everything else was secondary. And I started a process that exists to this very day, before I say yes to coming to the first River City reading festival, or to anything else, I go through the process, is this

something I really want to do? I don't want to ever get caught into a thing anymore, which I have to do it, or somebody else wants me to do something. So I have the illusion at least of nothing else that I'm doing is because it's my decision. And also seriously, once you start eliminating the things you don't want to do, I find I have plenty of time to do things I want to do. I get up early in the morning, every day I live, do a little bit of writing, every day on my novels, every day. Now it doesn't mean it's a fully formed sentence or paragraph or a page or a group or series of pages, so maybe just some notes, maybe some editing, maybe some research, but nothing ever gets cold for me, because it's with me. It's like having a low grade fever, it's with me all the time. I can do a discussion about Iraq, do interview the Secretary of Defense or somebody wall-wall, and then slip right back to Otis Hallstead shooting his BB gun, putting out lights in his backyard or something.

Now, see, I've given you the plot of way, haven't I? Anyhow, it's a young person asked me recently, well, oh, Mr. Laramie, I just don't have enough time. And I said, could you write one page a day? Oh, sure. I said, okay, let's say you wrote one page a day for 300 days. How many pages would you have? 300. And I said, yeah, what would that be? It would be a novel, wouldn't it? Anyhow, the mechanics of this are for me. The life that I'd lead is so exciting because of my novel writing, and also the two together doing the television bit and doing the novel writing is so exciting, and I'm so fortunate. The worst thing you could possibly be, it seems to me, to be around somebody who's fortunate and doesn't know it. You're not, that's not the case today.

I am very fortunate, and I know it. What if I had decided I wanted to be a brain surgeon? Let's just, what if I had decided I wanted to be, say, a professional baseball player? Anyhow, the thing I ended up wanting to be, I could do both of them. In other words, the two kinds of writing, and it has been exhilarating and quite an experience for me. And I am still, no matter what happens on television and whatever, I'm a written word person. I always be a written word person, I am a reader, I read something on a written, and I'm not talking about the journalism part, but I read it for myself, it's fiction, and only fiction. And I drive to drive back and forth to work every day in Washington. I always have a book on tape, and I also have another book by the side of the bed. I am surrounded by, and I read all kinds of stuff. I mean, I read serious stuff, and old stuff, and I also read mystery novels and spine novels, and it's just part of my life.

And now, I'll take your questions and comments. Have a couple of guidelines. In fact, I only have one guideline for your questions and comments. This is a letter-rary event. If anybody in this room wants to know who the next president of the United States is going to be, I wouldn't tell you, even if I knew, and only an idiot would say he or she knew, and to paraphrase Richard Nixon, I am not an idiot. But I would love to do anything, anybody have any questions, comments? I don't handle criticism well, just keep that up, yes. You're listening to Jim Lair. He now takes questions from the audience. Question is, do I have any characters in my novels named Lawrence? No, but I will.

I hear by swear at the first River City reading festival. I, in fact, I will go, when I get home tonight, I'm going to look through and see if some of these things I'm working on, I'm going to put a Lawrence in there, I promise. Now you'll really have to buy the next book. In fact, I could still stick one in, oh, Johnny, because it's still in manuscript form. Aha, Lawrence just got born. Yes, ma'am. Any of my novels have been adapted to film? Well, the movie business, okay, I don't know what business is all of you already. I know what business I'm in. All of them. And of all the businesses I have ever been in, ever heard of, others have been in, with a possible exception, exception of maybe, what do they do in the circus? The people who go through, you know, the flying trapeze, those people. The movie business is the weirdest of them all.

It's amazing. I've had two of my novels made into movies. The first one was Viva Max, my very first novel. It was the dream, I was a newspaper man. And the dream of all newspapers, all Hemingway Generation newspaper people, is you're going to write a novel, it's going to be made into a movie, and it's going to change your life. That's exactly what happened to me. First novel, Viva Max is about the retaking of the Alamo in modern day times by a group of Mexican soldiers who walked up from Nuevo Laredo to San Antonio and retook the Alamo, right? I'd say yesterday. And it was made into a movie, starring Peter Houston off, Jonathan Winners, the great, the one, the only Pamela Tiffin, anybody ever heard of her? I'm sure they have it. Henry Morgan, John Aston, whatever it was, a monumental event for all kinds of reasons. Because first of all, we made, my wife and I, we made, I made $45,000 for the movie rights.

And because the kid who wanted to make the movie didn't have any money to buy the rights. So he said, he was 19 years old, he worked for CBS, and he read some things, synopsis of the book, decided he wanted to make a movie. He said, if you will, let me have the rights free. If I'm able to raise the money for the movie, I'll give you a percentage of the budget of the movie. Not, you never get anything in terms of any profit for a movie, anyhow, he made the movie. And an agent took $5,000 out of 50, so we had $45,000, I was in city editor, the afternoon newspaper in Dallas, and I was the highest paid newspaper man in working newspaper man in Dallas at the time, I was making $11,000 a year. So I'm going to watch it. Hey, we could live four years, I'm $45,000. And so I was working from five in the morning to seven at night, six days a week, and the whole deal had been, eventually, like him in way, I was eventually going to become a full-time novelist, so I quit. And to write full-time, and the local public television station, and I'm telling you a lot more than you need to know, but the public television station, just to finish the story,

the local public television station in Dallas asked me if I become a consultant to them for news and public affairs. I'd done one television show in my life as a guest on this kind of a local meat-to-press thing, I said, sure. I worked two days a week, they paid me money, and suddenly I was in public broadcasting, I've been in public broadcasting ever since. There's another book, The Last Debate, in fact, was made into a movie by Showtime, it's not a very good movie. Because Garner played the moderator, and I know where a bunch of other people, Audra McDonnell was in it, Peter Gallagher, but it was not terribly successful. I've had about four others of my other books of mine have been optioned. I'll tell you a quick story about that. There was a movie guy who wanted to make a movie of one of my books called Kick the Can. It was the first of these one-eyed Mac novels, and then he came back to my agent and said, we want Jimmy Charles-Lieher to write the screenplay. My agent says, no, no, I've never written a screenplay, I'm not a screenwriter.

So he told them, they said, they came back, we know we really, really wanted to write screenplay. They offered me a certain amount of money, but I said, I don't care. I do not want, it's not my thing, I can't write screenplays. Then they came back again with even more money in the opera, and I said, I am now a screenwriter. I literally went and bought a book called How do I Write a Screenplay. I wrote the screenplay and paid a huge amount of money. They also paid me to entice with me even more. They gave me a consultants fee, too, and of course that was never made into a movie. There are people in Hollywood who write screenplays, who have had careers writing screenplays. Means and millions of dollars have never had one produced. It's an extraordinary, as I say, it's an extraordinary business. I have two right now that are under, one is under heavy option, which is really, really

very close to being made into a movie. One is kind of a light option that will probably never happen. But it's weird, it's really weird. Yes? Yes, ma'am. Have you ever been writing a long storylines with a director? Do you come to a dead end that they had to back out? You heard that. I'd ever been writing along and hit a wall and have to back up and start, oh, yes, ma'am. Happens all the time. This is why it's terrific about being married to another novelist. The other thing that I'm also helped by is I always have a couple books going at the same time. So if I get into a bad corner, a bad wall, I really will back off and say, okay, maybe I just need to let it sit, and I'll put it aside and come back to it. And sometimes I come back and figure it out. Sometimes I'll just write around it. Sometimes I'll start all over again. Oh, yeah, it happens. Because if you really got your character down, and once you get past the toy fire engine phase, where you've started, and you've got your character, and it's Otis Hallstedt,

and you've got something going. And if it's really working, then it's not that you lose control, but you have to go with your character. You have to go with a situation. And sometimes you may think, oh, well, I really did. I wanted him to go this way, but then you try it and say, no, no, no, no, that's not right. He wouldn't do that. This guy wouldn't do that. She wouldn't do that. And that's the fun part, but you can scramble your brains a few times, hitting the wall, and it's exciting, when you finally figure it out. Question of what are some of the things that I eliminated from my life so I could do the writing? Quit making speeches? This isn't a speech, you see. This is a conversation with some fellow sunflowers of my fellow and sister sunflowers. I quit flying on the shuttle.

I used to have to go to New York all the time. And I now go on the train, or I don't go. I seldom ever go on the shuttle. My wife and I do not accept social events for work purposes unless we just have to. In Washington, you could literally go to seven cocktail parties, four sit down black cocktail dinners, and 12 or 14, what they call, flybys every day. We go through that entire process, and I'm very seldom go to those. And I always, and my wife is just, you just need jerk, somebody calls and you know, Jim is just so busy, you know, and so it works. And the other thing, which was I did not, I had never developed a way to really rest, to really relax, between having small children and having the daily news job, plus writing,

it was just wall to wall, energy, emitting. And because I had, when I was recovering from the heart attack, the doctor said, you know, I had to take an app every day when the first few weeks are recovering, because I had a bypass, there's about to have another heart attack, so I had to bypass a month after the heart attack. The doctor said, you know, why don't you continue to take an app every day? And so I gave up lunch. I mean, going out to lunch, I never, ever go out to lunch. Unless if the poke calls, I'll go have lunch with you. The present calls, I may or may not go to lunch, but I lie, you have a couch in my office and I take an app every day. Now I don't, I close the door and the joke at the news hour is, unless the news happens right out under his couch, he ain't going to report it. And there's, unless a while, you know, we'll have a crop of interns or desk, young desk

assistants, and they'll make the mistake, you know, somebody, you know, Sammy Sue Wawa called for Mr. Lee here, and knock on my door, and that's called a capital offense in our, whatever. But I do, I really, and also the other part of that, I also put on my list at the same time, was don't do business over meals. I mean, a meal should be a pleasurable thing. It's a personal thing. Just to do business with me, come to my office, and you, I know, I'll see anybody, just about anybody. Don't tell anybody that, okay? I mean, we're in public broadcasts, and I mean, I feel that, you know, if somebody wants got something to say, I'll listen to them. And, but I'm not going to have a lunch with you, I never, never do lunch. Sometimes I'll have breakfast with somebody that, on the way to work, there's one place I will go that's on the way to work and takes me, you know, 35, 40 minutes, I get back in the car and I'm on the way to, and I go to work. And I definitely, never do business dinners under any circumstances, unless I just have

to. Those things alone have, have, have, have, have, have, have also taken a nap, means that I still have energy in the evening to do, not only to do the television, to do the news hour, but also just a function. I can work at night if I have to on my books. But more importantly, I can wake up in the morning, fresh and ready to go. And I go to the office, we work morning newspaper hours at the news hour, meaning our editorial process begins at 10, 15, I'm at the office at 8, or 8, 15, and there's nobody there. And that's when I write, in my office at, at, at my office at the office, at the news hour. And I work on weekends, when I travel, I have a laptop with me, every place I go. I always, I wrote on the, on the flight from Milwaukee to Kansas City, whenever, whenever that was, it was, it was yesterday. And I go, when I go home tonight, back to Washington from Kansas City, I will probably, I have my life, I have a laptop, weighs two pounds, works like a charm.

And I've got something, you know, it's a little, I'm doing a rewriting thing now. It's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, any, it's, it works. You're listening to Jim Lear at the River City Reading Festival. Mr. Lear takes another question from the audience. Question was, she had read that one out of four Americans had, last year had not read a book. Well, I don't have an easy answer to that. I find that appalling. I find that amazing. I can't imagine not reading books, although I understand the problem. I mean, I, that, that, that, that, that, that statistic makes, I have an old friend of mine went to, went to the Victoria College with me, junior college with me, who's a teacher, college professor, teaches English, teaches another junior college in South Texas. on the way up, kids trying to, it's a tough thing. And he's trying to teach them American literature. And the way he begins, because the kids just didn't, they don't know about the printed, he gets videotapes of movies of great novels.

And he shows them 10 minutes of it. And then he shows them, then they have to read that 10, whatever's represented by that 10 minute, he's using everything he can, all the technologies and whatever to get people to understand the importance of reading and all of that. I share your concern, but I don't have an easy answer. Because I find it, obviously, it's very disconcerting to me, because, in my opinion, all that matters is between two pieces of paper, between two pieces of cardboard. And it isn't on Google. Is somebody down here, mate? Yes, sir? Can we carry through, like most of all, the novels? Question, individual characters carry through the novels. The one-eyed Mac, the people in Oklahoma. But an I wrote two books of evolving some former CIA agents who retired into the Panhandle of West Virginia. That's where our house is.

And they do little enterprise freelancing stuff for old friends. And one of them's called Purple Dot. Tell you a quick story about this. This goes to show you about what Washington is like. One of them's called Purple Dots. And the Purple Dot comes from the fact that in Washington, CIA agents, FBI agents, whatever kinds of agents, maybe tailing somebody, maybe on a surveillance thing in cars. And then suddenly, the person they're tailing goes into a building, the person's in the car. In other words, the agent doing their trainings in a car. And there's no place to park. And there's a fire, there's a fire hydrant, or there's a yellow, whatever. And so they developed this Purple Dot system. And they put a little, the dots about the size of a dime, Purple, and they put them in the lower right-hand corner of a license plate for FBI agents, CIA people, and all that sort of thing. And the word to all the police agencies in the Washington

area, if you see a car parked illegally, and they're even at the motor's running, and you see a Purple Dot in the right-hand corner, don't touch that car. Because they were totally in FBI agents, cars, and stuff like that before. Well, the word got out within the bureaucracy. Everybody wanted one of these Purple Dots. The Assistant Secretary of Lawa wanted a Purple Dot, because what a great thing that would be. Well, I made all this up. And I went to a cocktail party, you know, a swishy, big shot cocktail party in Washington, a guy whose name, if I called his name, you would recognize it. Trust me. Comes over to me and says, yes, sir. He said, Jim Ma, you know, I've been in the government for a month and done, you know, and, you know, how do you get one of those Purple Dots? Hey.

Anyhow, that's the one-eyed Mac and the CIA guys, the only continuing, only continuing. Who is it? Yes, sir. As you were analyzed, the process is possible through the default that I heard. Well, the question is, the character takes hold, and the question is the way we were analyzed. It's just the most exciting thing that can happen for me. And sometimes when they don't take hold, it's just, you know, something's wrong. But you could be in the, you could be in the, you could really be in the swing of things, and everything's working and it's fine. The novel that, this one, I'm, oh, Johnny, really had problems with it, because it didn't really take over the way I wanted it to, I expected it to, and it did not. But when it does, sometimes it takes you places you had no intention of going. Even though I have rarely outlined anything ahead of time. Sometimes my mind jumps quicker than I can write,

so I will take, you know, once I'm going, I will make some notes about where I think I'm going. But usually, once I do that, I don't ever go over there. And it is, the, just analyzing, I think it just means, if that happens, it's working. Sometimes you've done it, but you can still end up against the wall, even if somebody's with you, and you're with them, you can still, because this character may not know what he or she's doing. Yes. What authors inspired, what authors influenced myself? Well, him and way for one, you know, him and way, his whole point was, you know, the iceberg theory of fiction writing. You know, it's what's below the waterline that the novel is really all about. It isn't the stuff that you actually read. It's what it triggers in your mind as you're reading. And there's a George Seeminoan, he's a Belgian writer. He's written, he wrote, I don't know, 500 novels.

And they, some of them, about 100 of them are about a French detective in Paris. And I read those when I travel. I don't have them done it recently, because I'm doing other things. But I used to take one with me. They haven't all been translated into English. But I always, I mean, he, Seeminoan, I promise you, if you really read him carefully, in one sentence, he can describe snow coming and make his ship. He can describe heat in a room, and you'll start sweating profusely with one or two sentences. And I, he is, when I want to get a shot of inspirational writing, I read Seeminoan. F's got Fitzgerald, a different kind of inspiration. I mean, just about the flow of the language, it is, you think, my God, how did this guy do that? I mean, I tend to, to, you know, there's some creative writing teachers who say the way to learn

to write is to try to be, try to write like him in way, or Fitzgerald, or fill in the blank, because you can't. But in the process, you'll learn how to write, you'll develop your own style. Nobody, you can't copy somebody else's style. But of the, of the contemporaries who are writing now, I mean, Updike is, I find myself having to reread some of his, he's such a, a stylist. I have to, I have to really pay attention when I'm reading Updike, but in the best, in the best way. The problem when a writer, for me at least, when a writer reads something else, somebody else's fiction, I have sometimes read it twice, not the whole thing, but reads saying, you know, first of all, to follow it, you know, as, as just a reader, and then say, when the, how in the world did he or she pull that off? What, what, what was it? And so, to me, that's an ongoing, ongoing process, and stripping.

This, last question? Last question. I haven't lived in Oklahoma for a while, so do you appreciate it at all? Question is, do I still own bus? Yes, indeed. It's my pride and joy. It's a 1947 flexible clipper. Flexible clipper is buses that were made in the, starting in the 30s, up until the 60s. We had one, one of our three buses of the Kansas Central lines was a 1938 flexible clipper that was worn out. When we started 47, it already been worn out because of the war, all the buses were worn out. And that's one of the problems. My dad, all our money went to keep him in the buses running. But anyhow, I found this 1947, our bus line was running. If we'd had the money, we would have bought a brand new flexible clipper. And of course, we couldn't. But I found one, a guy in Bristol, Virginia, about three hours from Washington. I heard about this guy who said, who said, had a pristine 1947 flexible clipper along the Holy Dead.

And I bought it. And I drove it myself. Unfortunately, it was in great mechanical shape. And the guy said, I'll help you get it started. I, a friend had driven me down there. I'll help you get it started. And I said, great, great. And he said, once you get it started, don't turn it off till you get there. And I was like, oh, what have I done? I'd already paid for it and all of that. And so I couldn't stop when I'd go to a gas. I finally had these things run about two miles to the gallon. And I was, I had to start me good gas. And I figured I'd revbed it. And I thought, well, I know that battery. But I did, just for as a precaution, waited till I found a place that had a little bit of a decline to it. So let me hold it. I turned it off, filled it up. Yeah, two tanks filled it up, dead. I'd been driving at bus already for two and a half hours.

And the battery was dead. So I finally found it anyhow. I had the bus fixed up, and I had it completely restored. And I had it painted Kansas Central colors. Another Kansas colors, yellow and blue. Across the top, it has Wichita, Hillsboro, Marion, Emporia. Because we had a run. The Emporia, we also had a line that went from, I mean, a connecting line went from Lehigh, west through Canton, Galvan, McPherson. So McPherson was up there. This is across the top of both sides of the bus. And underneath the windows, Kansas Central lines. And on the back, like kind of an oval in script, had this sign painter put on there, a root of the Flint Hills. And we have six grandchildren, four of them are boys. And their idea of a really great time

with their granddaddy is to ride that bus with me. And it's so much fun. It doesn't always start, but I have it, and I love it. And it's very, very special to me. And speaking of being special to me, this has been a special day for me. And all of you, I know it is for all of you. This is the River City Reading Festival. I'm sure will last forever. And I'm going to expect every one of you to bring somebody else with you the next time you go. And be here every time because the question about people not reading books is what we are all about. That's what this festival is all about. For each and every one of you, and all of us in Kansas and everywhere else, I love you all. Simple sunflower. Bye. You've been listening to Jim Lair, host of the news hour on public television, author and keynote speaker at the first River City Reading

Festival at the Lawrence Art Center, sponsored by Altrusa International, a service organization that promotes literacy. It was recorded October 14, 2007. The Recording Engineer was Chubby Smith. I'm Kay McIntyre. KPR presents is a production of Kansas Public Radio at the University of Kansas. Next time on KPR presents, it's a traditional holiday classic. Join us as the quick silver radio theater presents a Christmas Carol, a ghost story that's eight o'clock Sunday night on Kansas Public Radio.