(Jane Ciabattari, Amy Tan, Ben Fountain) Two National Book Critics Circle award-honored novelists, Ben Fountain and Amy Tan, read from their work and talk with NBCC Vice President/Online Jane Ciabattari about inspiration, research, readers, awards, the unique challenges of first novels, and the imaginative process that gives their work originality. Since 1974, the National Book Critics Circle awards have honored the best literature published in English. These are the only awards chosen by the critics themselves.

Published Date: August 20, 2014

Transcription

Voice:

Welcome to the AWP Podcast series. This event was recorded at the 2014 AWP Conference in Seattle. The recording features Amy Tan and Ben Fountain. You will now hear Jill Christman and Jane Ciabatarri provide introductions.

 

Christman:

I was so hoping that the music would stop when I approached the lectern. I thought, “What am I going to do if it doesn’t? Who will I call?” Hello, everybody, I am Jill Christman. I am a member of the AWP Board, and I am so delighted that you are all here today for a conversation with Amy Tan and Ben Fountain. Everybody’s in the right place. No one ran screaming from the room. I also, my main role, I’m introducing the introducer, it’s one of those introductions, so what you need to do is what you need to do with your cell phones right? You need to make them quiet and you need to make your cameras so we have a quiet, calm space, but for the glaring lights. On behalf of AWP, I want to thank you all for being here this afternoon, and I want to send out our gratitude to the National Book Critics Circle for sponsoring this special event. We are truly grateful. I am really excited, and without further ado, please join me in inviting to the stage the Vice President of the National Book Critics Circle, Jane Ciabatarri, to get this conversation started. Thank you so much.

 

(Audience applause)

 

Ciabatarri:

Thank you, Jill Christman. It’s great to be here, and I always like to say when the AWP gathers, nowadays people are saying it’s like burning man indoors. I don’t think it’s quite like burning man indoors. But it is annual, and it does create all kinds of excitement, explosiveness, inspiration, visual imagery; it’s an amazing event. I’ve been coming off and on since I was just out of graduate school and went to give a reading in Lawrence, Kansas, with the late William Burroughs. Why they twinned the two of us I don’t know, but it was a memorable experience. Every time I’ve come here, I’ve seen people I have revered: Marilynne Robinson, Toni Morrison, it’s just been an amazing list. All the writers I’ve wanted to emulate over the years I’ve had a chance to hear at the AWP. But one of the things I wanted to do right now is offer you the chance to give a round of applause to David Fenza and Christian Teresi and Cynthia Sherman and all the board members of the AWP who work so hard to make this happen. Can we do that? It’s an amazing group. It’s just, they make it work. It’s very special. I’d also like to ask if there are AWP board members here? Could you hold up your hand? In addition to Jill. So you can get noticed. You really should be given attention to. How about National Book Critics Circle members and board members, I see at least two of you here. Hold up your hand, I’d love for people to see you.

 

The National Book Critics Circle is 40 years old this year. We started as a group of people who used to go to the Algonquin Round Table in New York City, and sit around, and they were book critics and they talked about books, and they created an award that would be given by the critics only. It wasn’t a publisher submission, it wasn’t anything to do…it was the critics voting over a year-long process. They decided that they wanted to have a National Book Critics Circle that lasted beyond the Algonquin, way beyond the Hudson, all the way to the West Coast and even to Hawaii, so that it was a National Book Circle, it wasn’t just in one place. So that was 40 years ago. We will have our awards ceremony for the newest group of awardees on March 13th this year. On March 12th we’ll have readings. And currently on our blog, which I’m part of as VP online, there are 30 reviews of the finalists. We chose them in January. We argued all year on a password-protected whiteboard. We accepted several meetings in which we discussed them in person. We voted down from the long to the short list in January so those finalists have been announced. Reviews for those finalists are going up on the blog now even as I speak. We also have video interviews with those finalists on the blog, and I actually traded one of Ben’s from last year. So you’ve an opportunity to see them in an interview session and get a sense for what their work is like. And then we’ll announce the winners on March 13th. You can find that all on our blog: BookCritics.org. We also have another new kind of award we are very happy about. It’s named the John Leonard award for a founding member. It’s for the best first book in any genre, and the winner this year is Anthony Mara, who I believe is down at Stanford. But he was one of five finalists, and this is an award that’s given by the members, not by the board.

 

Another question for you guys: How many of you are here for your first ever AWP? Wow. Look at that. Are you having fun? Is it good? Are you getting what you want? (applause) Good. I’m so glad. Are you Seattle people? West Coast people? Good. I’m glad. I hope you will come by the book fair booth number 909 to say hello. That’s where the Book Critics members and board members have been hanging out since Wednesday. We have a sign-up list. You can sign up for free for the articles we have every week that tell you about what we are doing. You can join as a student member for 15 bucks. If you are not a professional reviewer, you can join as a friend for 35 bucks, and professionals, you can also sign up if you are a reviewer. We have a Name That Author game that’s based on the past 40 years…all the finalists, and we only have 14 included. It’s 14 clues. They are tough clues. Somebody who gets one might be a winner. And the winners will get autographed books by our featured speakers Amy Tan and Ben Fountain. We are going to draw that on Saturday morning at about 11:30. So go by booth 909. Get your entry form. Fill it out and bring it back so we’ll be able to consider you.

 

One of the things that I always think about when I think about the National Book Critics Circle is how much we honor all our finalists because we go such a…there’s such a rigorous year-long vetting process. Everyone who’s been a finalist stays part of our community of really fine writers and we include them in events that we do, and we include them in the blog from time to time. Most recently I asked a series of former finalists and winners along with our members, “What was your favorite NBCC winner of all time?” And we ran about 40 different return responses from Richard Powers all the way through to one of our student members, so that’s another way we keep abreast of our winners and keep an eye on excellence in literature. Which is saying, I was really excited to have Amy Tan and Ben Fountain here to read from their work. Ben is our most recent NBCC fiction book award winner. His book was considered last year and given the award. And Amy comes to us after her first novel, The Joy Luck Club, was nominated as a finalist for the award 25 years ago. And one of the exciting things for me is that Amy kicked off her book tour 25 years ago at Elliot Bay in Seattle. So there’s something really kind of delicious about having her here in addition to Ben. I’m gonna go in alphabetical order by last name, and so first up is Ben Fountain.

 

He is the author of Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, published in 2012, which received the National Book Critics Circle Award as well as The New York Times’ book award for fiction. It was a finalist also for the National Book Award. His story collection, Brief Encounters with Che Guevara, received the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Barnes & Noble Discover Award for Fiction, and a Whiting Writers’ Award. His short fiction has appeared in Esquire, Harper’s, and The Paris Review, and his nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere. He lives in Dallas. Ben will be reading from his award winner. And I have to say, I mentioned the 30 books in 30 days we do in his citation last year. Our board member Steve Kellman noted: “During World War II, the US Army commissioned Frank Capra to create a documentary series explaining why we fight. A virtuoso account of obnoxious nexus of football, business, and combat, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk makes magnificent mischief of explaining why we should not.” Ben Fountain.

 

Fountain:

Thank you, Jane, and thanks for having me here. Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, people say, “Well, what authors were you thinking about when you were working on this book?” Joseph Heller is someone a lot of people suggest. I was thinking about Kurt Vonnegut. Actually I was thinking more of the Marx Brothers and the Muppets. I just, I think, they represent two of the highest achievements in western culture in the way they go into conventional social situations and wreak havoc. I just think it’s wonderful the way they do that. And so I’m going to read a couple sections from Billy Lynn, a couple of short sections where you might say these were inspired by the Muppets and the Marx Brothers. Just really quickly, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk takes place over the course of one day in the old Texas Stadium where the Cowboys used to play. It’s Thanksgiving Day, and the Cowboys always play on Thanksgiving Day. The Bravos have been brought back for a two-week quote victory tour around the United States, and then they’re going to be sent back to Iraq. And they’re at the Cowboys game on the last day of their tour, and then they head back to Fort Hood and then to Iraq in the days that follow. So Billy Lynn and his buddy Mango, they’re both Bravos, they’re out walking on the concourse of Texas Stadium before the game.

 

(Reads from Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk)

 

Okay. I’m going to go a little bit farther on. It’s still before the game, and the eight Bravo soldiers are in a high-end club in the stadium, and they’re having Thanksgiving dinner. It’s called the Stadium Club, and these Stadium Club patrons keep coming up to say congratulations and thank them for their service.

 

(Reads from Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk)

 

Thank you very much.

 

Ciabatarri:

Thank you, Ben. That’s one of my favorite passages in the book, and I also love that every once and a while you come across someone who puts their words together in a certain way. Silverback is such a perfect word. Anyway, thank you.

 

And now Amy Tan. Amy was born in the United States to immigrant parents from China. She rejected her mother’s expectations that she become a doctor and concert pianist. She chose to write fiction instead. Her novels are The Joy Luck Club, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; The Kitchen God’s Wife; The Hundred Secret Sentences; The Bonesetter’s Daughter, which also became an opera by the way; Saving Fish from Drowning; and all of them were New York Times best sellers. She is also the author of the memoir The Opposite of Fate; two children’s books, The Moon Lady and Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat; and numerous articles for magazines. Her work has been translated into 35 languages. As I mentioned, The Joy Luck Club’s 25th anniversary is coming up in March. Amy also will be coming back on March 22 to do a gala at the library in King County. So those of you who live in Seattle could watch for that as well. She’ll be reading from her new novel, The Valley of Amazement, which is actually an amazing book, a remarkable book. The Valley of Amazement is both a painting by a Hudson River School painter, which I hadn’t known about, you know, it’s sort of like this imagined painting that goes back in time, but it carries throughout the full book. And one of the things I said when I reviewed it for NPR is that Amy Tan is a master of illusion and one of the best storytellers around. So it’s a real honor to introduce Amy to read from her book, The Valley of Amazement.

 

Tan:

Well, I could see the influence of the Muppets and the Marx brothers. I wish I had such great cultural models. I’ll have to say it was Gilligan’s Island. Actually, the book was inspired by a photograph I found of my grandmother that suggested that she was a courtesan, and that got me doing a lot of research to find out what a courtesan house really was, and so I’m going to start reading from the beginning, portions from the beginning to give you an idea of what life was like there.

 

(Reads from The Valley of Amazement)

 

Ciabatarri:

We’re doing a sound check now because we are shifting from other there to conversation… And I think I can hear my voice. Can you hear my voice? I think there’s one thing that we’re going to do, which is not look at each other while we speak. So we’re not being rude. We are trying to keep our mic clear for you guys. Make sense? Does that work? Thank you all. I have asked Amy and Ben both to think about, a little bit, the fact that each of them had enormous critical acclaim for a first novel. I know a lot of you out there might be wondering, “What’s it like? How long does it take to write a novel, a novel that you did so well by? Did so well and entered the world in such a (inaudible) way. What was the process of writing? How long did it take? What was the publication process like? And how was your life changed by a first novel? I’m going to ask Ben first, to give Amy a chance to settle in after her reading, and then I’m going to ask Amy that question.

 

Fountain:

The fact that there are so many variables and so many things you can’t control, doing this kind of work. Really the only thing you can control is getting the words on the page. And so if by good fortune you get the book published and it gets out into the world, I mean, anything can happen. When good things started to happen, I think the main emotion was relief, that it wasn’t going to sink and disappear without a trace, so that maybe I could write another book, or had the means to write another book. And I suppose I’ve reached the point in my life where I can enjoy having some success. I’ve maybe put a certain amount of my WASP guilt complex, or maybe suppressed it sufficiently that I can enjoy things like that. Let’s see, what are some of the other good things? People don’t call you a bum to your face so much, especially your in-laws (laughter), and I don’t know, it just makes writing the next book a little more feasible, it seems like.

 

Tan:

It was like winning the lottery, only never having entered the lottery. I couldn’t believe it. You know, I was a very practical, realistic person who knows that first novels, if you were lucky, would sell about 5,000 copies. And so as these things were happening, I really was suspicious. I ended up feeling as though somebody else had taken control of my life, because it was so unreal, and as things started growing, you know, when I got the nomination for the National Book Critics Circle Award or National Book Award, I actually felt that it was like Faust, or The Picture of Dorian Gray, you know, The Selfie of Amy Tan, you know, and I had bargained with the devil, only I didn’t remember the making the deal. I was trying to figure out also why people liked the book. And you know, was it because, was it exotic, or was it, you know? And I had to be writing another book at the same time, and it was difficult with all that success on my shoulder, that I started numerous novels, probably about seven of them, and threw away hundreds of pages, and cracked three molars and broke out in hives.

 

Ciabatarri:

Whoa!

 

Tan:

I did not believe this would be my life until seven months after publication, and then I finally told Lou I probably could be a writer the rest of my life.

 

Ciabatarri:

I also mentioned that each of you had a prior career. And what was it like to feel you had already done one thing and then were becoming a writer? Ben?

 

Fountain:

Well, I went to law school and then practiced law. I think now, looking back on it, I was trying to avoid writing, because it scared me; it seemed like the hardest thing and a thing least susceptible or predictable of success. But by the time I turned 30, I realized I was never going to have peace in myself unless I did this really, you know, insane and irresponsible thing, which was leave a safe career and try to write when I really hadn’t written anything since college. I mean I think the legal education, the legal way of thinking held me back as far as fiction writing. I was very trained in this lockstep way of thinking that the law requires. And doing this kind of work, fiction writing, I mean it has its own logic, but it’s more an emotion logic, and it took me a long time to get away from that legal kind of lockstep thinking and maybe more into a more emotional and maybe intuitive way of thinking and writing.

 

Tan:

I was a business writer for technological companies—IBM and all the Bell companies when AT&T broke up. And I had many, many clients. I worked 90 hours a week, and I couldn’t stop, and I did not feel satisfied with it. And I ended up going to a psychiatrist; somebody told me I was a workaholic. And I was. He was very helpful. He fell asleep three times. And I decided that I should do something behavioral to find something to stop working so much, and fiction won out. I started writing fiction in 1985 at the age of 33. And because I was a successful business writer, it had the advantage to me feeling that I did not have to be a success in writing fiction, feeling I could do this solely for myself. And I found there was great satisfaction not only in the craft, but in the subterfuge that I had created for myself in thinking I was writing fiction but was actually writing about things that had disturbed me all my life, like my mother (audience laughter). So when I tell people to write for themselves, it sounds disingenuous, but it’s not if you have another livelihood that pays quite well. Did it help? I think in the same way that Ben was talking about, that kind of writing is not an advantage. I wish I had taken something away from it, like deadlines. I had to meet deadlines constantly, and I miss them all the time now. The other was, I think was, writing to please other people—that was what business writing was about; there was their agenda. Whereas with fiction writing, I had to be authentic, as they say. I really had to find out what I needed to write for myself.

 

Ciabatarri:

What is your writing process like now? You have a new book out. It’s been multiple novels and children’s books, and wonderful publication history, including the latest book. What’s the process like now for you, because I know you have other books in the works as well?

 

Tan:

Yeah. Do not follow anything I say. It’s bad advice. It’s been eight years because I let myself be distracted. I wrote an opera, I built a brand new (inaudible) from scratch, and the guy wanted me to pick out everything from light plates, which is... But basically, I do a lot of jotting in a journal, over the years, observations, ideas, and reflections on that. I do a lot of research. I love research. And when I finally sit down to write a novel, after writing numerous things out by hand, which is much more freeing to me—it’s more the subconscious can come out—when I can finally sit down, I do the same sentences beginning over and over, over again, and I say to myself, “Why am I doing this?” because all these sentences are going to go. By the time I get to the end of the book, all that beginning is going to be gone. And I know that because that’s what’s happened in every single book. And yet I have to do that. I have to be in that place. It always begins with that place, and I have to be there and firmly in that place in order to begin. But the beginning often has to do with what, what moment in that character’s life begins the story. And I know thematically, but I don’t know it yet narratively.

 

Ciabatarri:

Well...

 

Fountain:

When I first started writing, again, I was operating on, at a considerable amount of anxiety and fear of failure, and so I outlined everything, and I held out until all the way to the end, and it just seemed too stressful, and too much pressure was involved to start something and not know how it was going to end. And over the years I’ve gotten a lot more comfortable with starting something and not knowing how it’s going to end. And actually that’s where the pleasure comes from. And that’s also where the stress comes in, but you know? How do you write something when you don’t even know what the first scene is going to be, much less what is going to be at page 300? And so at a certain point I came to the conclusion, well, that you figure out the story by writing it. But how to write the story if you don’t know what the story is? Well, that’s why writers are crazy! (audience laughter) And so I suppose what we do is we go on faith that over time, you know, with all our fumbling and stumbling, the story will reveal itself if we are diligent. And if the gods are with us.

 

Ciabatarri:

I’m going to ask each of them one more question, and then I’m going to let you ask questions, okay? Do you have questions? Do you? All right, all right. We’re going to ask each of them, what are you working on now? Amy?

 

Tan:

I will find out tomorrow when I meet with my editor. He is flying here from New York. I’m flying here to San Francisco back home, and we’ll have dinner. But we’ve talked about two books as possibilities. One is the next novel and the other is a nonfiction book about writing. A lot of what I will write on for the next year has to do with my schedule. It’s very hard to work on a novel when I am going from city to city almost every day. And I’ll be going from San Francisco, to D.C., to New York, to Spain, to Norway, and back to Seattle and so on and so forth. So I think the nonfiction will be easier because it will be a series of essays. We just, about writing, have you ever wondered how an editor and an author work together? That in part is what this book is about. During the writing of this book, this editor I have now is the fir...it’s the first time I’ve ever worked with him. And he’s the legendary editor Dan Halpern at HarperCollins. Our relationship as writer and editor is just so amazing. We exchanged about 1,600 emails during the course of this. Dan, early on, said, ”I love these emails. I think we should publish these.” Which completely freaked me out, and I said, “I will never write another email to you.” And even if I agreed, it would become so self-conscious as to be dishonest, and then he said, “Okay, I take it back, you are absolutely right.” And then when we finished the book, he said, “I think we should publish our emails.” We’re not going to publish all of them, but we’re probably going to take select things and during a portion of the book talk about that editor-writer relationship.

 

Ciabatarri:

And Ben, what are you working...

 

Fountain:

Okay. I’m about 200 pages, rough pages, into a novel set in Haiti. And Haiti’s a place I’ve been going to since 1991, and I have one failed novel about it. That was the first novel I wrote, and I mean, why Haiti? Well, we could get into this mother tongue, but I think the point I want to make is that one of the wonderful things about doing this kind of work is that you follow your interests where it leads you. And that you don’t have a boss. And you have a great deal of freedom to explore, if you can keep body and soul together economically, but Haiti was a place that just kinda got its claws in me from an early point even before I went there. And I started going and exploring it, and so for all you MFA students out there, or would be, or you’re considering getting an MFA and then embarking on this, you know, this really contingent provisional notion of trying to make a life as a writer. I think maybe 40 years ago, the stakes were a lot higher in this sense. If you went and joined corporate America, you got something in return. If you sold your soul, you got, you know, a reasonable prospect of job security, good health benefits, and when you retired, as secure pension. And now you can sell your soul, and you might be out on your ass next week. So why not go ahead and do what you want?

 

(laughter and applause)

 

Ciabatarri: 

I’m going to go to the mic so I can see you. We have this light in our faces. I want to thank both Amy and Ben, and I’m gonna have some questions coming, but first let me just say that you might get a hint for our Name That Author contest from what you’ve heard or are thinking about these two. Just bear that in mind. If anybody wants Name That Author entry forms, I have some with me. Come talk to me or go to booth 909. Okay. First question in the second row right there in the middle.

 

Audience member:

For Ben Fountain, dialogue, my son is two-time Purple Heart Iraq vet, and I sent him your book, and he swears you were in the tank with him. How did you come by...awesome dialogue?

 

Fountain:

The gentleman’s question is: How did I come up with my awesome dialogue? And thanks to your son for reading the book. I do appreciate it. You work at it. You pay attention to the life around you, and again that’s another wonderful thing about doing this kind of work. You can’t do it if you’re numb or sleepwalking through life. ’Cause writers are desperate people. We need everything we can get our hands on. So just out of necessity and desperation, I’m listening and looking and trying to absorb everything I can. I mean, for this book I read all the books. All the memoirs. I hung out with soldiers quite a bit. I watched the documentaries, and then I tried to tune into the sound of it, and just line by line got as close as I could to the authentic voice.

 

Ciabatarri:

All right. You in the blue shirt.

 

Audience member:

...short story versus novel...(inaudible)

 

Ciabatarri: 

Short story versus novel...going back to short stories. Is that for Ben?

 

Fountain:

Well, I like writing both, and I mean, I wish I was faster, because I have so many more novels and stories I want to write. But, you know, I like writing both. I would be sad if someone said you had to be one or the other. There’s less stress in writing the story. It’s a lot easier on the psyche to have a three-week failure as opposed to a three-year failure. I’ve had one of those. But I like writing both.

 

Ciabatarri:

Okay, I’m pointing right at you, you’re in the third row. In the blue shirt.

 

Audience member:

...(inaudible)...seems true to me in the same way that (inaudible) in Vietnam seemed true to me, that it’s really saying something about American culture and this mix of football and war and men who are a certain kinda stupid, and I’m just curious, but again, I’m just this academic, intellectual kinda guy, that seems really true in me, but I’m curious, like if this gentlemen’s son, do the veterans you’ve heard from, do they feel the same way? Are they—do they feel like this is capturing something for them? Or not so much?

 

Fountain:

The gentlemen’s questions is: Do veterans who’ve read Billy Lynn, do they feel that it’s authentic, that it’s a good book? And I have to say, without exception, all the veterans who’ve made contact with me, yes, they feel very positive about the book. It’s a self-selecting group. I mean, the ones who thought the book was lousy or were just never inclined to pick it up, or put it down after three or four pages, they aren’t the ones who make the effort to seek me out. At least it hasn’t happened yet. So, I mean I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback from soldiers, which is about the best praise I could get, I think.

 

Ciabatarri:

Other questions?

 

Audience member:

This is for Amy. You were involved in writing a screenplay...and screenplay writing is very different. Given that experience, what did you think of that? How did that affect your other writing plans?

 

Tan:

It delayed my novel by three years. Actually, I got seduced into co-writing that with Ron Bass, and because Ron Bass and Wayne Wang, the director, had said, “I think you will learn something creatively about earning a scene, and emotionally where a scene begins and where it ends.” And that was heroin to me to hear those words. And they said that I wouldn’t really have to do that much, that I would just kind of float in and out. But three years later, or two years later, you know, we had this movie, and I had co-written this with Ron Bass, who is an amazing screenwriter and mentor and teacher. The other part of it is, that’s so different, is that you have 90 minutes in which to tell the story—or less than two hours, and it is quite different. And so you are very much aware of the difference of the medium, and how you have to depict something and very much those white spaces that you can have in your novel, and how those are represented on the screen. I find it very, very different, and you know, having to start with the notion that you have the heart of the story and you have these characters and their souls and you have to recast. Of all the three of us working on it, I was the least protective of the novel. I would say, “Those are just words, get rid of that,” or “We don’t need that character, it’s too long.” You know? They would defend the book, which I thought was very touching.

 

Ciabatarri:

Another question? (inaudible)...front row.

 

Audience member:

Yeah, this is very entertaining and I love your work, but if I had an opportunity, I’m also, I did something else before I was writing, and I’m also a bookaholic. But I had the pleasure of being all over China and seeing how much it’s changed, and I guess when I...well, I can’t really say that, but a lot of your work is....(inaudible) and I know you’ve spent a lot of time there, so what do you think about that, and how do you think it might influence your work as a teacher? What ...(inaudible)...

 

Tan:

What?...The question was about China and how much it’s influenced my work, and now China has changed so much and how will that influence my work in the future. I’m, you know, so far I’ve been really interested in my family’s past, which, in our family, ended...the Chinese part of it ended in 1949 when my mother and father arrived here. So the history has always been there in the past. But recently, I found that my sisters who had been left behind, one of them revealed something to me, which was quite shocking. As a child, they, first of all, as a child they had a stereotype of China, like many people, images of LIFE Magazine. Peasant in the field with conical hats, bent over in the rice field. And I learned from my sister about five or six years ago, as I was going off to a little village in the mountain of Qua Jo in China, one of the most remote, probably the most remote port....province. She said, “What’s so special about that?” She said, “I lived in one of those places for 18 years.” She was the rice farmer in the conical hat, bent over in the field, picking leaches off her legs. I don’t know why I didn’t know that. And so now I have a family member with an immediate history in China that took place after 1949. The China today does include my family. Does include some difficult things that have happened recently with another sister, and, you know, so many stories begin with these difficulties, with these conflicts. And so there I have China in the present day. The...if you have not been to China, let me say this, the most modern airport I have ever been to is in China. The most tripped-out hair salon I have ever been to is in China. The most technologically challenging hotel I have ever been to is in China. Some of the most expensive things you could buy in the way of food. China is not what it was before, and you know, therein I think lies a possible path to what I might write about in the future, which has a lot to do with change, perception, and desire and greed. Not just, I’m not talking about greed on the side of the Chinese, I’m talking about opportunity and greed in general of people who go there.

 

Ciabatarri:

One last question? Jill? One last question? How are we looking?

 

Christman:

About 30 seconds.

 

Ciabatarri: 

About 30 seconds!  Right behind you. Question.

 

Audience member:

For Amy Tan.

 

Ciabatarri: 

Amy.

 

Audience member:

In your work, did you experience a power imbalance between men and women? How do you find the men you deal with react to your work?

 

Tan:

You know, I....the most negative things that I get, usually are with Asian-American men, often times teaching in universities, who feel I am not portraying men in a good light, and I am not creating role models. And I don’t think of my work as being educational, or as social propaganda. It just so happens in my family there are a lot of terrible men, and they are my source of inspiration. (audience laughter) My father was a wonderful man, but he died early in my life, and that’s why a lot of good men die in my books. But I, I also, I, I don’t think I’m writing on the basis of terrible men. In this book there are some characters I think, I’d love these men if they were real. And as I think about the…the way they communicate their relationship with women, it has much to do with language, and my...the misunderstandings that are in there, that underlie a lot of the culture and a lot of the experience and histories, personal histories, of these people. I will be doing a conversation with a woman named Deborah Tannen. I don’t know if you’ve heard of You Just Don’t Understand. She’s a longtime friend from when we were in a doctoral program in linguistics, many, many years ago, and we will be having a conversation at PEN/Faulkner in Washington, D.C., about this very subject of men and women and language and discourse and what is contained in that discourse.

 

Ciabatarri:

Terrific. I want to thank you all. We need to move through the room. You have an opportunity to have your book signed by Amy and Ben, but first how about a big cheer “thank you” for the both of them for being so generous with their time, their work, and answering our questions. Thank you all.

 

Voice:

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