Harvard Book Store; WGBH Forum Network; Elizabeth Kostova: The Swan Thieves

Everybody Good evening. Name's Mike. On behalf of our bookstore I want to thank you all for coming out on this wet and cold evening to our event with Elizabeth Kostova. Before we get so I want to mention just a few of our bookstores upcoming events. Tomorrow night Charlotte Bennett will discuss her new book The People vs. Bush about her campaign for attorney general of Vermont on a platform to prosecute George W. Bush for murder. They talk about here in the store at 7:00 and it is free. Next Monday Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz will discuss his new book freefall America free markets and the sinking of the world economy that talk about the Brattle Theater at six tickets are $5 and they're still available at the registers. And next Tuesday we will be joined in our monthly wind down by the good people from the Let's Go travel guide series. The event will be here in store at 7. It is free and as usual there will be complimentary wine so please come on by. And for more information on these and other upcoming Harvard bookstore events you can pick up the January events fire at the information desk or go online to

Harvard dot com. Does he ever take a moment now to turn off or sounds your cell phones if you have them with you. I am very excited to welcome Elizabeth coast of a to Harvard bookstore to read from her new novel The Swan Thieves. MS coast of his debut novel The historian was an imaginative retelling of Dracula that caused a sensation when it was published in 2005 and it became the first debut novel ever to reach number one on the New York Times best seller list. His cost of earned her MFA at the University of Michigan where she won the 2003 Hopwood award and she is the founder of the Elizabeth coast of a foundation which seeks to foster creative writing in Bulgaria and support the translation and publication of Bulgarian writers abroad. MS coast of his new novel The Swan Thieves began as one renowned artist Robert all over attempts to destroy a painting in the Impressionist collection at the National Gallery of Art committed to a psychiatric hospital. Oliver is placed under the care of Dr. Andrew Marlow.

When the now news all over begins obsessively painting portraits of an unknown woman doctor Marlowe begins a globe trotting journey to uncover the mysterious woman's identity. The Times of London called The Swan Thieves atmospheric and richly entertaining and the associate cited the Associated Press called the novel and understated beautifully written tale of arch love and an obsession triggered by both. We'll follow MS coast of us reading with a question answer session and end of the book signing here at this table. We'll start clearing chairs away as soon as the talk is finished I'm going to ask that the line form to my left going off down this way and curving around as necessary. It will help direct that. We have copies of the swamp is available to purchase at the registers We ask that you personally copy before having it signed. And as always I do thank those of you who purchase a book from Harvard bookstore. By doing so you're supporting a local independent bookstore and this author series making it possible for Harvard bookstores bring captivating authors like Elizabeth Kosovo to you. So please join me in welcoming her to the podium. Thank you very much for that nice introduction.

Can everybody hear me now. Is the microphone on. This is how I like it. Yes no it's all right. Just trying to really speak up. But if you if I start to Diane please tell me your Because I'd really like for you all to be able to hear it. There has that. Yeah I can hear that. Well I'm very proud to be here and I'm very proud to support an independent bookstore. So you know you're grateful to have it here in your community. I thought I would do something a little bit out of order which is often written of course and that is to read you a short chapter very short. And then in the prologue. So I'm going to Chapter 35 which starts in 95 for those of you who are page turner.

I like to have the page. And I should just tell you quickly some of the characters in their names the main character in this section is Beatrice. She's a young married woman Mary. And her character in this chapter and an avid painter in an era when women are not particularly encouraged to paint and her currently attempting not to fall in love with her husband who is also a painter her by marriage. And the only person who seemed in her world who seems to really understand her and his name is. So the main characters here are her husband and her husband's uncle and they're in Normandy on the coast. The village where they stay is quieter than nearby.

Ian says he likes it better for that very reason. There he found even more unsettling in summer and there must be as many people on the promenade there as on the way. They can always take a horse drawn carriage to it for some quiet elegance if they like. But this hamlet of houses in walking distance of the broad beach pleases all of them and most days they stay there in Serenity walking the pebbles and the sands. Every evening means Montagnier allowed to be in the rented parlor with the cheap damask chairs and shelves full of sea shells. The other two men listen or talk in low voices near them. She has started a new piece of embroidery as well to be a sewn into a cushion for a dressing room. My birthday present. She applies herself to this task day after day straining her senses over the fine small flowers in golden purple. She likes to work on it while she sits

on the veranda when she raises her head there's the sea the gray brown green topped cliffs off to the left and far right wing fishermen and the boats pulled up on the beach. Think clouds above a blustery horizon every few hours it rains and then the sun breaks through again. Every day is a little warmer until a stormy morning suddenly keeps them unsigned. The next day is brighter still. Her pastimes all help her avoid. But one afternoon he comes to sit beside her on the veranda. She knows his habits and this is a change in the mornings and again in late afternoons when the weather is fine he paints on the beach. He has invited her to accompany him but her her eight excuses she doesn't have a canvas prepared always put a stop to that and he goes by himself cheerfully whistling touching his hat as he passes her in her chair on the porch. She wonders if he walks more briskly because she is watching. She again has that

strange sense that he is shedding years under her gaze. Or is it merely that she has learned to look through his years now more transparent to her that she sees through them to the person they had made him. Whenever he takes leave of her she watches his straight back his favorite old painting suit retreating down the beach. She is trying to learn to view him. Her husband who happens to be on holiday with them. But she knows too much about his thoughts his turns of phrase his dedication to his work his regard for hers. Of course he doesn't send her letters here in this house but words linger between them his slanting handwriting. The sudden leap of his mind on paper his caressing to you on the page. Today there is a book instead of an easel under his arm he settles down next to her in a big chair as if determined not to be rebuffed.

She is glad in spite of herself that she has put on her pale green dress with yellow reaching at the neck. A few days before he said made her look like a narcissus. She wishes he were even nearer so that his gray jacketed shoulder could brush hers. He would go away when he would get on a train back to Paris. Her throat tightens. He smells of something pleasant from his twin that some unknown so to Cologne. She wonders if he has worn this scent for many years whether it has changed with time. The book in his lap stays closed and she is certain that he doesn't intend to read it. A suspicion borne out when she sees the title. She recognizes it from the shelf just inside and he obviously snatched it up before coming to sit with her. A ploy that makes her smile down at her needlework. She says with what she hopes is a housewife's neutrality. He answers.

They sit in silence for a moment or two and that she thinks is the proof. Even the problem if they were genuine strangers or ordinary family members they would already be chatting about nothing in particular. Man I ask you a question my dear. Of course she finds her tiny scissors with their storks beak and embossed legs. She cuts her thread. Do you intend to avoid me for a full month. It's been only six and a half or six days and seven hours. He corrects her. The effect is so droll that she glances up and smiles. His eyes are blue. Not elderly enough to put her off as they should. That's much better he says. I had hoped the punishment would not last for weeks. Punishment she asks as mildly as she can. She tries in vain to rethread her needle. Yes punishment and for what. For in my ring a young painter from a distance. After all my good manners you can surely afford to give me a little cordiality.

You understand I think she begins but the needle is giving her unusual trouble. Allow me. He takes the needle and threads it carefully with the fine gold silk. Then hands it back. Old eyes you know they get keen with you. She can't stop herself from laughing. It is this humor between them his ability to mock himself more than anything else that undoes her. Very well you will understand that it is impossible for me to pay as much attention as you would pay a stone in your pretty shoe actually and pay much more to the stone so perhaps I will simply have to become more annoying. No please. She has begun to laugh again. She hates the joy that sparkles between them at such moments. The pleasure that might become visible to anyone else. Doesn't this man understand that he is part of her family and elderly. She feels again the elusiveness of age. What he has already taught her is that a person doesn't feel

old inside at least until the body claims its dismal due. That is why the past seems old although he is younger. While this white haired silver bearded artist seems not to know how he should behave. Stop it. I'm too ancient to do any harm and your husband thoroughly approves of our friendship. And she tries to sound offended but the strange pleasure of his closeness is too great and she finds herself smiling at him again. All right. And you have argued argued yourself into a corner. If there's no reason for objections anyway you can come out and paint with me tomorrow morning. My fisherman friend down on the beach says it will be fine. So Fine then the fish will be leaping into his boat. For my part I thought they left tire on rainy days. He was imitating the dialect of the coast and she laughs. He gestures toward the water. I don't like your language here with all this sewing. A great artist in the making you should be out with her easel. Now she feels herself

blushing from the neck up. Don't tease me. He turned serious at once and takes her hand as if without thinking. Not as a gesture of courtship. No no I'm in earnest. If I had your gifts I would not be wasting a minute wasting. She was half angry half ready to cry my dear and clumsy. He kisses her hand in apology and lets it go before she can protest. You must know what faith I have in your work. Don't be indignant. Just come out and paint with me tomorrow and you'll remember how you love it and forget all about me and my clumsiness. Merely escort you to the right view. Agreement again that vulnerable boy gazing out of his eyes she passes a hand over her forehead. She cannot imagine loving anyone more than she loves him in this moment. Not his letters not his politeness but the man himself and all the years that have polished him and made him both confident and fragile. She

swallows puts the needle neatly through her embroidery. Yes thank you I will come. When they returned to Paris three weeks later she takes with her five small canvases at the water in the boat's sky. And now this is what you encounter when you open outside the village there is a fire ring blackening the thawing snow next to the firing is a basket that has sat there for months and is beginning to add there to the color of ash. There are benches for the old men huddled to warm their hands too cold even for that now too close to Twilight too dreary. This is not Paris. The air smells of smoke in night sky. There is a hope beyond the woods. Sunset in the dark is coming down so quickly that someone has already lit a lantern in the window of the house

nearest the deserted fire. It is January or February or perhaps a grim March 1895. The year will be marked in rough black numbers against the shadows in one corner the roofs of the village our slate stained with melting snow slides off them in heaps. Some of the lanes are walled and there's open to the fields and many gardens. The doors to the houses are closed and the scent of cooking rising above the chimneys. Only one person is a star in all this desolation. A woman in heavy travelling clothes walking down. Someone is in there too. Bending over the flame a human been indistinct in the distant window. Their woman carries herself with dignity and she isn't wearing the wooden of the village. Her cloak and long skirts stand out against the violet snow with fur that hides a curve of her

cheek the hem of her dress has a geometric border and pale blue. She is walking away with the bundle in her arms something wrapped tightly as if against the cold. The trees hold their branches toward the sky. They frame the road. Someone has left a red cloth on the bench in front of the house at the end of the lane. Perhaps the only spot of bright color. The woman with her arms with her gloved hands turning her back on the center of the village as quickly as possible. Her boots clicked on a patch of ice in the room. Her pale against the gathering dark she draws herself together close. Protective naming the village or hastening toward one of the houses in the last row even the one person watching doesn't know the answer nor does he care. He has worked most of the afternoon measuring the road waiting for the ten minutes of winter.

The woman is an intruder but he puts her into quickly noting the details of her clothes her hood forward to stay warm or to hide her bundle. A beautiful surprise whoever she is she is the missing note to fill that central stretch of road he has just inside his window for more than a quarter of an hour. Her step on the road but for a moment she would turn and look straight at him her soft her lips for a million. But she does not turn and he finds he is glad he needs her as she

is needs her moving away from him into this snowy tunnel of his canvas needs the straight form of her back and heavy skirts with their elegant border her arm cradling the wrapped on object. She is a real woman and she is in a hurry. But now she is also fixed forever. Now she is frozen in her haste. She is a real woman. And now she is a painting. Thank you. Thank you. We have a little time for questions and I'll do my best to answer them whenever they are. I'm sure somebody has. Yes ma'am. The question was How do I feel my MFA program improved or helped my work.

Well I was very lucky I went to notice there's a book on Vlad the Impaler right there. I was very lucky I went to an MFA program that has a wonderfully congenial atmosphere environment and I found that I had for the first time in many many years almost since I was a child I had time to focus on writing instead of writing just around the edges of everything else I needed to do. And it was really I always when I think I'm arriving at my on the pay program I think of that movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Has everybody seen that. I mean I guess the whole world has seen them and you know in that movie they're all these people have shared a vision of Table Mountain and they sculpted in their mashed potatoes and me they build it in and then they all meet at Table Mountain

all who can get through to Table Mountain. And there's this recognition they have this recognition of one another. Other people have this kind of form of of happy insanity that I have and getting together with a lot of other fiction writers for the first time in my life is like that. I had known plenty of writers but suddenly I was immersed in that situation. So any time and it gave me this kind of joy of community which when I enter and I am if a program written about half of the historian and I wrote the other half a second half so it was really like rocket fuel. But I was you know Alania when I went there and I was already in my late 30s and I knew the value of what I had. You know I had worked more than fulltime so many years that I really knew this time was precious and I had to use it. If you have other questions about in the same programs we can talk when I afterward and then it's a big

decision if you're thinking about it. Yes. And the question was What is my writing process. And I have to say it was very different from these two books with the historian that that was a deeply felt book for me and I felt you know I developed the characters with great care. There's a lot about that book that was kind of like solving puzzles. There's a lot that had to be worked out logically and. And I found that I had to write it from start to finish in pretty much the order you read it and that was I read much later that the most efficient way to write a mystery is to work out the mystery itself the crime or they heard in the book and you get

that completely worked out and then go to the beginning in writing a book. So I think kindness in the most inefficient way one possibly could. But I needed to do it that way to solve those problems for myself. And with this one themes I promised myself that I would try different process and it was it was really inspired by a friend of mine in my and the FE program who is also a novelist and short story writer. I went over to see her one day and I said well what have you what are you doing today and she said oh I'm working. When are you working on. I'm working on my novel. Oh that's good I said. Well so what chapter and you won. And she said I don't know. And I was amazed to find that I didn't know that you were allowed to do that. So I promised myself that when I wrote the second book if I ever managed to do that I wouldn't try to write in that way. And what she did and which which is what I did in this one piece is that she

she writes Whenever material is in her mind to connect a story with this particular story. Whenever material is compelling or kind of hot for her that time and it gives a great feeling of intimacy to her writing and I hope also to this one themes. Of course when you do that then you have to spend in infernally long time afterward piecing together what you've written and building bridges from when seen to another. So I also spent about a year and three months in the end of writing this one piece just rewriting it and making sure all of that fit together. But but that was very liberating in a way to to be able to write what was really kind of alive in my mind at a particular time and I had no idea how to write the third one. Yes. Well I knew I knew right away that I didn't want to write a sequel.

I think there are some things that are just better left alone. And I also think vampires for example perhaps. And I also think that and also I would like to learn something completely new from book I write and the written historical research I do for each book is exhaustive and very important to me. So I knew I didn't want to to write a sequel. And I had wanted for a long time to write a book about a painter. I'm not a painter myself and I love painting as a spectator and I'm close to quite a few people who are painters very gifted ones and I'm fascinated by the idea that someone can look at the world in terms of color texture. I think when you're a writer and I think most of the writers in this room. What degree you have in some way you have a kind of tape loop of words that's constantly going in your head and it describes the things you see and make sense of your experience.

And I think there's something to me there's something fascinating about seeing the world in an official way in this kind of compelling visual way. And writing this book although I am still clumsy and imagining what it's like to be a painter has made me look at the world in a different way. So when I stand here and look in all the shelves I see colors much more vividly than I used to. And I think that's because I kept trying in this halting way to train myself to see the world a little differently. So I wanted to to try to do that. In answer to me I think implicit part of your question it. It never never occurred to me to me nervous about writing a second novel after an accidental first public success. I didn't expect a historian necessarily even to be published. I knew that it was an odd book and then it might not sell and when it not only sold to a publisher but then went on to have some success. I was really stunned and happy and grateful to have readers but

also very surprised and it didn't occur to me to be nervous about a book until about 10000 Rangers stood up in queue in a session since hand. Don't you don't you wonder what it will be like to write a second book after this. Do you sit down to the blank page and feel a great nervousness about all this people out there waiting to see what you will write and when there it will be as good. And do you worry that your publisher will be disappointed in you and to you. And after a long time I'm not the same as what you asked. And after a long time I meant to wonder if perhaps I should be nervous. But I'm happy to say that and I know writers also find this true that when you're actually composing fiction especially if it's going well or at least not poorly you have a sense of disappearance into the text and you really don't remember at least I don't confess what my name

is. What year I was born and I certainly never remembered at those moments that I had written a first book let alone published. And that that's a great sort of protection from that that phenomenon of accidental A6 accidental success or our failure whatever happens out there. So for me they this visceral pleasure of writing fiction remain the same. And that may be partly because I had been working for 20 years at least before I published the historian. Yes. If you travel and research Well these these two books came out very differently. When I wrote the historian about places I had been previously. So when I when I started it and during the ten years while I was writing it I

really had no time or money or freedom to go anywhere basically. Maybe to Philadelphia. I really I was completely wrapped up in working several jobs raising young children. Being broke being busy and so I drew on my own travel notes and memories but. How many of us really trust our travel memories so I had to double check a lot of when I was writing anyway. Do library research and interviews to kind of back it up with this one thing. I had the experience for the first time of going to a few places in order to write about them and that was that was completely different. I found myself being very observant and being careful in my note taking. I took a lot of photographs in addition to writing notes. I took someone else with me who can write on their notes for

corroboration and it was it was really a wonderful experience. It was more I think like being a journalist or travel writer temporarily and those things I took home and put into the into the book and I found doing that that there were details that I never would have known about if I hadn't gone to the Norman coast for example. I wouldn't have known that. But the rocks are like the big pebbles on the beach and the noise they make when the tide pulls them in and out. And I might have stumbled on some of that in sound film for example but I never did. So I found it wonderful and of course it's such a drag to have to go do research in friends that it was a great experience it was a much smaller shorter travel experience than what went into the historian which was many years of living and working and travelling in other countries. Yes or no.

How many books have to be sold to qualify as a runaway best seller. It seems to mean that there were a runaway is not a scientific term and I have no idea what that I think that's probably a marketing exaggeration when people say runaway best seller. I don't know is that a technical term and several publishers publicists former publicists. So this is a very I don't know that actually specific construction. Yeah. And I think I think that where you run away it's probably publicising weren't really so and maybe it refers partly to the spinnet went to a book becomes a bestseller

because there are many books of course that begin that are sort of grassroots bestsellers they begin with slow sales and build by word of mouth and two very popular books including littering novels. This answer your question. You. I guess in instances it isn't a matter of numbers to actually a well kept secret

mark. YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH I KNOW RIGHT. Do you have another question or two. Yes. Thank you but I will definitely when qualifying for the cooking.

But yes it's funny you mention music because I have been thinking about a new story that actually doesn't feature music centrally but I was. As I was working on notes for it I just started reading a third novel about two months ago and I was suddenly realizing I would like to attempt to write about music even if it's if it's only one book and I think that's I think it's even harder to write vividly about music and it is about the visual arts. You know it's hard to make people hear music I tried to do that a couple of times in the historian because there there are people who in the historian who are encountering Eastern Europe in the form of traditional music. And that's something I'm not very much. But it's very hard to do. And yes. But I remember that. Yeah. Well I don't know about that but I'll try something else to hand this a second ago yes.

The question was How do I come up with the idea for a story. Well again these these two novels had very different origins and they're the first one is a terrible cliche which is that I was standing on top of the mouse. And I suddenly on a hike and I suddenly had a kind of vision of a father telling a young Donner tales about Dracula in beautiful places in the Old World. And I wondered for the first time if this would make a good structure for a novel. And I I sat down and wrote a lot of notes right away. And my second novel and this one theme. Really developed kind of piecemeal I knew I wanted to write about a painter. I began thinking about the Impressionist because I know he's been interested in them both in their work and in them as a kind of social phenomenon and in their

place in our lives because they're such familiar images and they often become so hackneyed. And the story from there. I also very much wanted to try the literary experiment of I wanted to try to make the figure of one character rise up three dimensionally out of other people's voices which is what happens I hope in this book because the character in the center of the book refuses to speak about himself. So whenever people speak for him. And I was into line and when I found this quotation which I put it in front of the book by and large. When she says you would hardly believe how difficult it is to place a figure alone on a canvas and to concentrate all the interest on this single and universal figure and still keep it living and real which is the problem of the portrait painter.

And who has married her at this story who tells his her story is a portrait painter Robert Oliver some of the time. So I wanted a portrait in other people's voices. So this one themes arose out of several different concerns but in kind of gradual way. And my third novel also occurred to me in a way that is so cliche that is somewhat public which is that I woke up in the early morning from a dream in which I had seen the opening scene of a novel that dealt with the material I wanted to write about but in a way I've never ever pictured before. Very dramatic and strange and a little bit macabre also. And then the dream went on kind of. The trajectory of the novel not seeing my scene but what might happen in the middle and then the final scene. Also very strange. And then I dream I'm ashamed to say that I saw my

novel this novel in paperback lying on the shelf and it could rain the title. So all of that worked perfectly with when I wanted to do and I forgot how to use it and of course many dreams seem brilliant when you have them when you first make up and then you write them down and you go back 24 hours later and think that this really quite work but this one was one that did. So I guess we have to leave the rest to Carl Young. But I will am using it already in the story. Yes. So. Did everyone hear the question in the back and a good caring voice.

All those announcements. So that's a really interesting question and I found that when I set out to write about the impressionist I found that I had gotten tired of them to say that they are their images are so familiar to us and their you know we see them on cards and an umbrella of us and they don't reproduce very well. You know if if you compare an impressionist painting in the flesh with even a quite fine art book reproduction it's very hard to appreciate them in reproduction because you can't see can't really see the texture on the canvas what shows the hand of the artist so vividly. So I really did have to go through some of this process and rediscovering them for myself and then a project of going to music and many of my characters go to as well. Going especially to examined an impressionist. I mean precious work in one way and other and

immersing myself in the real canvases and they really are. The great impressionist paintings I think are just extraordinary pieces of art and we say that it sounds stupid now but they are wild creations they are so radical in the context of what came before and even now when you look at them the fact that they're different and six inches two inches you know set the alarm off there but at three inches and five feet and the other end in the room I was I was looking at just a reproduction actually the other day that had been shrunk to this thing and suddenly it was a completely different picture. Still an exquisite picture but. But you can see the forms in miniature and very starkly. And of course many of those painters painted outside and said they they didn't have the luxury of backing up 10 yards from their from their easels.

And I was really astonished and by when I learned about them. By the courage it took for them to examine the degree to which they were ridiculed and condemned by the press and received the disgust of the public. And sometimes excitement and very brave progressive reviewers. And within of course 10 or 20 years they were already finding a following at least among collectors who can look farther than the previous generations. So I took great pleasure in seeing these paintings again but I did have to go through that whole process that Andrew Marlowe complains about in the opening chapters in the book. We have time for one more question. Yes there

are. Sure I know that about 20 years ago but this year I went to Bulgaria for the first time to study traditional music which is as strong ha me and had over many years. And while I was there I met my future husband and I spent many years going back to Bulgaria and visiting family friends learning more about the culture. Learning a lot of the language and when I went there after I published the historian I went to Bulgaria and tour and it's very rare for a western book to use a small East European sending it in in a major way. And and. The book Christopher seemed in a very moving way in Bulgaria and I decided well I

was there and then I went by Met a lot of writers actually who came to hear my readings and I realized that many of them were struggling struggling terribly. You know it's inspired to be a writer in any culture it's hard to make a living it's hard to find time it's hard not to lose your mind it's hard to get the support of other people to do that. And if you're doing it really doing it it's not an easy it's a strange thing to choose a strange way of life. And in Bulgaria I met writers who were not only working many jobs but then driving a taxi at night. They couldn't get published because the European market has been flooded with translations from English including my books. And when you see when you look around a park in Sofia you see people reading and if you go and take a pole or walk around Snoop you'll find that most of them are reading James Patterson or John Grisham. And because of that

Bulgarian writers especially literary writers have a tremendously hard time having anything close to a normal career now. So I decided to donate 10 percent of the international royalties from the historian over my lifetime to assist and support Bulgarian literary writing and to create prizes there and there were very few literary prizes and very few that weren't by nomination. They didn't have that kind of. That kind of open application or open process that we have here. There were the literary journal struggle and there were there's almost no until now there's been in the snow workshop of writers meeting or what you might call a creative writing instruction but which is really discussion among colleagues. And so I've formed an international writing seminar. It's an annual seminar and so open to writers for

fellowships and to writing in the world. So if you would like to apply in your own place go to you if for Bulgaria. And last year we got over 100 applications for 10 places. So we have had phenomenal writers there. And we also have created some translation prizes. So this is I think when you have any kind of. Human accidental success with writing. It really behooves you to give back in some way. And I'm also worked a lot for literacy in this country I think that's in just a horrifying problem we have. But I wanted to do something in Eastern Europe because Eastern Europe has really nurtured my work that I'm starting I was a 10 minute answer but this is one of my who's one of my pet cousins.

So and there is so I mean you have a great Web site if you want to look at it. You had one more question and wrap up. Is it. Well I wrote I wrote the historian in 10 with a lot of other work to do and I wrote this one in four and I felt as if it left marks on my desk. This four years seemed so fast especially with the tour I did print historian but it seems to me that although every novel is a new project and I'm very struck starting over this third time about I'm very struck by how little I know about writing a novel.

It's amazing how much each project is his own thing. But I do feel that I'm getting a little bit faster at certain things. I don't think speed is kind of goal. I'm sure you'd agree with that. But there are things that I did with grainy grey agonizing slowness in the historian that I now understand I can't indulge in because they don't make sense intellectually. It's not that I want to hurry. But but I'm learning more about going right to the point in the first sentence. So I hope that you know it's a process. But thank you for asking that so delicately. Twenty years later there have been some novels published in the last two years that were 10 to 20 years in the making and whose authors received a lot sort of. I would say criticism but perhaps

Pinney for writer's block and who then produced works. So there's hope for all of us maybe. Thank you so much. Thank you.