0:03

I'm Alec Baldwin, and you're listening

0:05

to Here's the Thing. Of

0:07

all the staff writers at the New Yorker

0:09

magazine, Susan Orlean covers

0:12

perhaps the most ground thematically

0:14

and geographically. She's

0:17

been embedded with fertility, shamans

0:19

and Bhutan, and orchid thieves

0:21

in Louisiana. She's profiled

0:24

a dog, a boxer named Biff,

0:26

and the entire city of Midland, Texas.

0:30

She combines a deep emotional

0:32

understanding of her subjects with

0:34

rigorous reporting, and she spends

0:36

pretty much as long as she likes

0:38

on each project. If that weren't

0:41

enough, her book The Orchid Thief

0:43

inspired adaptation one

0:45

of the more successful art house movies

0:48

of the past twenty years. Her

0:50

most recent book takes as its

0:52

heroes the librarians and archivists

0:55

of Los Angeles County. Her

0:57

entree to this story was her shock

1:00

upon hearing for the first time just three

1:02

years ago about the six

1:05

arson at l A's Central Library.

1:08

The fire is mostly unknown outside

1:10

southern California, overshadowed

1:12

by the Chernobyl event, but it's

1:15

our Alexandria, the

1:17

most devastating library fire

1:19

in American history. So we have

1:21

four hundred thousand gone, just

1:24

gone. The whole collections. The

1:27

l A Library had the largest cookbook

1:29

collection in the US. They're

1:32

out of print. They're gone. I

1:34

mean, they had car

1:36

manuals for every make and model

1:38

of cars, starting at the model t irrecoverable.

1:42

It had been developed. Librarians developed

1:45

these collections over the years,

1:48

finding these books, putting them together.

1:51

So each library is also unique

1:53

in that way. What's in the New York

1:55

Public Library is not the same as what's

1:58

in the l A Public Library, but the

2:00

core stuff. And

2:03

while you can quantify it, you can say

2:05

four hundred thousand books. The

2:08

library was founded at

2:10

the turn of the century. Many

2:12

of these collections had been built

2:15

from that time, and that

2:18

can't be fixed by money.

2:22

And it's like Fantasia. It's

2:24

an incredibly beautiful building that

2:26

is a sort of combination Art

2:29

Deco Egyptian downtown,

2:32

right in the center of downtown. And this was

2:34

the central library of the entire

2:37

l A Library system in it

2:40

was in bad shape. It was a time

2:42

when downtown l A was in bad shape.

2:44

People weren't even sure that it was important

2:47

to have a library. Downtown Los Angeles

2:49

has changed. It's unrecognizable from when I

2:51

first came here. No one lived inland

2:54

that what Nola Wood lived in Silver Lake in Los VELAs.

2:56

The air quality was so poor that everybody lived as far

2:58

west as they could afford, and nobody

3:00

lived downtown. Describe what happened

3:04

um April. A

3:07

fire alarm went off and everybody

3:10

thought it was a false alarm. The library

3:12

had a lot of false alarms, and

3:15

lo and behold, firefighters

3:17

found smoke in the fiction

3:19

section. Suddenly

3:22

it absolutely erupted. I mean, you can

3:24

imagine a fire in the library, that's

3:27

the perfect environment. More

3:29

than that, it wasn't only that it was

3:31

books. It was in the stacks, which are

3:34

almost like chimneys. They

3:36

were thick, concrete walled tubes

3:39

filled with books. Biggest library

3:42

fire in the history of the US, which

3:45

at the time I heard about it, which

3:47

was very recently, I am shocked.

3:50

You would assume there would be coverage

3:52

in the New York papers. So

3:55

I went back to look at what

3:57

was going on that somehow

3:59

obscure. You're this news. There's

4:02

a little story on the front page

4:04

in the New York Times saying radiation

4:07

detected in Scandinavia was

4:10

the Chernobyl meltdown, and

4:13

I had kind of forgotten how

4:15

terrifying that had been. Nobody

4:18

knew what was going to happen, and

4:21

it really was days

4:23

of the New York Times being wall to

4:25

wall Chernobyl coverage because we

4:27

none of us knew if this fallout

4:31

was going to end up traveling

4:33

around the world. In fact it did, but

4:35

the Chernobyl I don't want to digress on this, but

4:38

I had lived in Los

4:40

Angeles pretty much full time, the only time

4:42

of my life that I lived only in l

4:44

A. And

4:46

in December eighty five and moved back to New York. So

4:48

you just missed and well,

4:51

I and I commuted back and forth forever,

4:53

but I was mostly in New York and Chernobyl

4:55

was six and I was living in New York

4:57

at the time, and remember that never

5:00

heard a word about this fire. Yeah,

5:02

so how do you first become familiar? How

5:04

did this cross your desks? I had

5:06

just moved to l A. And

5:09

I was offered a tour of Central

5:11

Library by the head of the Library Foundation

5:13

because I had done a little fundraising

5:16

thing for them, and I thought, well, I've never

5:18

actually been to Central Library

5:20

in l A. And libraries

5:22

had really come back into

5:25

my consciousness when I

5:27

had a kid and started taking

5:29

my son to the library and

5:31

was reminded so

5:34

powerfully of what it is like

5:37

as a child to go to a library. And it was

5:39

really vivid and

5:41

very poignant for me because my mom

5:44

had just developed Alzheimer's and I was

5:46

thinking a lot about our trips together to

5:48

the library, so

5:51

libraries were on my mind. When I was offered

5:53

this tour of Central Library, I thought, oh

5:55

great, so I went down there was really

5:58

struck by the building because it's so beautiful.

6:01

And as we were walking through on

6:03

this tour, Ken Brecker, who

6:05

is the head of the foundation, pulled a library

6:08

book off the shelf and he took

6:10

a deep whiff of

6:12

it and I

6:15

thought, I guess I'm new to l a. Maybe

6:17

that's the way people do it here. What do I

6:19

know books? Actually,

6:22

it's a nice thought. And he

6:24

said, you can still smell the smoke

6:27

and some of them. And I

6:29

said, oh, did they used to

6:31

allow smoking in the library

6:35

And he looked at me like I was crazy. Of

6:37

course, he said no, the fire And

6:39

I said what fire And he said

6:42

the big fire, the fire in

6:44

six that shut the library down for seven

6:47

years. And my

6:49

jaw just dropped and I said,

6:51

what tell me about this? And

6:55

how did I never hear about it?

6:57

Because the more I learned,

7:00

more I learned the scope of the

7:02

fire, the more amazed I

7:04

was. That was one of those stories

7:07

that was kind of hiding in plain sight. So

7:10

my interest in writing about libraries

7:12

then had this hook because

7:16

besides just being a chance to

7:18

write about my feelings

7:21

about libraries, it was a chance to

7:23

write about this event that was fascinating.

7:26

I mean both the investigation into

7:28

it, the reason that I

7:30

didn't know about it, the

7:33

libraries recovery from it, and

7:36

all of the emotions around

7:38

it, which we're really powerful

7:40

because obviously people in l A knew

7:43

about this, and for seven years that

7:45

library was closed, the main library,

7:48

the library still

7:50

around. He just passed away. We

7:53

spent many, many many hours on

7:55

the phone. He's he

7:58

was an amazing care during

8:00

His name was Wyman Jones and

8:03

he's irascible, um,

8:06

arrogant, fascinating, multi

8:10

talented guy who was an

8:12

amateur magician, very talented

8:14

magician and jazz

8:16

pianist who's also this

8:20

head of libraries. He had come from running

8:23

the libraries in Fort Worth, Texas

8:25

and was the head of the library system

8:28

in l A for twenty years. Very

8:30

opinionated. He actually

8:32

believed that central Library should

8:34

be torn down and that the land should

8:37

be sold and there should

8:39

be a new library built somewhere else. But

8:42

he conceded the point when public

8:44

opinion rose up to preserve

8:46

the building. So why if back then,

8:48

when the fire happened and it was closed for seven

8:51

years in that area isn't favorites, why

8:53

did they bother resurrecting the library.

8:55

Well, there were a lot of people who made the argument

8:57

that there was no need for a central downtown

9:00

library and that the city

9:02

could function very well just having branch

9:04

library. And those people who wanted to resurrect it, how

9:06

did they win the day. I

9:09

can't say that people had the

9:11

ability to see twenty years into

9:13

the future and realized downtown would be renovated

9:17

um the way it's been, because I was downtown

9:19

in that period of time here as a visitor

9:22

and no one lived down here.

9:24

It was desolate at night. So

9:27

the idea that the library would be

9:30

a centerpiece in a revitalized

9:33

downtown sounded ridiculous. But

9:37

these people really had the hope that downtown

9:39

would turn into a thriving

9:41

part of the city. But there were also

9:44

people saying the building is too small,

9:47

we should tear it down, sell the land,

9:49

will get all sorts of money for the land, and

9:51

we'll build another central library

9:54

somewhere else. Yeah, and that

9:56

there was a very strong um

10:00

kind of movements supporting that. Now,

10:03

looking back, I would say, we're really

10:05

lucky that that didn't happen. Is there

10:07

a hero of the preservation

10:09

cause absolutely there was a woman named

10:11

Margaret Bach and another

10:14

architect named Barton Phelps. A number

10:16

of architects got together and said

10:19

we have to preserve the library.

10:21

And that actually was the

10:23

first organized group

10:27

doing any kind of historical preservation

10:29

in l A. So we have them

10:32

to thank that that grew into

10:34

being the l A Conservancy,

10:36

which has preserved all these Loutner houses,

10:39

all these Schindler houses that

10:41

wouldn't have happened if the

10:43

library hadn't been threatened. Now,

10:45

described the devastation of

10:48

losing that volume

10:50

of these things to them, precious volumes

10:52

of beautiful books. Who did you talk to about that?

10:55

I spend time with a lot

10:58

of the librarians who many of

11:00

whom are now retired, who were here at the time

11:02

the librarians were devastated.

11:05

I mean they had spent their entire

11:07

professional lives developing the

11:10

collections in their departments

11:13

also, and I found

11:15

this really touching. They were

11:18

absolutely frantic

11:21

over the prospect of the patrons

11:25

not having the library to come to. And

11:28

the city of l A hired a psychologist

11:30

to work with the librarians because a lot of them

11:32

really were suffering kind of PTSD

11:36

and they had seen their life's work go up and smoke.

11:38

They care. They care about books

11:40

in a way that you probably you do on

11:42

the park as your this is your stock and trade. But uh,

11:45

you know similar, I guess to art, where there's

11:47

an inventory of material that exists

11:50

purely for a humanistic reason.

11:53

People who work there are

11:55

horrifically underpaid. I

11:57

was guided recently by a New York Time

12:00

writer, uh, to the

12:03

plight of libraries in Iowa,

12:06

and we were my wife and I have a charitable

12:09

foundation, my family, and we were pointed

12:11

towards this group of people. And

12:14

there's three libraries she's been in touch

12:16

with who are struggling too. I spoke

12:18

to I said to one of them, I said, what

12:21

do you need? I don't want to assume anything. I said,

12:23

what do you need and how much money?

12:25

She said, the budget for the library is

12:27

five thousand dollars. I

12:30

said, I said, wait a second. I said, you mean like

12:32

a day or a week or and she said no,

12:34

no, She said everybody's volunteers and part

12:36

time people, and no one's getting paid. And she's

12:38

books are given to us. She said, books we don't need.

12:41

She said, what I need in this library, it's food.

12:43

I need money for food because the kids

12:45

are coming here and asking for food and they want to eat.

12:47

They come from poor homes. And I

12:49

thought the average person just can't appreciate how much

12:52

they must have suffered. Yeah. A number

12:54

of librarians um marriages

12:56

fell apart in the wake of this. They

12:59

were really pressed and out of a

13:01

job, yeah, and felt useless,

13:03

felt they didn't know what

13:05

to do with themselves. One woman

13:07

librarian told me she didn't get her period

13:10

for for four months after the fire.

13:12

She was under so much stress

13:15

and she was so dismayed.

13:17

I think it's very

13:19

difficult. I think it would be

13:22

the only analog I can think

13:24

of is if your house burned down. When

13:26

Dick Cavitt's house, one of the Seven Sisters

13:29

houses in Montalk, the Stanford White Houses

13:31

on the bluff there in Montalk. The

13:34

house burned down. A

13:36

good deal of what was his on the

13:38

personal level was destroyed in the fire. The house

13:40

was ruined, and for that reason, I keep

13:42

nothing of any value like that in my Long

13:44

Island home. It's in storage in the city

13:47

because I'm terrified of a fire. It's terrifying.

13:49

And interestingly, the insurance coverage

13:52

that a library has covers

13:55

the building and not

13:57

the contents, so the

14:00

insurance did not cover the

14:02

cost of the lost books. It's like

14:04

two million dollars worth of books. The

14:07

money had to be raised. It was raised

14:09

by tiny donations

14:12

from school kids, big

14:14

donations from the Getty Foundation,

14:17

from some of the studios George

14:19

Lucas, Sydney Sheldon Um.

14:22

There was a real rallying in the city,

14:25

and I suspect it was a lot of people

14:27

who had never really before given the library

14:29

much thought. Well, of course, all

14:32

books now in the world we live in existed

14:34

digitally. Everything is on a file somewhere

14:36

and backed up, and there's no fear that

14:38

that's going to be raised forever. This

14:41

fire, because it was so epic, did

14:43

it launch some kind of program

14:45

where people could preserve these books better

14:48

and in case this happens

14:50

and these fabled collections aren't lost.

14:53

It's interesting because, um,

14:55

the fire occurred right at the moment

14:58

when technology was first entering

15:01

library management. The

15:05

l A library at that point switched

15:07

to an electronic catalog because

15:10

even losing the card catalog was

15:13

devastating. Yeah, I

15:15

mean they had to read catalog two

15:18

million books they didn't even know.

15:20

And that was actually one

15:23

of those odd pieces of timing

15:26

that electronic cataloging

15:29

was just becoming widely available.

15:32

So l A had to read

15:34

catalog all of its books. Anyway,

15:36

it was purchasing all of

15:39

these new books to replace the ones that were

15:41

lost, but the books

15:43

themselves all new books.

15:46

Digital copy exists, but

15:49

of old books they

15:51

Google has a huge project

15:53

where they are digitally scanning

15:57

old but they don't exist on a file that

15:59

that book is it. Yeah, and they're

16:01

gonna make a file. I mean for an individual

16:04

library to do that, it's probably

16:08

Google. Yeah. And

16:11

so we are putting more safeguards

16:13

in place so that if you had

16:15

a devastating fire and

16:17

you lost these

16:20

rare in many cases,

16:22

now I think there is a backup on the other hand,

16:26

the l A Public Library has

16:28

the largest or one of the very largest

16:31

collections of maps and atlas

16:33

is of any library in the country. They have over

16:36

two thousand. It would

16:38

take a very long time

16:41

and a lot of money for them to digitize

16:44

all of them. That's the goal,

16:47

because that would be fantastic to have all

16:49

those maps, a digital

16:51

copy of all of them. But it's

16:53

it's an enormous amount of work for

16:55

a library to do. For me, what I find

16:58

interesting with a book like this,

17:00

You don't make it into a detective story. You don't

17:03

build this book in that way. This book

17:05

is a lot of history. How does the book begin

17:07

to emerge? And how do you piece together? I

17:10

guess what I'm asking is, how does Susan Lean write

17:12

a book? What do you do? I'm still

17:14

trying to answer that question, actually for myself.

17:17

But what I do I have a My

17:20

approach is to throw my net

17:22

as wide as possible in the beginning,

17:25

to have no preconceived idea

17:27

of what the book has, show me everything, just

17:29

I want to learn everything. The

17:32

way I look at it is in the beginning, I'm

17:34

a student. I'm I'm doing

17:36

a graduate course in the

17:39

library. Library history, the history

17:41

of this particular incident with the fire,

17:44

the people who work there. The

17:46

people who work there now what the day

17:48

to day life is of a library, and

17:52

in the course of it, you know, and the

17:54

history of arson and the history burning

17:56

books, in the course

17:59

of world of events, which sadly

18:02

has been a theme since

18:05

the beginning of time. As

18:08

I'm doing all of this and gathering

18:11

so much material, themes

18:14

begin emerging to me. And what

18:16

this was about was

18:19

storytelling. We are creatures

18:21

who tell stories, We

18:24

preserve stories, and

18:26

we make stories up about yourselves.

18:29

And I feel like this was

18:31

about the story of the library, and

18:33

the library is the repository

18:36

of stories. The

18:38

people who became very interesting to

18:40

me in the book, like Harry

18:42

Peak, the person who is accused

18:46

of starting the fire, of Charles lammis

18:48

one of the really fascinating

18:51

characters who ran the library.

18:53

These were people who were who made

18:56

up stories about themselves, who created

18:58

stories around the who they were

19:00

in the world, even more

19:03

than the average person. So

19:05

as that theme began to emerge,

19:08

it helped me organize this

19:10

material and begin pruning away at

19:13

what was important for me to know

19:15

but wasn't important to put

19:17

in the book. I

19:19

chose to start the book with Harry Peak

19:22

because I think people are

19:24

more interested in people than they are in

19:27

places or events

19:29

that a book that invites you in through

19:32

a character is often

19:34

one that you're willing to keep reading. And

19:37

he as a person who

19:39

was a compulsive storyteller

19:43

otherwise known as a liar, he

19:46

symbolized so much of what the book

19:48

was. He's a kind of classic

19:52

creature of l A, a want to be actor,

19:55

dreamer, a drifter, how

19:57

old at the time of the event he is in his to

20:00

Ennis, And he also kind

20:02

of intersected with l A history in

20:04

a very interesting way. Um, and

20:06

I won't necessarily tell you the

20:09

de nument of his story, so that

20:11

will leave a little bit of mystery. But even

20:13

the way he left this earth was

20:15

very much a part

20:18

of what was going on historically in

20:21

Los Angeles. Yeah,

20:23

but my challenges. I like writing about

20:25

things I don't know anything about. So I begin

20:28

as a student and then I become a

20:30

teacher, and I try to turn to readers

20:32

and say, let me teach you about this amazing thing

20:34

I learned about, And like

20:37

a teacher, I have to figure out how can

20:39

I tell you this story in the most compelling

20:42

way that keeps

20:44

you engaged. And I don't have to

20:47

include every single thing that I learned,

20:49

because there's just too much, but instead

20:51

create a narrative that will bring

20:54

you into the story and you can

20:56

follow the journey

20:58

of learning about why this topic

21:01

interested me. Susan

21:04

or Leave New Yorker writer and

21:06

the author of the library book

21:09

about l a Library

21:11

Fire. If you're as fascinated

21:13

as I am by all things New Yorker,

21:16

you should listen to my interview with the intrepid

21:19

Tina Brown coming from Vanity

21:21

Fair. She was greeted with skepticism

21:24

when she took over The New Yorker. It

21:27

was much more open warfare

21:30

against me at the New Yorker at the beginning, you know, because

21:32

we had this huge kind of pushback

21:34

from the old guard expecting that this

21:37

was going to be me putting Demi Moore and

21:39

in the magazine. I mean, first of the cartoonist

21:42

Bob Mankoff. He thought that I was going to

21:45

cancel all of cartoons and just put pictures

21:47

in here. The full interview

21:49

with Tina Brown in our archive

21:52

at Here's the Thing dot org. This

22:06

is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening

22:08

to Here's the Thing Now,

22:11

more of my conversation with New Yorker

22:13

writer Susan or Lean. In February,

22:17

ten months after the worst library

22:19

fire in American history, the l

22:21

a p D arrested a man named

22:24

Harry Peak. He confessed

22:26

to starting the fire, and then he

22:28

recanted. He confessed

22:31

multiple times, actually and recanted

22:34

multiple times with different alibis

22:37

each time. It assumed that that was coached

22:39

by an attorney. Did a lawyer coach He didn't

22:41

even have a lawyer for the first

22:44

several times that he confessed and

22:46

recanted. This was he confessed

22:49

to friends, and friends turned him in as

22:52

one's friends do. There was a reward.

22:55

He had confessed multiple

22:58

times two friends. He confess

23:00

to the police in a casual

23:03

interview where they were simply saying, what

23:06

were you doing that day? Where

23:08

were you? What happens in days prior

23:10

to no video cameras that are getting people in

23:13

and out. There were simply security keeping

23:15

people from coming into early There

23:18

was no there's no record. Take your feet

23:20

off the table exactly, and don't eat

23:23

potato chips on the rarebus quiet

23:27

and even today

23:30

libraries are open to anybody,

23:32

anyone can come in. That

23:35

is both their greatest strength and

23:37

sometimes their greatest

23:39

challenge. I did this movie with

23:41

Emilio Estefays. He did this movie The

23:43

Public and it's about a

23:46

guy who's on the staff of the Cincinnati Public

23:49

Library who joins a protest by

23:51

homeless people who are denizens

23:55

of the library, and a bane to

23:57

the board of the library

24:00

stage a demonstration and they seal off a section

24:02

of the library, takeover and have a protest of a demonstration.

24:05

And the movie just screened at the

24:07

Toronto Film Festival did quite well with great

24:10

We all went up there, Michael Michael,

24:12

Kay Williams and Taylor

24:16

Shilling and all these wonderful actress who working film

24:19

and m and Amelia plays the lead role.

24:21

And the support he's gotten from the library

24:23

community is really, really wonderful.

24:26

They are a warm, friendly, welcoming

24:28

place, full of interesting stuff

24:31

costing nothing, and

24:33

there aren't that many places in our

24:35

world that exists like that.

24:38

So there was no record of Harry

24:41

Pea coming into the library, as

24:43

there was no record of anybody coming

24:46

into the library. And in regards to

24:48

him confessing and becanting, did he

24:50

indicate any motive? Why did he do it? Once he

24:52

confessed to the next question is why he never

24:55

he never said. The

24:57

library opens for employees or

25:00

elier than it does to the public. So

25:02

a door is open, a security guard sits

25:05

there to make sure you have an employee

25:07

badge to get in. On

25:09

that morning, a young man

25:12

started walking in. The security guards stopped

25:14

him and said the library is not

25:17

open, and the young man

25:19

apparently was annoyed by

25:21

being stopped and left. The

25:24

city's final explanation

25:27

for why they believed Harry Peake did it on

25:30

top of the fact that he had confessed,

25:32

was that he was angry

25:35

that the guard had turned him away.

25:37

I want to get into the apple store early too.

25:39

But did anybody venture what was wrong with him?

25:42

Did they get into his mental health?

25:44

And that's part of what the mystery is

25:46

because usually people

25:48

who are pyromaniacs generally

25:52

display that behavior fairly

25:54

early in life. It's very rare

25:57

for someone in their twenties who has no

25:59

history ever and has never

26:01

been to torch the l a central

26:04

library. Did uh?

26:06

Did experts determine how the fire

26:09

was set? It's

26:11

a big question. Arson is

26:13

the one of the most difficult

26:16

crimes to analyze and

26:18

investigate and In fact,

26:20

it's the least successfully prosecuted

26:23

felony for that very reason. Usually

26:26

the means of starting a fire get

26:28

destroyed in the fire. And

26:31

believe it or not, libraries

26:33

until the late eighties did

26:36

not have sprinkler systems. Librarians,

26:40

yeah, it's pretty shock library

26:43

they didn't have sprinkler systems because the

26:45

worry was water is

26:48

as damaging. Someone

26:51

set them right, someone lights a match to you

26:53

know, and and sneaking a cigarette

26:55

back in the set and then boom, you've got your sprinkler

26:58

systems going off in your books are going to be ruined.

27:00

So the American Library Association

27:03

until the late eighties advised

27:05

against sprinkler systems.

27:08

And this was before they

27:10

had systems that use gas. And yeah,

27:14

I mean this was not basically

27:18

fired prevention at that time

27:20

was a sprinkler that would

27:22

get triggered and sent. In

27:25

fact, a great number of the books that were

27:28

ruined in the fire

27:31

were ruined by water that

27:34

firefighters were. Yeah.

27:37

Now you grew up in Cleveland, yes, and

27:39

what did your dad do. He was a real estate

27:42

developer, mostly

27:45

a mom and part time worked

27:47

in a bank. When you were growing up in that household,

27:50

what were books and your childhood

27:52

and what was yourn was a big

27:54

reader. My parents were great

27:56

library goers, and they grew up

27:58

in the depression. I think they

28:01

felt, as many people

28:03

who grew up in the depression felt, if

28:05

you could borrow something, why would you buy

28:07

it. They were not big on buying books.

28:10

It was to them a luxury

28:12

that was didn't make sense

28:14

you could borrow a book. So

28:17

we would go to the library all the time.

28:20

I grew up going at

28:22

least once a week, if not twice a

28:24

week, taking books out. I

28:27

didn't start buying books till I was in college,

28:29

and I think I was buying textbooks and suddenly

28:32

became obsessed with owning books.

28:35

My parents, to the day they died, they

28:38

had the money to buy books. They

28:40

lived through the depression and they

28:43

had were very comfortable and

28:45

could have afforded any books they wanted. They

28:48

it was something that was

28:51

embedded in them that you borrowed books

28:53

from the library, you didn't buy them. So

28:55

we didn't have a lot of books in my house. Even when

28:57

I go to Barnes and Noble, I love it, and I just

28:59

said, I get the same feeling. I mean, I'm in a room full

29:01

of books. It doesn't matter whose name is on the

29:04

door by Lincoln Center, the one by

29:08

now and when it closed, I

29:10

was that was my Barnes and Noble. I was devastated.

29:13

Not even the big one on Broadway

29:17

in the old Shakespeare. I didn't. I

29:19

didn't. I didn't go to that one. I didn't like

29:21

that as much as that one by Lincoln

29:23

Center. I loved that bookstore. I'm gonna

29:25

close. I was so sad. Oh it's it's

29:28

a heartbreak. Now. I want to ask you, because

29:30

we are going to run out of time, how

29:32

does writing congeal in your life?

29:34

Like when do you decide that's what you're

29:36

going to do with your life? And it's a big commitment.

29:39

I started writing when

29:42

I learned to read, and

29:46

I never thought I would be anything

29:48

other than a writer. I

29:50

wrote little books for my family

29:53

when I was really young. I'm

29:55

not trying to say it was a prodigy. I just

29:57

writing always seemed to me to

30:00

be the filter through

30:02

which experience made sense to

30:05

me. Communicating

30:07

telling stories seemed like

30:11

a natural transaction between

30:14

me and the world. Just it was

30:16

just what I wanted to do. When

30:18

I was probably in

30:21

college, I realized what I really

30:23

wanted to do was tell true

30:26

stories. I didn't want to write fiction.

30:28

I wanted to learn about the world,

30:30

and particularly learn about

30:33

things that they hadn't noticed or hadn't

30:35

thought about before. And trying

30:37

to figure out how you do that for a living

30:40

was of course a bit of a challenge. But

30:42

when I discovered the New Yorker, I

30:45

thought, ah, I get

30:47

it now. This is where

30:50

you write those kinds of stories where you

30:53

examine life and tell

30:55

their stories. So it was

30:58

my dream to work there. And

31:00

I'm lucky enough too. And I've

31:03

never done any waitress

31:05

but other than that, I've never done any other jobs.

31:08

Do you think that Orchid Thief was your most cinematic

31:10

book, Well, the funny thing

31:12

is I think none of them are. And

31:14

yet what surprised you but that when they mean they

31:17

made this into a very famous movie, we did

31:19

that. Surprise you when we want to make it real. Surprise

31:21

me. In fact, when it was optioned, and it was optioned

31:24

immediately before I had even finished the

31:26

book, I thought, I have no idea what

31:28

these people think they're doing. It's a very

31:31

um, discursive, sort

31:34

of reflective internal book. I

31:36

cannot imagine how

31:38

you're going to make a movie out of this. But

31:41

that's not my problem, that's your problem. And

31:44

I remember saying to

31:46

a friend, They're gonna

31:49

have to make the crime be

31:51

a murder or something more dramatic

31:53

than just stealing orchids is just impossible,

31:57

and there's going to have to be some sex

31:59

in it some how, and

32:03

lo and behold, there you go. I

32:06

mean, when I got the script for adaptation,

32:08

I read it and thought, you people are crazy.

32:11

I don't know what you're doing, but at

32:13

least I'm right you did have to put

32:16

in a murderer and a car crash.

32:19

I've had this funny relationship

32:21

with Hollywood that I

32:23

write things that I want to write, and I they

32:26

are not conventional

32:28

in any way in terms of Hollywood

32:31

sense of a story, and yet they

32:33

come knocking and I'm

32:35

delighted. Well,

32:38

I've never particularly been

32:40

interested in it, but we are adapting this

32:43

book for television, and I thought,

32:45

you know what I'm gonna I'm gonna give it

32:47

a shot. I think it would be fun to try

32:49

a different kind of writing. Um,

32:53

but there's so many things I want to write

32:55

about out in the world that um,

32:59

I've never at. I want to be the one to

33:01

adapt my work. I've always

33:03

found it mostly people option

33:06

my work, and I think I have no idea what you

33:08

are going to do with this. So just call

33:11

me when it's done and I'll come to the premiere.

33:14

I'm very happy. Give me a few days

33:16

notice so I can get my dress to the drive. I feel

33:18

about movies i'm in. I

33:20

don't want to see the movie. They'll say, you want to see a kind

33:22

of the movie. I'm like, no, welcome to the premiere.

33:25

I suppose now that I live in l A, my

33:27

interest in working on the

33:30

adaptation of this book is

33:32

more than it was when I lived in

33:34

New York because I'm going to work on it

33:36

with a friend who's a wonderful writer. Yeah.

33:41

What do you think living in LA is going to do to your writing? Boy?

33:44

I wonder about it, except, um,

33:48

you know, there are the stories that

33:50

I'm interested in writing. I think are the

33:53

same that they've always been, and

33:57

I don't see a big change

33:59

in that. I've lived in a

34:01

lot of different places since I began writing.

34:03

I lived in Boston and New York,

34:06

in Upstate New York, um

34:09

in Boston again, now

34:12

in l A. And I my writing

34:14

has remained really consistent. I think

34:16

there are stories that I'll

34:19

find out about because I live here

34:21

that I might not have seen otherwise. But

34:24

in the heart of the writing,

34:26

I feel that that's such an internal thing

34:29

that where you're living doesn't

34:31

affect it as much. You're married

34:33

to John Gillespie. Last time I checked

34:35

worked at the Lampoon. He did,

34:37

and it is a very

34:40

He's very funny. He's very

34:42

funny. But he also says to

34:44

me that the classic

34:46

lampoon response to someone else

34:49

making a joke is to simply, with

34:51

a very straight face, say uh huh, yeah,

34:53

that's that's funny. I co wrote

34:55

a book with Kurt Anderson, the

34:59

Writing and Hurt and I did the Trump Parody book.

35:02

Wrote a book called you Can't Spell America Without

35:04

Me. It's a parody. And what was

35:06

so riveting it was truly just overwhelming

35:09

to me and just mesmerizing was

35:11

how fast the book came out of it. He wrote it just like

35:13

like weeks just came. He'd sent me, you know, chapters,

35:17

and I was overwhelmed by how I

35:19

give him notes. He's so productive yet

35:21

and he's so funny. So

35:23

he and my husband were together

35:26

and there were a lot of people who emerged

35:28

from that couple of years. Um,

35:31

well, the lampoon has always turned out

35:33

amazingly clever, smart

35:36

people, but that particular year there were

35:38

a lot of people who have gone on to have quite

35:41

illustrious careers. Is he still writing

35:43

now? My husband, he

35:45

wrote a book about corporate boards

35:47

and how bad they are. Um,

35:50

but mostly he's been in the

35:52

financial world, which

35:55

is funny. He

35:57

finds the funny. He exactly.

36:00

Well, I want to say, because we're pretty much

36:02

at a time, and I just want to say, in my town,

36:04

Massapequa, Long Island, the Massapequa Public

36:07

Library and very nice library,

36:09

and it was centrally located. It wasn't like on some

36:12

outpost where they could have got cheap land, you

36:14

know what I mean. They just was right in the heart of town. You

36:17

just got that special feeling of going

36:19

to the library. You went to the library

36:21

and you were groomed almost Because

36:24

my father was a teacher, I guess this is a part of it. Oh,

36:26

there's an opportunity for me here. Something's gonna

36:28

happen here. This is a sacred

36:31

a place of real deliberation. We're gonna

36:33

sit and we're gonna learn about

36:35

the research for school, obviously, and looking

36:37

up, you know about our var new Neez

36:40

Kabata Devaka and the Explorers.

36:42

We would study when we were in the sixth grade,

36:44

and they had two of the old style bookmobiles.

36:47

They would be taken on the trailer hitch and it was it

36:50

was parked in the parking lot

36:52

the nine whole public golf course

36:54

that existed in my neighborhood, and the and the parking

36:56

lot of the golf course was across the street from my house,

37:00

and we would walk across the street and go into this funky,

37:02

weird bubble.

37:04

It was like a little trailer and the woman was sitting

37:07

at the desk. It was almost like it was like doll

37:09

furniture was like a little little desk she was at.

37:12

And the books had all the little wooden

37:14

slats to keep them from flying off the shelf.

37:17

Uh. They had like these little guard rails they

37:19

snapped on them when they traveled so

37:21

they wouldn't come flying when the thing was driving.

37:24

And I get a phone call from the Massive

37:26

People Public Library and they say, you know this is over.

37:28

You know we're gonna take these things. We're gonna junk

37:30

them. Would you like to buy one. I

37:33

bought it kid, and I stuck

37:35

it, and I stuck it in a little corner

37:37

of my property on Long Island, and I put

37:40

trees around it because my neighbors complained. My

37:42

neighbors said to me, why do you have these decrepit

37:45

structures? They said, what is this? These

37:47

are real hamp the knights? Shall we say? One

37:49

woman said to me, she was I didn't realize we were living in Appalachia.

37:53

God, she said, but

37:55

I remember that feeling, you know,

37:57

of going to that and getting those

37:59

books, and you knew the value the plastic

38:02

coating on them to protect the coverers and everything.

38:05

And I remember the sacred

38:07

experience and handling that material,

38:10

And I think that you know, I love

38:12

bookstores too, and I love owning books.

38:14

Like libraries, there

38:17

is something special and sacred

38:21

about the idea of it being

38:23

a shared space

38:26

with shared things, that we

38:29

as a society have created

38:32

this entity and we all

38:34

sharing it together, and it works

38:38

almost all the time. You take a book

38:40

home, you read it, you bring it back, someone

38:42

else takes it. It is

38:45

democratic, small d experience

38:48

in the most really beautiful

38:51

way. And going into a library

38:53

and seeing a scholar and

38:55

a teenager and a

38:58

homeless person and a wealth person,

39:00

and everyone has the same right to take

39:02

the books. It feels great. It's like how I assume

39:04

some people feel when they go to church. It feels right,

39:07

it feels good. It makes me feel

39:10

I get very emotional about it. I mean, and

39:12

I'm going into a bookstore I love and it

39:14

feels amazing and I want everything,

39:17

and I love walking around. That

39:19

element of thinking, wow, we can really

39:22

do things together as a society

39:24

and have it work is

39:27

particular to a library, and it feels

39:30

so gratifying.

39:32

I'm really looking forward to seeing a

39:35

movie of this because that something tells me, like Orchid

39:38

Thief, it's an unlikely subject into

39:40

something that could become a very very engaging

39:43

film. Thank you, I hope, but I hope. I

39:45

hope it makes it to the screen in some fashion. Yeah,

39:47

thank you so much. I'm I'm excited

39:49

about it, and I think, um,

39:52

it will be a pleasure to highlight

39:56

this world of libraries

39:59

in some way. UM, because

40:01

they really, especially at this moment in time

40:04

when so much else feels so

40:08

dark and trouble risk, they are

40:11

real beacons in the world at

40:13

the moment, and there's

40:16

something about being in a room full of books.

40:18

There's nothing else like it. You I

40:21

do that now. I know it's completely

40:24

acceptable in l A. To snorted book. I'm

40:26

gonna Susan

40:31

Orleans latest, The Library, book

40:34

about the devastation of the l A Central

40:36

Library,

40:39

is in stores now from Simon and

40:41

Schuster. This is

40:43

Alec Baldwin and you're listening

40:45

to here's the thing.