Loading summary
Transcript78 lines
- [00:01]
Sponsor
This episode is brought to you by Lifelock. Not everyone is careful with your personal information, which might explain why there's a victim of identity theft every five seconds in the U.S. fortunately, there's LifeLock. LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats to your identity. If your identity is stolen, a US based restoration specialist will fix it, guaranteed or your money back. Save up to 40% your first year by visiting lifelock.com podcast terms apply.
- [00:38]
Charlie Gibson
Well, hello there, bookcasers. It's another Thursday. We're delighted to see you, even if we're seeing you on a Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday. I'm Charlie Gibson.
- [00:46]
Kate
Absolutely. We'll take you any day of the week. As long as you are a bookcase lover and you're enthusiastic and open minded. You're one of us.
- [00:53]
Charlie Gibson
Absolutely. We should send out those foam rubber things that were number one, you know.
- [00:57]
Richard Russo
Yeah.
- [00:58]
Kate
Big foam finger, you know.
- [00:59]
Charlie Gibson
Yeah, exactly.
- [01:00]
Kate
And everybody can wear them when they listen. I love today's show. You know, I have said several times that I have the greatest job in the world. And frankly, over the last three years, I've met a few of my literary heroes. I've also discovered some new literary heroes, but I've met a few of my literary heroes. Amor toles, James McBride, Hernan Diaz. Like, there are people that I've met that I've been in awe of and this week's guest, Richard Russo, is one of those. I fell in love with Richard Russo after I read Empire Falls and then I read just about everything else that ever wrote elsewhere. That Old Cape Magic Straight man is one of my favorites. If you, by the way, home listeners have not read Straight man, you will love it and laugh out loud. I love Richard Russo's writing. So when I heard he had something new, I was like, are you kidding?
- [01:47]
Charlie Gibson
Well, first of all, I love the trilogy too. That was set in upstate New York. Nobody's Fool, Everybody's Fool, Somebody's Fool. I love that trilogy. But Russo is extraordinary in that he writes such fully developed characters that are so relatable, even if they come from an area to which you wouldn't normally relate. And you can just picture the places that he writes about in small town, upstate, challenged town in New York, upstate New York. And he writes with a tremendous heart. This is a very full show and Richard Russo is a very, very interesting writer, so we're delighted to have him. But I want to underline his new book just out on Tuesday the 13th. I'm worried it's going to get lost. Because it's a book of essays called Life and Art. Seven of the essays are about his life and about his family as he tries to come to terms with them, and six of them are about his art. And I think it's an extraordinary book. I read it a few months ago, and I knew after I read the first essay that I couldn't read them a lot in one day. And so I sort of parceled them out so that after I read each one, I would take some time to think about it because they are very, very thoughtful. People don't read essays, unfortunately, but Life and Art is very, very much worth reading.
- [03:13]
Kate
Yeah. I would argue you said you needed time to reflect after you finished them. I think that's a good way of describing the essays themselves. They're brilliant reflections on a life well lived. And does my work mean anything? And here is the state of the world today. And I have to say, I love essay writers. I love Mary Laura Philpot. I love Jenny Lawson. I love a good essay. I really do. So these collections don't get lost on me, but I'm a big reading nerd. Please read this book if you like Richard Russo, and you really should, because he's a brilliant writer. This is really his reflections on the world and on writing. It's a really good book. And I think he also makes the case brilliantly why art is more important now than it's ever been, that we need art, beautiful art, art that questions everything. We need all different kinds of art right now to reflect on where we are as a society. I think he makes that case brilliantly in this book as well.
- [04:12]
Charlie Gibson
Yeah. Just one quick read. In the end, we tell stories because we must, he writes. And the real source of that isn't talent or knowledge or the authenticity that derives from research and lived experience. It's mystery. What we don't understand is what beckons us. And so much of what he says he doesn't understand is what's going on in the world right now as he tries to make sense of it. And he is still puzzled by his parents, whom he so obviously loves, but who were very flawed characters. The essays are wonderful. So here's our conversation with Richard Russo. Richard Russo, it is indeed a pleasure, a real pleasure, to have you in the bookcase. I think I've put a wing on your house with all the novels of yours that I've read. But I'm curious as to how this book came together. And why did you write these essays? What was your motivation?
- [05:12]
Richard Russo
One of the things that happened for me during the pandemic was that when all of my social obligations went out the window. When I found out that I was told to go home and stay there, as everyone was. And it came as a great relief to be told to do that. Which is what I'd been trying to do for years, as it turned out, and was entirely unsuccessful at. But no. Told to stay home.
- [05:38]
Charlie Gibson
Go.
- [05:38]
Richard Russo
Go home and stay there. And I did. For reasons that are difficult for me to articulate. I'm not sure I understand it myself. There was something about the form of the essay during that particularly dark time. That was very, very appealing to me. So much of what writing is about is that sense of must. What is. Could be writing all sorts of things, but what do you feel tugging at you, really tugging at you so that at any given moment you're working on this. And not that you may have half a dozen good ideas of things to do, but for some reason during this dark period which included, you know, an insurrection. It included, gosh, some. Some very dark moments in our collective American history taking place during this particular time. And. And I found that I had things to say about some of these things that. That probably were not going to be wedged into. I wasn't going to stand up on a soapbox and fiction, anybody, that. But. But I felt. I felt the necessity to testify in some way to some of the things that were going on around me as George Floyd's murder and so many other things that were going on at the time. It. It just seemed that they had to be acknowledged. And the only way to do that was in essay.
- [06:50]
Kate
What was your goal when you started experimenting with the form during COVID I mean, did you know it was going to be a collection? I mean, because some of them almost read like a diary. Like. I mean, some of them feel like they're inwardly facing and not outwardly facing. Did you know you were writing towards a collection? Were you writing for yourself?
- [07:07]
Richard Russo
I was mostly writing toward writing for myself, I think. But, you know, the. The farther you go, the more essays you manage to produce. You begin to ask yourself, what are the common threads here? If I feel this sense of must about writing these things, then what is it that ties them together? And after I'd written half a dozen of them. Yeah, probably around half a dozen. That would be about half the book. After I'd written half a dozen of them, I began to notice that they did divide rather nicely, very niftily, into two. Into two sections. Some of them were about life and some of them were about art. And I thought, ooh, look at that. I like that. And so the book began to divide that way, and I began to allow it to happen that way. Give it. Give it my permission to turn out to be what it wanted to be.
- [07:59]
Charlie Gibson
I love the idea that you've written six of the essays and you think, oh, what hath I wrought? Maybe this is a book. And it seemed to me that you wrote the essays on life to bring some perspective to your early life, to your upbringing, and the essays on art to put your life's work in some perspective. Is that. Is that fair to say?
- [08:20]
Richard Russo
One of the purposes of giving context to my life's work through some of these essays is to suggest to people something that dawned on me kind of late or later that it probably should have, that a pedigree is not really necessary. I am the product of public schools, a public school in a. In a kind of a lost, forgotten mill town in upstate New York. From there, I went on to a public university, University of Arizona, which. Where I got a wonderful education, but it wasn't an Ivy League education, nor was it really. I mean, the very best public universities you tend to think of these days. You might think of the University of Michigan or the University of Wisconsin. My education at the University of Arizona, as I said, was terrific. And I'm constantly looking for ways to tell people about that. But it's important for me to say that, because sometimes writers themselves, artists in general, either like to give or manage to give the impression that what we do is. I don't know what mystical it's like you're saying to readers, don't try to do this at home. You can. You don't need necessarily, a Yale degree or a Harvard degree or a Stanford degree. You don't necessarily need to be following in the footsteps of other people in your family who have had a similar trajectory. And I think it's important, too, for people to understand that if you have a calling, whether it's a calling to write novels or to paint or to make films or to do any of those things that we think of as artistic enterprises, it's important for people to understand that the need, the sense of must that an artist has, invariably, you feel that sense of must years and years and years before you have the necessary talent and experience to actually do it. I spent the first 10 years of my apprenticeship trying to learn the tools of my trade. But long after I'd learned most of those tools, I was still trying to figure out who I was. And that's not unusual for an artist. And so during those 10 years when I was honing my craft, trying to write stories, largely failing to do so, that sense of must that I had about doing something that I was at that point still unable to do was incredibly important, as I think it is to every artist. And so that I don't want to get all religious about it and say that it's a calling, it's a vocation.
- [11:06]
Charlie Gibson
You talked about the fact that it took you some time, you had a calling, felt you had a calling to write, but that it took you some time really before you could write. I was very struck of the passages in your essays. What held you up was a breathtaking lack of self knowledge. Why is that critical to a writer? You write, you have to know who you are and what you love. And until then, you don't know who you are. I find that really interesting. How come?
- [11:36]
Richard Russo
Well, in my case, at least, the who I was was the last piece of the puzzle. I learned all my skills, all the tools of my trade. I got all of that stuff down first. But I still wasn't myself. I still didn't know who I was. Because my leaving that upstate New York mill town where, where I grew up was an escape not only for me, but for my mother, who grew up there too, and was desperate to leave. She just, she couldn't wait to leave. And she discovered, because she couldn't leave without me when, when, you know, if she hadn't had me, she could have, she could have left earlier. But she did. And, and, and so I was part of her escape plan. We were, we were going to go out to the University of Arizona and I was going to become a college professor. Her plan, she viewed our escape as if we were entering witness protection. The whole idea was if I went to the university and learned a new language, and she was very smart about that. She understood that if I was going to become a college graduate and hopefully a college professor, basically I would be learning a new language which would have very little in common with the language of the upstate mill town that I came from. And so I would have to. I would have to learn that language. And if I did, to her way of thinking, that would mean that I had entered the witness protection program and no one ever, ever need know where I came from, which was why it was so difficult for her towards the end. Her life out west didn't go the way she had hoped, and she ended up having, having to return to Gloversville, which was very difficult for her but even more difficult for her than that was the fact that once I did learn who and what I loved, which was my family, part of it, my part of my mother and father, they were very different. They disagreed about everything. But I loved them both. My maternal grandparents who bought that house in Gloversville, New York, show that my mother and I would, mother and I would have a place to live after their, after their marriage ended. The town that, that my mother wanted to escape. I loved those people. I loved that place. And it was very difficult for my mother to realize that once I knew who I was, once I knew who and what I loved, that I would probably for the rest of my life return to the place that she tried so hard to get me to escape from. I would return book after book after book, novel after novel, screenplay after screenplay, I would return to as much my father's world as her world, that I would always, throughout my, throughout my life as an artist, there would always be a special place in my heart for men like my father who worked with their hands and who America always seemed to want to disregard in some way or belittle in some way. Unlike my mother, he always thought that at the end of the Second World War he came home a genuine war hero, that America wouldn't change very much. And he never did. I mean, to his dying day, he always knew in that town where we grew up that all the cops sat outside the working men's bars and pulled over those, those guys like my father who worked 12 hour days in scorching heat working road construction. It was working men's bars that those cops would sit outside and wait and pull them over when they drove home drunk. They didn't, they didn't do that in the bars where lawyers, where lawyers drank.
- [15:18]
Charlie Gibson
Well, you write, you write that. My point is that stories by their very nature are incubators for meaning. We tell them to entertain, but also to make sense of things or try to. Is that true for the writer? Is he or she using a story to make sense of things or for themselves or are they trying to do it for the reader?
- [15:43]
Richard Russo
I think for both, the first obligation, I think I'm not going to do anybody else any good unless I've, number one, entertained and number two, instructed myself I must engage myself first before I have any hope of engaging anybody else. So there's that and it's, it's important that art and artists do this because there is so much in our world today there, there are just, there are just so many. It seems like there's so many people, many of them scientists, interestingly, who are trying to convince us that that free will, our ability to make meaningful choices, may in fact be nothing but an illusion. It may be something that we talk ourselves into to believe that our lives have meaning when in fact, really we're just performing steps that were written long before we were born. And we're just following down a preordained path and trying to pretend that our lives have meaning, that our choices in life are actually choices and not just the illusion of choices. I think for the artist, the artist has to. Whether it's not a question of who's right. It's not whether the artists are right or the scientists are right. What's important for the artist is that we have to believe we're right regardless. Because if we don't, we're out of business. If we ever get into a situation where we believe that free will doesn't exist, that our choices don't matter, we're done. Then we might just as well hang it up. Or we might better hang it up, I guess.
- [17:19]
Charlie Gibson
But.
- [17:20]
Richard Russo
But no, that's. Free will is. Free will is the. Is what the artist. It's the air we breathe. We're nothing without it.
- [17:26]
Kate
And we will have more with Richard Russo, including fan favorite rapid fire questions. We know you don't want to miss them, so come on back after these commercial breaks.
- [17:41]
Lori Bergamotto
From ABC news and good morning America. I'm Lori Bergamotto. This brightly moment is brought to you by Macy's this Father's day. Let Macy's be your guide to gifting dads. Embarrassing their kids is a time honored tradition, but Jed and Smith took it to a whole new level with his dancing dad. School pickups. Smith has been busting a move for every school pickup since his daughter Jaina was in middle school, gaining fans among the students. But one dance performance stands out as bittersweet. It was the final father daughter pickup on Jaina's last day of high school.
- [18:18]
Richard Russo
I just remember it being like, dang.
- [18:19]
Charlie Gibson
This is the last time he's gonna come to my high school and embarrass me. And I started getting really emotional.
- [18:25]
Lori Bergamotto
What started out as a way to tease and delight his daughter has turned into a tradition they'll both miss.
- [18:30]
Richard Russo
Embrace your parents. It's their way of showing you love.
- [18:34]
Lori Bergamotto
This brightly moment has been brought to you by Macy's this Father's day. Let Macy's be your guide to gifting.
- [18:42]
Charlie Gibson
Yeah.
- [18:42]
Sponsor
The NBA playoffs are here, and it's about to be Ridiculous, unbelievable, unfair, Downright Nasty. Straight up, can't miss, don't blink. Grab your popcorn and strap in. Cinema this isn't about who's next. This is about who's now. This time it's different. The NBA playoff is presented by Google.
- [19:08]
Unknown
Continue on ESPN ABC T Mobile's network is more expansive than your favorite fictional universe because T Mobile helps keep you connected from the heart of Portland to right where you are on America's largest 5G network. Switch now keep your phone and T Mobile will pay it off up to 800 per line via prepaid card. Visit your local T Mobile location or learn more@t mobile.com keepandswitch up to 4 lines of your virtual prepaid card. Allow 15 days qualifying unlock device, credit service port in 90 plus days device in eligible carrier and timely redemption. Required card is no cash access and expires in six months.
- [19:47]
Kate
I'm interested as I finish this book. What do you think a good essay owes its reader?
- [19:53]
Richard Russo
What does a good essay owe its reader? Well, if it's art and great essays, I think can't avoid being great art, then a great essay demands pretty much the same things that other forms of art do, which is your total attention all the time. Your total attention. You give it everything that you've got and you want to temper all the skills, all the intelligence, all the, you know, whatever, whatever you have to bring to the table. You want to bring all of that. And also I think the other important ingredient is, of course, humility. The thing about art is that in almost every instance, it's more difficult than you think it's going to be when you start the journey and you have to be aware of how difficult it's going to be. You have to be willing to be surprised. You have to bring to it, as I say, everything you have and then realize that it's going to probably take longer than you expect. And it's going to require that necessary humility, too. You can't go through life as an artist thinking, I got this. This is going to be easy.
- [21:14]
Kate
I wanted to ask you, I have one last question because I thought it was really interesting that you said an SAS needs to bring humility to their writing. Because I think up until this point, I've always thought of an essay as an argument. Am I wrong? How do you bring humility to the arguments that you're making? I guess is what I'm asking.
- [21:34]
Richard Russo
Yeah. Well, I mean, it's. No, you're. You're not, you're not wrong at all. And an essay. An essay is an argument. But one of the things that happens is, as with most arguments, is that you bring humility to it because. Because what's going to happen to you, whether you like it or not, is that you're going to start an argument and realize that the argument that you were just trying to make is wrong, dead wrong. And for instance. For instance, I stopped writing one of my novels, and I can't remember which one it was now, but I. But I remember I stopped writing it and I was having a blast, was just so much fun. And I interrupted it to write my memoir elsewhere. And I did it, despite the fact that I understood, even going into it, that it was going to be pain. There was I. I thought that I had some sort of unfinished business with my mother. It was going to be a book that I could not have written while she was alive because I was revealing, among other things, that the thing that she kept most secret, which was that she had been a victim of obsessive compulsive disorder and had suffered, like so many people in. In her family and the maternal side of my family, so many people had. Had suffered from the complications of obsessive compulsive disorder. And so I was going to write this book. I decided I was going to write it because. Because that was the unfinished business. And I wanted. I wanted to explain to myself and maybe to other people why my mother and I always seem to be at such loggerheads about things we could not find a way to agree about things that she thought we had always agreed to until fairly recently. And so I wrote this book with the intention of explaining to myself and to readers that the reason we could never agree late in life was because we were so temperamentally different. We just could. We were temperamentally opposed about so many things we couldn't come together the way she wanted to and the way I would have loved to have come to, too. We could not come together because of how different, only to discover in writing the book that the reason we couldn't come together wasn't because we were so different, was because we were so similar and that I was on the same spectrum of disorder that she was on. Her obsessive compulsive disorder made her life narrower and narrower and narrower until she was finally in the last years of her life after she had been diagnosed with congestive heart failure. Her living space was the length of the cord, the. Literally the cord that she was breathing. That she was breathing off. That was the. That was the full extent of. Of her living space and the Reason that I bring this up is that of course, my being a writer didn't allow me not to suffer from the same condition that my mother suffered from. It was exactly the same condition, but in my case, unlike my mother, it didn't involve moving her knickknacks around to make sure that everything was as perfect as she could get it. Mine allowed me to turn my sentences around endlessly, over and over and over, to revise, revise, revise, get everything until it felt absolutely right. And so for me, the very thing that made my mother's life smaller in me, perhaps because what we were both suffering from wasn't quite so pronounced in me, but also I had just chosen, by pure, stupid, dumb luck, I had chosen something that would allow me to take obsessive compulsive disorder or whatever this is that, that we have in, in my family. For me, it turned into a tidy living. And you could, you could move your.
- [25:26]
Charlie Gibson
You could move your characters around.
- [25:28]
Richard Russo
Character. This has nothing whatsoever to do with character. I, I could only wish that I could demonstrate sometimes half of the courage that my mother demonstrated during her long life. She was courageous and then some. And I have never had to be half as courageous as she was, but boy, I was a lot luckier.
- [25:49]
Charlie Gibson
But what I heard you just say is that writing can become self discovery for a writer. That you learned by writing that book about how similar you and your mother were. And I would suspect the same thing is true when you write these essays, and I also suspect it's the same when you write a novel, that there is self discovery in everything that a writer produces.
- [26:18]
Richard Russo
I've lost count of the number of books that I've written, but it's been true for every single one of them. Every single book that I have written, every screenplay, every artistic project that I have been involved in has opened the door to the next one. Because with each book that I've written, I recognize that some artistic choice that I've made, I mean, that's, that's the, that's the blessing, is that yes, you do teach yourself. With every single project you learn more and more about yourself. But that's also where the humility comes in too. Because after all these books that I've published and people who know me well would, would, would, would second this when I, when I tell you I am as full of shit now as I have ever been. I have, I don't know how much longer I have to live, but I know I've got, I know I've got more books. I Know, I've got more books in there that are trying to get out. And if I had figured it all out, if I had done, you know, if I had taught myself everything that I needed to know by writing these books, I would be out of business. I would have nothing. I would, I wouldn't have another book to write. The things that mean the most to me, I can't get to the bottom of it. And that's the good.
- [27:26]
Charlie Gibson
Richard Russo. It is a pleasure to talk to you.
- [27:29]
Kate
It is.
- [27:29]
Richard Russo
Thank you so much for your interest. This book in.
- [27:39]
Kate
Rapid fire questions for Richard Russo. How long is a Russo writing session?
- [27:44]
Richard Russo
That depends on what you call writing. I call writing. When I sit at my desk and my pen is moving, that's certainly writing. But then I will go out and walk for the idea of putting that all out of my mind. But of course, when I'm walking, things occur to me. And as soon as I get home, I make, I'm making notes about what I wrote this morning, what I messed up and what I might. And then often in the afternoon, I'm just typing up what I wrote in the morning and seeing and seeing where at least some of it is messed up. And so that's a, that's. I mean, it's. Would you call that typing? Would you call it writing? If you change something, I. And it's for the better, I would, I would call that writing. By mid afternoon, I say to myself, all right, I've. I've done a full day's work here. I'm just going to read. But if you read, I defy anybody to read without, without getting ideas.
- [28:29]
Kate
I like this. So basically the answer is never. The answer is never. It's never over.
- [28:34]
Richard Russo
I'm reading. I think I can steal that. So, yeah, yeah, I think I'm pretty much. On the one hand, when I explained the number of actual, the actual hours sitting in front of my desk and actually writing, it's not that many, but yeah, depends on your definition.
- [28:53]
Charlie Gibson
Was there a book that you read at a young age that made you think I could do that, that made you think I wanted to be a writer? Then where did the, where, where did the inspiration come from?
- [29:04]
Richard Russo
Well, I was always a voracious reader, but I didn't make the connection. And I should have, because the writers that meant the most to me when I was younger and then in college and in graduate school when I was working on my PhD were writers without pedigrees. I knew from reading Dickens that you didn't have to be to Be from the right side of the tracks to be a great novelist. My God, his parents were in the workhouse. You couldn't have come from humbler beginnings than Dickens came from. I think pretty much the same thing could be said for Twain in this country. So all of my favorite writers were people from humble beginnings. And yet, although I knew that in my head, I never thought until I was almost finished with my academic dissertation, almost finished with the Witness Protection program. It never occurred to me that that happened to me or that it might apply to me. And one day I was in the English department, and the creative writing office was right across the hall from the entrance to the English department. And I knocked on Robert Down's door and knocked on it and said, you know, I've. I have this feeling that I might want to write stories. And he said, well, show me one. And I went home and wrote one. And he said, well, you need lessons.
- [30:25]
Charlie Gibson
If you listen to a book. Have you read it?
- [30:28]
Richard Russo
No, but I have probably missed an exit or two. It's the reason I don't listen to as many books as I used to. I would miss exits. I remember reading. My wife and I, when we were on the road, we used to love to listen to those. Oh, God, what were they? Rumple of the Bailey. Remember Rumpel of the Bailey books? The actor who played Rumple would always. Would always read those, too. And they were just so wonderful. And we would listen to them, but we would. Sometimes we would go miles beyond our exit, have to turn around and wind our way back. So I don't listen to as many books as I used to. I did the audio recording for Life and Dart, which was fun, and I've done that.
- [31:16]
Kate
Is that your first time that you've done that? Is that the first time you've done.
- [31:18]
Richard Russo
No, I did it. I did it on a couple of other short books. I think people realize they don't want to listen to me for a long time, but if it's. If you. If you could put it in a small enough package, then they'll listen. But. But no, I. I did that. And I. And I understand. I mean, it's a performance. The people who record audiobooks, my God, they are so good at what they do. And so I don't have any desire to do it for my novels or anything like that, but I did do it for this one.
- [31:44]
Kate
My last rapid fire question is sort of a slam dunk question. Your favorite independent bookstore, sir?
- [31:52]
Richard Russo
Well, there's one. There's one right here in Portland. Portland, Maine. That is walking distance, too, from my house up here on the Eastern Prom. It's called Print A Bookstore. And coincidentally, the owner of Print A Bookstore is one Emily Russo. And if you believe that coincidence, you really, you really should question. No, that's my daughter. That's my daughter Emily's bookstore. One of the things that my daughter learned about her bookstore, Print, during the pandemic was that you can imagine if ever there was a time when people were scared about going out, you know, especially before the vaccines came through. But even. But even afterwards, people were scared. If ever there was a time when you would think that people would stay home and order their books, one click Amazon and the book arrives. You would think that that was what would have happened during the pandemic. And yet during the pandemic, I mean, that entire neighborhood understood how important that bookstore was in terms of the entire. In terms of the entire neighborhood. And those people went out, they knocked on the door, the door was open, the books were handed out outside during the pandemic. And not only did the bookstore not go under, it did flourished during that time when you would expect. Would have expected it would have been one of those bookstores, that independence that probably just wouldn't have been able to make it.
- [33:19]
Charlie Gibson
Well, that was a hard choice for him to make of what his favorite bookstore was. His daughters, Emily Russo, who has Print A bookstore, and he does like it. I mean, why wouldn't he? It's his daughters.
- [33:30]
Kate
Yeah. I mean, but also too, like, what a great way of sending a message to a parent. Mission accomplished. You know, I hope there are some parents that listen to this show. And I'll tell you, parents who are addicted to reading create kids that are addicted to reading. It is an addiction that you don't have to be ashamed of passing along in the DNA. You know, my dad created a reader out of me. Richard Russo obviously created a. A reader out of his daughter. And what a great way of saying, you did a good job and I still love books. So take heart out there, parents who are looking to get their kids to read.
- [34:04]
Charlie Gibson
And so we talked to Emily Russo soon after that conversation with her dad, and we're going to make that part of a podcast that's all about bookstores a little later in the year, because she really gave us a masterclass, if you will, on how to run a bookstore and what the problems are and what the responsibilities are.
- [34:24]
Kate
Yeah. And we also had a conversation with Source Booksellers in Detroit, Michigan, and she's the oldest bookseller in America, and she had some terrific masterclass lessons for us, as well as to how to survive the market throughout the decades, no matter the climate. And so we felt like it was worth putting these two great independent bookstore owners together and to give our listeners a masterclass in owning a bookstore. And why again, we did a piece on it on GMA too. Why independent booksellers are so vital to America.
- [34:58]
Charlie Gibson
Janet Webster Jones is the owner of Source Bookstore in Detroit. We had a lovely conversation with her. She's a spitfire for somebody who's 88 years old, so we will marry. The conversation with Emily Russo and the conversation with Janet Webster Jones in a later podcast. I want to take a minute, Kate, to say something that we both have been thinking about a great deal. We have endeavored to keep this podcast apolitical, a safe space for listeners, if you will, not getting involved with the political vitriol and anger that seems to pervade our society these days. However, this past week, Dr. Carla Hayden was summarily fired from her position as librarian of Congress. Dr. Hayden Dr. Hayden is the first woman to lead the library, the first American, African American in the 225 year History of the library to be Librarian of Congress. It's the largest library in the world, and Carla Hayden was devoted to being a faithful custodian of this national treasure. She has been a devoted public service every moment of her life, and she was fired without explanation, although the White House Press Secretary said she supported DEI and kept inappropriate books in the library. But to the contrary, Dr. Hayden stayed above the culture wars. At congressional hearings, she received great praise from both Democrats and Republicans. Her loyalty was to preserve this greatest collection of information and resources ever assembled and to make those resources available to everyone. As she wrote on the library's website, the library is an equalizer. We can realize our vision of connecting with all Americans because the Library of Congress is for everyone. How can you object to that? Kate and I had the privilege of meeting Dr. Hayden and talking to her for this podcast and for Good Morning America, and losing her as a great public servant is a great loss to this country.
- [36:59]
Kate
Kate we believe libraries are vital to the free exchange of information, and free information is vital to our democracy. We do not believe in taking books from shelves. We do not believe in firing librarians for doing their jobs. And Dr. Hayden is one of the best librarians in the world. We will miss her dearly as Librarian of Congress, but we know she will land somewhere incredible and that she will continue to accomplish great things. That being said, listeners, we both believe in protecting libraries and we aren't going to stop talking about that on the Bookcase podcast. So, Dr. Hayden, we send you our best and wish you had been treated with the honor and respect your service and position should merit.
- [37:39]
Charlie Gibson
Well said, Catherine. Well said.
- [37:41]
Kate
And well said.
- [37:42]
Richard Russo
You.
- [37:42]
Charlie Gibson
Anyway, next week, Next week we have, with that as a preface, next week we have Dave Barry, who is himself also a national treasure. Indeed, he has written a memoir. He's written a million books and a million columns when he was for so many years the humorous for the Miami Herald and syndicated around the country. He's just a funny guy. And when I heard he'd written a memoir, I thought, how can you write a book, Dave, that's serious and not funny? Well, he can't. He can't resist being funny. So we're going to talk to him next week and you will laugh as you will if you read his book.
- [38:23]
Kate
I didn't know, by the way, for instance, that for a while, every four years, he was staging a satirical presidential campaign. His first choice for presidential slogan was my favorite, Dave Barry for president. Period. Yes. Of the United States. I love that.
- [38:43]
Charlie Gibson
Yes. And. And he probably got as many votes as he deserved. Probably did, which is very few. And he knew he wouldn't get any. He just is a funny guy. The book is class Clown. It is just out. And for a memoir, well, he's serious for the first chapter. And then he thinks, well, enough of that. Let's be funny. And it is funny. Your mother read it and she wakes up during the night and she likes to turn on the light and read, but she wouldn't turn on the light in this case and read in bed because she thought she'd wake me up when she was laughing so hard.
- [39:16]
Kate
Oh, I read it in the backyard. I'm on a corner, right? So I'm sitting in the backyard, my fenced in backyard, and I'm reading Dave Barry and I'm getting texts from my neighbor saying, what's so funny? What's so funny?
- [39:27]
Charlie Gibson
Anyway, the book is very funny. The book is such a fun read. I hate fun as an adjective, but it's a fun read. So we will talk to Dave Barry next week on the Bookcase. We want to make you aware, as we always do, of the folks who make this podcast possible. And when we come back, a final word from Richard Russo.
- [39:47]
Kate
The book Case with Kate and Charlie Gibson is a production of ABC Audio and Good Morning America. It is edited by Tom Butler of TKO Productions. Our executive producer is Simone Swink. We want to make mention of Amanda McMaster, Sabrina Kohlberg, Arielle Chester at Good Morning America and Josh Cohan from ABC Audio. Follow the bookcase wherever you get your podcasts, and be sure to listen, rate and review. If you'd like to find any of the books mentioned in this episode, we have them linked in the episode Description.
- [40:16]
Richard Russo
During my last book tour, I think it must have been with Somebody's Fool. I crossed paths with my friend Ann Patchett several, several times. And then as now, because the world is as fraught now as it was then, we kind of asked ourselves, you know, how do you get up in the morning and spin tales? And the mantra that we came up with that I continue to live by since the world seems to still demand it every single solitary, blessed morning. The mantra that we came to was that if it mattered then, it still does. If it doesn't now, it never did. And I think that part of the reason that we have come to that conclusion is that when times get really bleak, that's not when art goes away. That's when art becomes more important, not less important. FX Presents welcome to Wrexham. For the last four years it's been this roller coaster of magic. The Emmy Award winning series returns with an all new season.
- [41:22]
Sponsor
We're going into a really tough division.
- [41:25]
Kate
Birmingham, absolute favorites with the arrival of Tom Brady.
- [41:28]
Richard Russo
It's a friendly competition. Well, not so friendly.
- [41:31]
Charlie Gibson
Imagine the opportunity to beat Tom Brady at Sports FXS.
- [41:36]
Richard Russo
Welcome to Wrexham. All new Thursdays at 9 on FX, stream on Hulu.