Michael Dirda

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willis

Michael Dirda: -- incredibly funny. She has all kinds of arrows in her quiver and is a writer of great breadth and imagination. Her books include “Lincoln Dream” and “Passages,” and many others, including the collection “Fire Watch.” I do want to say, before I ask Connie to come up and talk to us and regale us with her wit and her stories and anecdotes by answering questions, that the “Washington Post” is a very proud co-sponsor of the National Book Festival. It seems to me it's been a great success here, although I, I confess that I have not been able to escape from this pavilion all day except to go to the bathroom, but even then it was a near thing.

And I also wanted to say that, I have a plug for myself. I have a new book collection of essays coming out in November and several of those pieces are about science fiction and fantasy. I have long been a cheerleader for the genre and have urged my friends who are readers of the mainstream only that they should look beyond the boundaries of the bookstore shelves to find really imaginative, wonderful and exciting writers, among whom I count Connie Willis.

[applause]

Connie Willis: Hello. You guys have lasted all day, that's great. First I want to say thank you to the “Washington Post,” particularly because I just recently -- I live in a dark, benighted land called Colorado, and I was recently able to start subscribing to the “Washington Post Weekly,” which they put all their major articles and editorials in a package and ship them out to us in the dark, benighted lands beyond the Mississippi. So I want to say, great, it's been great to be be able to read the”Post.” Not on time, but still.

So anyway, I'm delighted to be here. I'm so excited that I got asked to participate 4/4/2018 LOC - willis 2 in the National Book Festival, which I think is a wonderful thing. And I was -- When I was asked, they gave me the option of reading and or of giving a speech and the option of talking about my own writing, and I really felt that on an occasion like this, at a festival that celebrates the book, which is such an astonishing thing, -- and it's so exciting to see so many other people who read books in one place. This is so great -- that I want to speak to you today, not as an author but as a fellow reader. I don't think that the two are actually separate, because I think nearly all authors came to writing through their love of -- no, that's wrong -- through their obsession with books. And I don't think obsession is too strong a word.

I read a story about Coleridge walking along the streets of London, so obsessed -- so engrossed in a book that he ran into a man full-tilt, and the man thought he was a pickpocket and had him arrested. Richard Wright forged a note from his white employer so that he could check out books from the public library. And which, blacks were not allowed to check out books from the library at that place and time. And, he wanted desperately to read the works of H. L. Mencken, so he was willing to commit a crime to do it. Abraham Cahan, who was spending so much time reading “Dombey and Son” that he went bankrupt, something I can really relate to.

So, I myself trekked all the way to Oxford to see not the colleges, not the Christ Church Cathedral, but the pub where the Inklings met to read ”Lord of the Rings.”

[applause]

And the bridge under which Lord Peter Wimsey proposed to Harriet Vane.

[applause]

I was actually on a tour of the colleges when our leader said, "This is where Lord 4/4/2018 LOC - willis 3

Peter proposed," and everyone pulled out their cameras and snapped shots.

[laughter]

And it was like, they're fictional characters, this didn't really happen. Although, they're probably more real than many of the real people who went to Oxford.

In high school, I got so engrossed in reading “Rebecca,” by Daphne du Maurier, it was right at the end and, you know, Max was on trial for murder and Mrs. De Winter, I mean Mrs. Danvers was up to no good. And anyway, I was so excited and wanted so badly to finish the book that when I came home from school I went right up to my room so that I could read uninterrupted and forgot to tell anyone that I had come home until they called the police.

[laughter]

So, even worse, I got so engrossed and I think I may be the only person to be so engrossed in ”Lord of the Ring” that I accidentally got married.

[laughter]

I was flying out to Connecticut over spring break for the express purpose of breaking up with my boyfriend. And, I bought these paperbacks, which I had heard -- this was way back before the "Frodo Lives" days, and all the fad of “Lord of the Rings.” I knew nothing about the author. I liked the covers of the paperback. I opened it up and it looked like it was, oh my gosh, a fairy tale for adults. And so I bought it to read on the plane and started reading and by the time I arrived at Newark Airport, I got off the plane and said to my boyfriend, "Oh my God, Frodo and Sam are in so much trouble. The Ringwraiths are after them. I don't know, they can't get to Mordor. I don't trust Gollum as far as I can throw him." 4/4/2018 LOC - willis 4

[laughter]

Completely forgot to break up with him and, 37 years later --

[laughter]

-- he still has to put up with me going ape over “Lord of the Rings.”

[laughter]

I do not feel addiction is too strong a word. I got hooked at the age of eight with my first library card. I had just gone to see the “Wizard of Oz” and, you know, they say that your personality is just totally shaped by the age of eight. And what I remember most about the “Wizard of Oz” was that I was an inveterate reader of movie credits even in those days. And, so I read at the very beginning, "In Technicolor" and then it was black and white. So for the first 15 minutes of the movie, when I'm supposed to be paying attention to Toto and Ms. Gulch and the tornado and all that junk, instead I'm whispering to my grandmother, "This is supposed to be in color, Gram." And she is saying, "They didn't even have color back in those days." And so when Dorothy lands, you know that wonderful moment when she opens the door and everything goes full color and you see the Munchkins and Glinda, I'm going, "I told you." So unfortunately, I do believe that that was my personality and it was pretty much set at age eight.

So when we went to the library, the librarian gave me my card and then very kindly asked me what I would like to -- you know, was there something special I would like to check out. So I said, "I'd like to check out the “Wizard of O” and she said, "They're over here," which I did not understand. And then she led me to this shelf of all the Oz books. And, the “Wizard of Oz” was checked out. 4/4/2018 LOC - willis 5

[laughter]

Irony has always played a very large part in my life. But they had “Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz,” which is almost as good. And I opened it up and I started to read and I went down in the ground to the kingdom of the vegetable Mangaboos and from there to Oz. And then on to Ix, and Wonderland, and Avon Lee, and the “House of Seven Gables,” and the March house and Mars and medieval Norway and Manderlay and the Mississippi and the Mushroom Planet. To the Old Curiosity Shop and Mansfield Park and ancient Thebes and Illyria and the Lesser Magellenic Cloud.

"There is no frigate like a book," Emily Dickenson says, "to take us lands away." And that was certainly true. Books can take us to the dry plains of western Nebraska or the drowned jungles of Venus. To Howard's End, and Dracula's castle and Blanding's castle. To Raintree County and Rivendell and the White Hotel, up the Congo into the Heart of Darkness, down an endlessly descending escalator with Thomas Disch, across the Bridge to Terabithia and into the center of the earth. To a different past where the South won the Civil War, a dark future where androids dream of electric sheep, and a gate marked, "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here."

But books for me were not just a gateway to other times and other places and other worlds. I did not feel that they were an escape at all. To me they were a way in, not out, a way into a world where in Annie Dillards’ words, "There is a life worth living, where history is still taking place. There are ideas worth dying for and circumstances where courage is still prized. This life could be found and joined like the Resistance." It was a way for me into a world of ideas, of beauty and meaning. Books were a means for me, like they were for Kipling, to everything that would make me happy. And I did find happiness in books. I realize that most of you, if you are inveterate readers, you know what it's like to live in a world where people tell you to get your nose out of that book and go get 4/4/2018 LOC - willis 6 some exercise.

[laughter]

Exercise is stupid.

[laughter]

The most important thing you can do with your life is read.

[laughter]

When I was 11, I won a copy of “Little Women” at school. I was a little Dutch girl for Halloween.

[laughter]

And I found my true vocation. I wanted to be Jo March and sit in a garret and eat russet apples and write books. Now I did not have a clear notion of what a garret was --

[laughter]

-- and I had no idea what russet apples were and I cannot tell you how disappointed I was when I discovered that they are those wrinkly little mealy leftover apples from last year. It was a huge disappointment, but I still wanted to be a writer.

When I was 12, my eighth grade teacher read Rumer Godden’s “An Episode of Sparrows” out loud to us at lunch. It's a story that pattern on Frances Hodgson Burnett's “Secret Garden” and it's about a little orphan girl who plants a garden in 4/4/2018 LOC - willis 7 the bombed-out rubble of a London church after the Blitz. My eighth grade teacher read it to us every day, after lunch, and introduced me thereby to the London Blitz. And years later I went to London accompanied by another book, “London,” by H. V. Morton -- wonderful book. And in it he talked about St. Paul's Cathedral and how the members of the fire watch, who were the clergy and the volunteers and the choir members of St. Paul's would sleep down in the basement of St. Paul's, down in the crypt with the other heroes of other wars and then at night would go up on the roofs and attempt to put out the incendiary bombs that fell on the roof. I thought that was cool. And I went up into the tower, into the dome and then outside, you can go outside in the gallery. And I looked at the skyscape of London and I was expecting sort of a Mary Poppins kind of thing, you know, the little chimney pots and the Victorian houses. It was the most hideous thing I'd ever seen. It was all these concrete buildings, car parks and hideous looking 1950s buildings and I thought well, that's a disappointment. And then I thought, oh my God. It all burned down. It all burned down. On all sides. For miles. And I thought, St. Paul's Cathedral cannot possibly have survived the Blitz. And then I raced downstairs, nearly breaking my neck on the stairs, and said to my husband and our friends, "Go away.

[laughter]

Come back in a couple of hours. I need to take notes." Because I knew that I had to tell the story of this incredible fire watch, who committed this miracle. I love the fire watch stone. It lies right in front of the front doors of St. Paul's and it says, "To the fire watch of St. Paul's, who by the grace of God saved this cathedral." Now, I for one think that that is giving credit where credit is due. Fire watch first, God second.

[laughter]

[applause] 4/4/2018 LOC - willis 8

God does get some credit because at the height of the horrible raid on Dec. 29, 1940, 29 incendiaries fell on the roof of St. Paul's in the middle of what could easily have become a firestorm like Dresden. And one of the bombs fell and lodged halfway down the dome, too high up for anyone to get it, too low down for anyone to go up from the other side and get it. They evacuated the cathedral, and the dean of St. Paul's, Dean Mathews, was standing there looking at it and one of the fire watch said, "What we do now?" And he said, "Now we pray." And they prayed and it fell off and they went up and put it out. And they saved the cathedral.

Seventeen Christopher Wren churches died that night and countless other wonderful things, wonderful people, but St. Paul's was saved. And something flickered in me. I believe firmly that it was that earlier memory of Rumer Godden's book put there by my eighth grade teacher that told me that this was what I wanted to spend the rest of my life writing about. And it has been. I knew just how to do it, too, because when I was 13, I had picked up a book called “Have Space Suit--Will Travel” by Robert A. Heinlein.

[applause]

One of his best books ever, although there are huge fights about, is it better than “Citizen of the Galaxy,” is it better than “Star Beast” is it better than “Tunnel in the Sky?” And I'm happy to argue that point with anyone who wants to afterward.

[laughter]

They're all wonderful.

I had picked it up. I knew nothing of science fiction. I had never heard of it. This book was yellow, it had a picture of a guy in a space suit on the cover. I thought 4/4/2018 LOC - willis 9 the title was really funny. I was 13, you know. And I opened it and I read, "You see, I had this space suit. How it happened was this way. 'Dad,' I said, 'I want to go to the moon.' 'Certainly,' he answered, and looked back at his book. It was Jerome K. Jerome's ‘Three Men in a Boat’ which he must know by heart. I said, 'Dad, please, I'm serious.'"

The moment I read those words, I cannot describe to you what that was like. There's that moment in Star Wars where the Death Star is clearing the planet and Princess Leia is watching anxiously on the map and Luke Skywalker is up there and there's, everybody's dead and Darth Vader is on his tail. And then, all of a sudden, Han Solo comes zooming out of left field and blows Darth Vader away and says, "Let's blow this thing, kid." And, my daughter was eight years old and very much like me, unfortunately, when we saw that movie for the first time. Princess Leia continues to look at the map. Her expression does not change. She does not even look up at that moment, and my daughter leaned over at me and said, "Oh, she's hooked."

[laughter]

The moment I read that first page of “Have Space Suit--Will Travel” I was hooked. But, more than that, I felt not only that I was in love with the hero, Kip, with Heinlein, with science fiction. A love affair, by the way, that, like my Tolkien-determined marriage, has lasted a lifetime. But reading it, I also felt that I had come home. That I had found, like the ugly duckling, like one of Zina Henderson’s people, like Oliver Twist and Harry Potter and Anne of Green Gables, that I had found my own true family, my own true self. The narrator in the movie, “Matilda,” made from Roald Dahl's novel, says, "Matilda read all kinds of books and was nurtured by the voices of all those authors who had sent those books out into the world like ships onto the sea. These books gave Matilda a hopeful and comforting message, you are not alone." I was not alone. I had Kip, and Jo, and Frodo and Anne, Lester, and Starbuck and Viola, Rumpole and 4/4/2018 LOC - willis 10

Elizabeth Bennett and Nick Caraway and Bridget Jones and the Bicentennial Man.

Robert Heinlein introduced me to “The Tempest,” and to Jerome K. Jerome's “Three Men in a Boat,” a comedy about three young men who go boating up the Thames to Oxford -- which led me to the Inklings and to Dorothy Sayer's “Gaudy Night” -- which led me to the mysteries and Agatha Christie and Jane Langton and to Raymond Chandler, who said that he had tried to write Philip Marlowe as though he were a modern knight -- which led me to “Morte D’Arthur” and T H. White and Mary Stuart -- who led me to “This Rough Magic,” which led me back to “The Tempest.”

[applause]

And I know you've all had that experience.

Frances Hodgson Burnett inspired Rumor Godden, who inspired my eighth grade teacher, who inspired me. Louisa May Alcott reached out across more than 100 years and spoke to me, made me a writer, transformed my life. So did L. Frank Baum, and Lenora Mattingly Weber and Sigrid Undset and Charles Williams and P. G. Wodehouse and Ray Bradbury and Jane Austen and Damon Runyon and Isaac Asimov and hundreds, thousands of other writers, reaching out across time and space to fellow members of the resistance -- to Richard Wright, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge and H. V. Morton and “Matilda,” and my eighth grade teacher and me. Transcending space and time, language and color and culture and religion, gender and age and even death, to speak to us, offering words of compassion and common sense and comfort -- "You are not alone" – offering us a world of imagination and transformation and truth.

"The world of books is the most remarkable creation of man," Clarence Day Jr. said, "Nothing else that he builds ever lasts. Monuments fall, nations perish, 4/4/2018 LOC - willis 11 civilizations grow old and die out, and after an era of darkness, new races build others. But, in the world of books are volumes that have seen this happen again and again and yet live on, still young, still as fresh as the day they were written, still telling men's hearts of the hearts of men centuries dead."

Come. Read. Join the resistance. Thank you.

[applause]

Male Speaker: [inaudible]

Connie Willis: Certainly, I'd be glad to answer questions.

Male Speaker: As before, Connie will be happy to answer questions. I think I can add at this point, we obviously saved the best for last.

Connie Willis: [laughs] Thank you.

[applause]

Connie Willis: I request that you not answer -- ask me one question. No, the novel isn't done.

[laughter]

It'll be done as soon as I can get it done, okay. I'm sorry, I've been talking to my editor a lot lately. 4/4/2018 LOC - willis 12

[laughter]

My book is very late, and getting later by the second, so... Yes, questions. It's just like the debates, how exciting.

[laughter]

You can't lead if you keep saying “wrong war, wrong place, wrong time."

[laughter]

[applause]

Female Speaker: I didn't get to see the debates. I'm sorry, I was traveling. I wanted to ask, is there ever any chance of someone doing an annotated version, or book of “To Say Nothing of the Dog?”

Connie Willis: Oh, cool!

Female Speaker: You mention so many historical things, and I love it, but I feel an idiot because I’m going, I didn't know that. It's so amazing, but how did you know all this stuff, and where did you find it, kind of thing.

Connie Willis: Well thank you, thank you. I love Oxford. I recommend to everyone, if you have read “To Say Nothing of the Dog” and even if you haven't, to read “Three Men in a Boat” by Jerome K. Jerome, one of the best books ever written. 4/4/2018 LOC - willis 13

[applause]

It is a comic novel about nothing in particular --

[laughter]

-- and the world divides neatly into two groups, the people who have never read the book and the people who have said, "Oh God, the comic song part," or, "Oh my God, the pineapple tin" or, "The cheese," or, "The swans," or "The packaging," or, "Uncle Fred," etc. It's just a marvelous book. It has never been out of print since 1889, so it doesn't need me, probably, pushing it, but it is a wonderful, wonderful book. I recommend it.

I also have a huge fan of Oxford. If you love Oxford, begin with Dorothy Sayers's “Gaudy Night,” move on quickly to Zuleika Dobson, after first reading all of the Harriet and Peter novels by Dorothy Sayers, and then a book called “Oxford” by Jan Morris is a wonderful book also.

All this stuff about the Oxford dons that I put in the book is all true. There really was an Oxford don whose housekeeper died and he arrived at a meeting saying breathlessly, "I'm so sorry I'm late. My housekeeper just died but I have propped her up in the kitchen. I think she'll be all right 'til I get back."

[laughter]

And there was another Oxford don who, I don't know what it was about, it was something in the atmosphere of Oxford that made everyone so peculiar up there. There was, of course, Spooner, who was famous for misspeaking, and who, instead of saying, "Conquering kings their titles take," when he was preaching a sermon in Christ Church Cathedral, once said, "The next hymn will be, Kinkering 4/4/2018 LOC - willis 14

Congs, Their Tittles Tack."

[laughter]

And was then interrupted by a large turkey walking up the aisle of Christ Church Cathedral, which belonged to Buckland, who was another peculiar Oxford don who had a bad habit of eating all kinds of animals. You would go to his house for dinner and he would serve you roast vole, which I can't even imagine how bad that had to be. So, anyway there was just something in the air. There was an Oxford don who trained his dog to jump out of trees onto innocent passersby.

[laughter]

I don't know. Anyway, I love Oxford and everything connected with it, so I do recommend trips to Oxford where you can go to the public where the Inklings read their manuscripts. And I do want to put in a plug for one of my favorite authors because most of you are familiar with Tolkien, yes! And with the -- I just have to say, I just -- you know, Hollywood can mess up almost everything it touches but every once in a while they just hit a home run and “Lord of the Rings” was definitely one of those home runs.

[applause]

The other very famous Inkling is C. S. Lewis, but my personal favorite of all the Inklings was Charles Williams, who nobody has ever read except maybe -- these are librarians -- maybe some of you? All right! My favorite Charles Williams is “All Hallow's Eve”. My second favorite is “Descent into Hell.” They're all wonderful. He wrote seven novels; they're all terrific. So, if you have not discovered him, please, please do. And I didn't write my book to make anybody feel dumb. I just put a bunch of junk in it that I liked, and thought maybe, maybe I could lead people to other books the way I had been led to other books. So, 4/4/2018 LOC - willis 15 yes? Oh, I'm sorry. So cool.

Female Speaker: This is kind of silly. I find myself, when writing, worrying about doing "nasty things" to my characters, and yet of course, that's how plots advance. And I know in your books of course, you know, these characters --

Connie Willis: I kill them.

Female Speaker: -- they go through plagues.

[laughter]

-- yeah, it's devastating. How do you deal with them as a writer, with bad things happening to good characters?

Connie Willis: Well actually, that is a really legitimate question. I do have a conscience, even though they're fictional. I will say that one of my worst moments was when I was writing “Doomsday Book” and I was trying to decide about Agnes. I was, that was a very black moment for me, but I think your responsibility mostly is to try and tell the truth. I know that's so peculiar coming from, since you're writing fiction. Your life is one gigantic lie, and yet, it's a lie with the intent of trying to get at the truth. So I think the important thing is to try and tell the truth. I don't believe in being gratuitously cruel to your characters for no reason. And I do know a few authors who I think are sadistic to their characters so, I just try to be mean but not that mean. However, if you're writing comedy, you can be as mean as you like. 4/4/2018 LOC - willis 16

[laughter]

So, because your character -- my poor character in “To Say Nothing of the Dog,” all he wants is one good night's sleep. That's all he asks, and he can't possibly get it from me, not in the course of the book. So, yes. Yeah.

Female Speaker: I wanted to ask a question relating actually to the “Doomsday Book.” You had a lot of history about the Black Death and I was wondering exactly how you researched for it? If you did research?

Connie Willis: I did research and I just read everything I could find.

[laughter]

I read and read and read and read and read some more. One of the problems of doing research is that it's my favorite part. I love doing the research and I would just as soon never start the actual writing of the book. And so, to me it's no job to look up all these things. But one of the things I do recommend to writers, if you're trying to research something you know very little about, start in the children's room of the library. Kids' books are wonderful. If you have a choice between a 500 page tome called “Life in the Medieval Village” and a 37 page book with pictures --

[laughter]

-- which will tell you everything you need to know.

[laughter] 4/4/2018 LOC - willis 17

And so I move from the sort of general research, you know, looking up stuff and trying to get a feel for things and then looking for the more particular stuff. And I hardly ever use the Internet. I just use books but that's just because I love books and I love libraries. How many of you are librarians? You do the Lord's work.

[laughter]

[applause]

You do the most important job on the planet. And I have to say I know there's a lot of talk these days about do libraries really serve a purpose and people can easily access books on the Internet and all this garbage. And the truth is, I never owned a book until I was in high school. There are kids today who will never own a book. It's you or nothing. The library is their salvation. So, keep those libraries open. And the rest of you, donate to your public libraries.

[laughter]

[applause]

They can't do it without you. Yes, okay.

Female Speaker: This is sort of a frivolous question, but it actually relates to what you just said. One of the things -- I love your dark, serious books, but I think my heart really belongs to your comic books like “To Say Nothing of the Dog” and “Bellwether.” And there is this scene in “Bellwether” where the main character, Sandra, is going to the library and she's checking out all the un – quote unquote, the "classic" unpopular books that no one is checking out any more like Browning, so that they will be saved from the forces of library demolition. And I just wondered, have you ever done that? Or is that based on reality? 4/4/2018 LOC - willis 18

Connie Willis: Yes, I absolutely do it. And I am currently having a feud with my local public library because they revamped the libraries. They did all these renovations and repaintings and stuff. And I walked in and I said, "Where the hell are the books?" And they said, "Well we discovered, we discovered in our research that nonreaders are less intimidated by low shelves than by high shelves, and so we got rid of half the books."

[laughter]

To which I responded, "You know, what would really be nonintimidating to nonreaders, no books at all.

[laughter]

But then you wouldn't really be a library, would you?" So they, and they said, "But all these books are new and shiny."

[laughter]

[applause]

It's an endless fight, and yes, I do. And I do recommend that. There is, you may not know this, the dark, dirty secret of libraries, public libraries, is they have a space problem. And so they will go through and see what was checked out for a given period of time and if something has not been checked out, which I, a lot of times don't check out the stuff I'm using for research, I just sit there and do the research in the library, they will then throw those books out. And of course if you are an inveterate reader, you already own your favorite copies of all your favorite novels. Go in and check those out once a year just so they don't get purged by 4/4/2018 LOC - willis 19 the library. So but somebody said to me, "Well, nobody had checked out “Three Men in a Boat," and I said, "And now, no one ever will because you threw it out." So yes, I get a little fierce about it. So, but the Internet is taking up some of the slack by putting a lot of back list and a lot of out of print books and that will help but, still. Libraries are good. Yes.

Female Speaker: Hi, I read “Passages” and I thought it was the scariest book I ever read. And I was wondering if it scared you when you wrote it?

Connie Willis: Yeah, Yeah. “Passages,” a book about near-death experiences, and mostly a book about death. And I really tried to think hard about what it was like to die, and what might happen. Unfortunately, since I've written a book, the question I'm most frequently asked is, "So, what does happen after we die?"

[laughter]

I don't know. I'll get back to you.

[laughter]

But, I felt that that was, like I was saying to her, I felt like my job was to tell the truth as nearly as I could tell it, and, that with such an important subject, it was especially important not to tell comforting lies or to tell anything that I could not honestly say I thought. And for me the ultimate dilemma is, with death is, I feel immortal, you know? You feel like you exist and you can't imagine not ever existing -- not being there. Somehow, if you're not there you'll know that you're not there which means that you're there. So, and so, there is that, this very strong sense in us of being immortal which I, you know, I don't think that comes from religion. I think it comes from us and then we give that idea and that feeling 4/4/2018 LOC - willis 20 to religion.

But on the other hand, having come up very sharply, sometimes, against the cold, hard facts of brain death, and knowing that sometimes the personality can not even survive during life. Those two are so mutually exclusive and that line between them, that attempt to reconcile them is so hard that I did the best I could.

So, but I'm sure, my feelings change all the time about it, and a book that I would recommend to all of you is the wonderful”How We Die” by Sherman Newland, the Pulitzer Prize-winning nonfiction book about death in which he seriously tries to think about it. My biggest complaint about books about death is that the people are not seriously thinking about it. They are either trying to do a Hallmark card version to make you feel good, or they are doing such a bleak version that they're not really, they're not really looking at the problem. So I try to look at it and do the best I could. So, thank you. Yes, ma'am.

Female Speaker: You talked almost the whole time about other people's writing and what you like to read, but how did you get your first work published and what's the writing process like for you?

Connie Willis: Okay. The writing process for me is to get up in the morning and discover that the dog has thrown up,

[laughter]

And then to call the vet and then to wait until the vet calls me back and then to discover that I have to load the dog into the car and take the dog to the vet and then I get back and then it's almost noon. And then I get to worrying about what 4/4/2018 LOC - willis 21

God-awful thing has happened during the day while I was gone, so then I switch on CNN and then, that's pretty much a writing day for me, so....

[laughter]

[applause]

I do try to, and see, my problem is I love reading. I love talking, obviously. I love researching. I hate writing. I just hate it. It's so hard. And I have to really bribe myself with, currently it's an iced grande chai from Starbucks, and one of those caramel sticks that are covered with chocolate that you get at Starbucks. And they just discontinued these caramel sticks and I went in and said, "I have a novel to finish."

[laughter]

"You have to call corporate headquarters now." So they had a leftover box so they sold it to me and I should be able to finish the novel okay. So....

[applause]

But, I usually, I don't work at home because of CNN. I usually go up to the student center or to one of the libraries in town or to a coffee shop and work. I work best with a little white noise. And I'm a very high tech writer because, of course I'm a science-fiction writer, you know. So I have the latest technological innovations to help with my writing. I read in a Big Chief tablet with a 20-cent Bic pen that I bought at Target during their back-to-school sale.

[laughter]

This year I treated myself with all Spider-Man notebooks. 4/4/2018 LOC - willis 22

[laughter]

So... And then I have someone transcribe this onto the computer. But, no it's -- people are, have different -- some people love the writing process. Asimov loved it. Stephen King loves it. Other people, it's just torture. I'm one of the torture people. And someone said, "Has it ever occurred to you that you're in the wrong business if you don't enjoy it?" And I said, "Well, yeah, but it's too late to get out now."

[laughter]

So, that's what I do. But I do, I love reading and I have always loved reading and to this day, it remains one of my greatest, greatest pleasures. And, since I feel it's my responsibility to pass on good authors to you, how many of you have read the Mapp & Lucia books by E.F. Benson? Are they not wonderful? They are wonderful. If you have not read them, I just discovered them last year. There were six of them in the series and I said to myself, "Now don't do what you did with Agatha Christie and P. G. Woodhouse, pace yourself. One every two years till you die." So I sat down and read all six of them.

[laughter]

And then, looked around and luckily, Benson has written a whole bunch of other stuff, too, so now I'm reading all of that. But that's my recommendation to you as a secret treasure. So, yes.

Male Speaker: One last question.

Connie Willis: 4/4/2018 LOC - willis 23

Okay. One last question? Okay.

Female Speaker: The first book of yours that I read was “Doomsday Book” and then I read ‘To Say Nothing of the Dog” and I was really impressed at how they were both equally well written but in completely different styles, sort of comedy and the darker style. I'm wondering which you like better, which you like writing better? And also, what made you decide to put something that could have been as depressing as the destruction of the Coventry Cathedral in what's mostly a comedic book.

Connie Willis: Okay. I, my natural forte, I think is comedy. I tend to see the world -- I just think the world is so hilarious. And anybody who doesn't agree with me obviously was not watching the debate the other night.

[applause]

[laughter]

So the world is an hysterical place and so it's my, I would say my natural metier is comedy. But of course, the world is also a very tragic place and one of the interesting things I think is that you talk about putting Coventry Cathedral into a comedy. My hero is Shakespeare, who, did not see anything odd about writing, taking the same material and using it to do all kinds of different things. He takes the story of star-crossed lovers and writes high tragedy, “Romeo and Juliet.” He turns around and writes it as low farce in the Pyramus and Thisbe section of “A Midsummer Night's Dream.” He turns around and writes it as high comedy in “Much Ado About Nothing,” and then very late in his career, he writes it as a sort of ironic bittersweet comedy in “A Winter's Tale.” I think that if you met Shakespeare, he would say that his true metier was comedy, and that the tragedies grow out of that. It's not the material, it's the treatment and the looking 4/4/2018 LOC - willis 24 at the world and I personally think that it's no accident that we cannot stand to watch dramas of the 1930s in the movies, well, maybe that could be because Bette Davis and Joan Crawford are in them, but...

[laughter]

But we, it's very hard to watch those and yet, “Bringing up Baby,” “His Girl Friday,” those are as fresh as the day they were made. And 150 years from now, 500 years from now, I think we'll still be able to watch the comedies. I think there's something essential and universal about comedy and so yeah, that's my favorite. And after, if I -- can I say just one moment about my books? Somebody said to me, "Which is your favorite book of yours to read?" And I'm like, "This may come as a shock to you. I do not read my own books. I read other people's books. They can read mine if they want."

But I am working on a new novel. It's called “All Clear.” It is time travel set in the same world as my other time travel novels, “Doomsday,” “To Say Nothing and Fire Watch.” This one is set in World War II and deals with a lot of the odd parts of World War II that you may not know about. The evacuation of the kids up north in England, the evacuation of, the other kind of evacuation of Dunkirk by an assortment of little tiny boats called the “Mary Jane” and the “Will o' the Wisp,” which somehow defeated the entire force of Hitler's war machine -- a lesson to us all. And the secret war of deception, which was engaged in right before D-Day, in which a bunch of geeks and slide rule pushers completely fooled Hitler into believing that the D-Day invasion was going to come at Calais. And did not fool him until the sixth of June, fooled him, in fact, until two weeks later, when it should have been completely obvious where the invasion was going to come. But, was so brilliantly taken on, a sign in which intelligence and humor can conquer evil in its purest form -- also a good lesson for today. So,

[applause] 4/4/2018 LOC - willis 25

so that's what I'm working on right now. And, somebody said to me, "Okay, is this “To Say Nothing of the Dog” or a “Doomsday Book?” And I said, "Well it's, you know, it's World War II." And they said, "Oh, shit. You're going to kill everybody, aren't you?"

[laughter]

And I said, "No. Not exactly." So, but I do promise then my next book is -- I have always wanted to write a book about Roswell and alien abduction.

[applause]

And Rush Limbaugh.

[laughter]

[applause]

And that is next, as soon as I finish “All Clear.” And then, probably I'll be dead by then, so. Okay. Thank you very much.

[applause]

Female Speaker: [inaudible]

Male Speaker: Connie says she will answer someone's questions over here but she'll be happy to answer questions after the program is over, which it now is. But as I said earlier, it is clear we left the best for last, but it's been a wonderful day. We've 4/4/2018 LOC - willis 26 had terrific writers, Ben Bova, Cathy Asaro, Fred Pohl, Patricia Wrede, Lois McMaster Bujold, Neil Gaiman, Neal Stephenson, Connie Willis. Have I missed anyone? I hope not.

Thank you all for coming. Come again next year.

[applause]

[end of transcript]