Author Event! Bruce Holsinger & Laura Dave
[0:00]And how many people have read it already?
[0:03]So I know just in terms of spoilers, okay?
[0:05]So that's like, there's like 20 to 30% of you
[0:07]have so I'll be gentle.
[0:10]But I do recommend for those of you who have read it,
[0:12]I've been a long time fan of this wonderful writer.
[0:16]He is a wonderful backlist as well,
[0:18]which I can wholeheartedly recommend.
[0:21]As I've been a fan since the gifted school
[0:25]and I actually had a shelf here in which I,
[0:28]I think my shelf's gone, which I'm going to talk about.
[0:30]Why is there so much?
[0:31]No.
[0:33]We're on tamed tells, but that was on there
[0:36]as one of my favorite books with Harper
[0:40]and by Nora Efron and some others that I really love.
[0:42]So anyway, so it's lovely to be here tonight.
[0:44]I love Zibi and I love supporting this wonderful bookstore.
[0:48]So I have a bunch of questions.
[0:50]I'll keep it to in the allotted time frame
[0:54]so that then you guys can jump in with your questions.
[0:57]But this book, The Writing captures you right from the get-go
[1:00]for those of you that haven't read it.
[1:02]So I thought maybe we would start by if it's good with you,
[1:04]if you would start by reading a paragraph or two
[1:08]from the book that you love by way of introduction.
[1:11]And maybe tell us how you would introduce the book.
[1:14]I'm going to go back to where the book came from
[1:16]and all that stuff.
[1:17]Yeah, okay.
[1:17]So the book is a story, it's a family drama,
[1:22]a suspenseful family drama about moral reckoning
[1:26]and the age of artificial intelligence.
[1:28]And the premise the setup is a family of five
[1:32]is on its way to a lacrosse tournament.
[1:34]In the eastern shore of Delaware, they're in a minivan.
[1:39]The sun, Charlie, apple of his parents' eye, 17 years old.
[1:43]He's at the wheel, but he's not driving the cars
[1:46]in self-driving or semi-autonomous mode.
[1:50]Charlie's dad Noah is sitting in the passenger seat
[1:52]and banging away on a client memo in the back seat.
[1:55]Or Charlie's two little sisters just on their phones
[1:59]as tweens often will be found in a minivan.
[2:02]And then Charlie's mom and Noah's wife, Laura lie,
[2:06]is sitting behind Charlie, just working in her notebook
[2:10]on a conference paper.
[2:12]So Charlie is at the wheel, but he's not driving the car
[2:16]and the family have this awful accident.
[2:19]And the whole novel unfolds asking,
[2:23]who is responsible or what was responsible for this accident
[2:28]and how these issues around the loss of autonomy
[2:33]in the age of artificial intelligence kind of interlates
[2:36]through this family's recovery from this calamity
[2:41]that they're trying to figure out and get past.
[2:44]So it's about resilience.
[2:45]It's about it's about parenthood.
[2:48]It's about sibling relationships, about love.
[2:52]But it's also about technology just slamming us in the face.
[2:56]It's not futuristic.
[2:58]It's happening right now.
[3:00]And it confronts us with all,
[3:03]I wanted the novel to raise all these kinds of questions
[3:05]about where we are in this moment.
[3:08]So I begin with a scene that involves Noah and Laura lie.
[3:14]So I'll just read just the first page.
[3:16]So it begins with an epigraph.
[3:19]Many novels begin with epigraphs who get a scene
[3:22]from a novel or you get a little snippet of poetry
[3:26]or a verse from scripture.
[3:29]This book also begins with an epigraph,
[3:31]but it's an epigraph with a twist
[3:32]and you'll see where it goes.
[3:36]And this I propose is the inhuman soul of the algorithm.
[3:40]It may think for us, it may work for us.
[3:43]It may organize our lives for us.
[3:45]But the algorithm will never believe for us.
[3:48]The algorithm will never suffer for us.
[3:51]The algorithm will never mourn for us.
[3:54]In this refusal lies the essence of its moral being.
[3:58]From Laura lie shock, silicon souls,
[4:01]on the culpability of artificial minds.
[4:04]I met Laura lie shock when she was writing her thesis
[4:07]on what would now be called
[4:08]the ethics of artificial intelligence.
[4:11]She was enrolled at the University of Chicago
[4:13]pursuing a dual doctorate in engineering and philosophy.
[4:16]She told me on our first date,
[4:18]working in the new field of computational morality.
[4:21]With a self-conscious laugh, I asked her what that meant.
[4:25]She lined up our coasters glasses,
[4:26]two pics and cocktail napkins along the bar
[4:29]and started to explain.
[4:31]She was interested, she said,
[4:33]in how we learned to be good.
[4:35]She wanted to know whether we can train machines
[4:37]to be good in the same way we train ourselves.
[4:40]I watched her lips move as she spoke,
[4:42]mesmerized by the spray of freckles across her delicate features
[4:46]by the frizzy mess of hair,
[4:48]by the small cleft in her chin.
[4:51]Draining her martini, Laura lie told me
[4:53]this title of her dissertation.
[4:55]Computational reason that ethical realism,
[4:57]our human's moral machines,
[4:59]then s-
[5:00]squirm under stool, blinking like an owl, daring to leave.
[5:04]I ordered another round.
[5:06]So that's how the book begins.
[5:08]We get a snippet from Lorelai's work from her book.
[5:12]And we get more snippets as the novel goes along.
[5:15]And then we get Noah in this posture of just awe and
[5:19]adoration telling their story.
[5:22]So we really begin right in the thick of it of where they
[5:25]met, and then we very quickly get to where they are.
[5:29]I love the way you write back at you.
[5:33]And I wanted to start by thinking with you or hearing from you
[5:41]about how did this book in particular begin for you?
[5:45]Because it's so layered.
[5:48]And yet it also reads so beautifully and so easily.
[5:52]Did it start with Noah?
[5:54]Did it start with AI?
[5:55]Where did it begin?
[5:57]It really began with this setting.
[5:59]So you can sort of see it on the front cover.
[6:04]And usually a book will begin.
[6:06]I mean, I'm sure you have this too.
[6:07]A book will begin with a premise or a scene like you see something.
[6:11]And like, oh, this moment on a street or this fight or whatever.
[6:15]This novel really began when my family just to escape.
[6:20]This was the first late summer of the pandemic.
[6:24]And everybody wanted to get out of town.
[6:26]So we rented an Airbnb on the northern neck.
[6:29]This beautiful part of Virginia off the Chesapeake Bay.
[6:31]And we went down there for a week.
[6:34]And we rented this pretty rustic old house with some kayaks.
[6:39]I was out with my son and a kayak.
[6:41]And he was on a paddle board.
[6:44]This is sounding familiar if you read the book.
[6:46]We go out of our code.
[6:48]We're scoot along the edge of the river that feeds into the bay.
[6:52]And we see this what I could only describe as a compound.
[6:57]Completely out of place.
[6:58]Like some guy had taken this old, beautiful horse farm
[7:02]and raised it to the ground.
[7:04]It had a white sand, which didn't belong out there at all.
[7:07]And this guard house, lighthouse, kamu, and a helipad.
[7:13]And as we were coming back in, this helicopter landed
[7:17]on the helipad.
[7:18]And this guy, I don't know who it was who got out.
[7:20]But that stuck with me for a couple of years.
[7:23]And I thought, I really want to set a novel here.
[7:25]And then I had this idea about this family getting
[7:28]over this accident.
[7:30]And the AI part of it wasn't even there yet.
[7:33]And I just thought I want them to kind of go somewhere
[7:36]to recover, to kind of get over it to just kind of shelter
[7:41]for a little bit.
[7:42]And that's where I decided to set it, to take them.
[7:46]And I knew I had the premise with the autonomous car
[7:50]with a self-driving car.
[7:51]But I wasn't even thinking about AI yet.
[7:53]And it was only in the fall, that fall of 2022,
[7:57]when chat GPT just exploded in the public consciousness.
[8:00]And suddenly, everybody in the world was talking about AI.
[8:03]That's when I realized what this novel was thinking about.
[8:06]And what the real moral dilemma, that's
[8:08]heart was, it gave me a vocabulary.
[8:11]And from there, it just kind of went along.
[8:14]Added all these other layers to it.
[8:16]And when you say it went along,
[8:19]did you, at that moment, do you outline the whole book?
[8:21]Do you write with, what do you know?
[8:23]How far ahead do you know when you're working on this?
[8:26]Only a few chapters.
[8:27]And basically, I kind of know how you're going to,
[8:32]how you, as readers, are going to feel when you close the book.
[8:35]But I don't really know where my characters are going to go.
[8:38]I don't quite know.
[8:39]I guess I know the basic storyline, but I'm not a plotter.
[8:43]And I never have been.
[8:44]And sometimes that will get me into a little awkward corners.
[8:48]I don't know if you have this problem.
[8:49]I do the same.
[8:50]I read the same way as that sense of not,
[8:53]there's this great eel doctor, quote, about writing a novel
[8:58]as like driving a car at night.
[9:00]You can only see as far out as your headlights.
[9:03]But that's as far as you need to see.
[9:05]I'm paraphrasing that terribly.
[9:06]But that's the idea.
[9:08]And the car is not self-driving.
[9:09]Yes, exactly.
[9:11]You're definitely driving the thing.
[9:13]So yeah, so I think I tend to write in sequences of chapters
[9:18]where I'll kind of know where I'm going for the next five
[9:20]or six chapters, the next 30 pages or so.
[9:24]But beyond that, I'm kind of flying blind.
[9:27]There are several relationships in this book
[9:29]that I feel like triangulate in very interesting ways.
[9:35]And one relationship that I particularly
[9:38]loved, I mean, you just pointed to the father and son
[9:40]relationship.
[9:41]But was the husband and the wife at the center?
[9:47]I remember their names.
[9:48]I'm almost positive.
[9:49]Well, you said Laura, Lian, Noah.
[9:51]Yeah.
[9:51]OK.
[9:52]Very good.
[9:53]Thank you.
[9:54]Thank you.
[9:55]And I actually have my questions written down here.
[9:57]So I'm going to pull this up.
[9:59]But.
[10:00]with Noah and Laura lie, it wasn't a relationship,
[10:03]marriage relationship, it was untraditional in some ways.
[10:07]Can you talk about how you landed on that dynamic
[10:09]because it felt so real and so lived in?
[10:13]And did you know going in when you were saying
[10:15]you don't know a lot about what your characters are gonna go?
[10:18]Did you know that you wanted that to be their dynamic?
[10:23]No, I really didn't.
[10:25]And my characters often start out of these very hazy people.
[10:30]Right?
[10:30]They're just kind of figures in the mist.
[10:33]And I can't just sit with one because I was in a panel
[10:41]the other day at a book festival with a writer
[10:43]who is talking about figuring out one character
[10:48]from the ground up completely before he moved on to the next.
[10:52]And I can't do that for me, they have to exist in community.
[10:55]And it's, they start coming out of the fog
[10:59]when I figure out who they love, why they love them,
[11:02]who they can't stand, who irritates them.
[11:05]So this kind of relational activity
[11:07]and as they cohere, they become more solid.
[11:11]And then I really can start figuring out who they are.
[11:14]And for Laura lie, she came to me
[11:18]after I had already figured out the kids in some ways.
[11:22]And it was Laura lie and understanding what she does
[11:25]for a living that completely crystallized the book
[11:28]for me, I'm like, okay, she works in this world.
[11:31]She knows this space.
[11:33]And over the, and then I became just completely obsessed
[11:37]with her character and her background
[11:39]and her writing, you know, I wrote big, big chunks of her book.
[11:43]You get only about eight or nine little snippets
[11:46]of them in the novel.
[11:48]And they're very, it is kind of darkly philosophical
[11:51]takes on the morality of AI and we're going
[11:54]and the dilemmas we're facing.
[11:55]I wrote many thousands of words of her book
[11:58]just to get a feel for her mind
[12:01]and distill them down in the little essences.
[12:05]And then figuring, once I figured out what she was doing,
[12:09]what she was about, I started writing her
[12:13]from Noah's point of view.
[12:14]I was never in Laura lie's head.
[12:16]I was, this is, just like you're,
[12:20]I think your last novel, maybe the new one too,
[12:24]is one person's point of view, first person.
[12:28]And that, and that's not usually how I write,
[12:29]I'm usually in multiple points of view.
[12:32]And that is, and that really helped me focus on her.
[12:36]The problem was I also kind of fell in love with her
[12:39]and my wife would read little bits of the book
[12:41]and you love it.
[12:42]And I said, you, I am, I guess, I am, I admit it.
[12:48]And I just, you know, their relationship
[12:50]just became this obsession and you're right
[12:54]about the, how untraditional it is in many ways.
[12:56]Noah is, you know, good guy, kind of, you know,
[13:01]mid-range lawyer, right?
[13:04]And he's aware of that.
[13:05]He's aware of Laura lie as this kind of spectacularly brilliant
[13:10]MacArthur Genius winner.
[13:12]And he kind of suffers the scorn of Laura lie's family,
[13:17]especially see her sister.
[13:18]Yeah.
[13:19]So his, his sister-in-law, Julia,
[13:22]who's the Dean of the Law School at Penn, right?
[13:25]And it's just always condescending towards Noah.
[13:28]He can really feel that.
[13:29]Yeah.
[13:30]Well, that, what's so interesting is you approach everyone
[13:35]with such empathy.
[13:37]It feels to me like, you know, that when I also am talking
[13:40]about how untraditional is, it's not resentment
[13:44]in the traditional way.
[13:46]Almost like he, you feel how much he's in love with her.
[13:48]There's just something very interesting about that dynamic.
[13:52]Did you set out wanting to write a story?
[13:54]See, it's so suspenseful, but it's really,
[13:56]in some ways, a story about a marriage as well.
[13:58]Did you set out wanting to do that?
[14:01]Or did that come?
[14:02]I'm sure I'm not stepping on my questions,
[14:05]but did you start, set out wanting to do that?
[14:10]Yes, I, I, well, I wanted it to be suspenseful.
[14:13]I wanted it to feel a little bit like a mystery.
[14:15]No, even though it's not, it's a suspenseful.
[14:18]It does feel like a mystery novel.
[14:19]But there's almost a locked room in that mini thing, right?
[14:23]And then you come out of it and you're looking back on it
[14:25]and thinking, you know, who did what, what did what, you know,
[14:28]who's, who's operating on who, what's operating on who?
[14:31]And, and yet at the same time, I got really obsessed
[14:37]with their marriage, as you could tell.
[14:39]If you know the book, it, I just, from every angle
[14:43]and every little thing that Noah would react to, right?
[14:47]His suspicion, it's not a spoiler to say it's suspicion
[14:50]of this, um, tech billionaire who ends up being
[14:53]their next door neighbor when they go down
[14:55]to the northern neck, the bay, um, his, you know, he's not,
[15:00]unreliable narrator, but he's a little bit of a clueless narrator, clueless is probably a strong
[15:04]word, a little bit oblivious to the things around him. And you know, we're all oblivious to our
[15:11]partners and to some aspects of realizing. But I wanted to dial that up.
[15:16]Well, sweetie, that was interesting when I was reading it. It reminds me in some ways,
[15:20]even though it's quite a different book, but it's another book that I love defending Jacob.
[15:25]And in that you have this boy who you're sort of your narrator's desperate to see as one way
[15:35]and almost has to hold him in a different way because of what happens. And then this is not a
[15:41]spoiler, but I will say when they go to shelter, as you say, you're nervous about what's going to
[15:47]happen there, is it going to unearth that and or, you know, unmore that even further. But very
[15:54]different, but similar in that in that dynamic. And that brings me to a question about
[16:02]about the siblings in the book and how you thought about them in relation to each other and how
[16:08]that was going to play out. Yeah. So that was really, you know, the relationship between Noah and
[16:14]Charlie, the father and son, was so that was such a central, I guess there are a couple of big
[16:20]acts that you're right. And Lorelei and Noah is one and then Noah and Charlie. And Noah,
[16:28]you know, his care for his son, it's a really good parallel, but I've also thinking about
[16:37]lessons. Right. And just oh my God, my son is in my son's garden. I watched half an episode on like
[16:44]a mouth. I was in it to anyone watch out. There's my husband's favorite show. It was his favorite
[16:50]unlike I'm so upset. Yeah. But yeah, that's that kind of agonized. Yes. Sense of jeopardy. Yes. And
[16:58]one one way of dealing with that was to get Charlie sometimes in the world of his sisters.
[17:05]Where they're just, you know, one of them's a, where they're both kind of brats as is Charlie,
[17:11]but they have a particular dynamic. So Charlie and Izzy, Charlie is the oldest,
[17:16]Izzy's the youngest kid. They are both super charismatic. They have friends to burn their athletic,
[17:22]adorable, their parents adore them. And then Alice is the middle child. Yeah. And Alice is struggling.
[17:31]And, you know, the kids form alliances against each other at different points. Very realistic.
[17:36]I'm the youngest of four. So I write what I know. And Alice, you know, struggling in this way
[17:43]that that makes her, I think very sympathetic and Noah is very worried about her. She has
[17:49]many friends and so on. And then at one point in the novel fairly early on, he notices she's texting
[17:55]somebody. Pretty rapping, you know, continuously. Who are you texting? Who's your, you know,
[18:00]and she says, um, my friend and Noah says, Oh, what's her name? And she's why met her in the
[18:08]hospital, which is sort of true. But she, as we learn, this friend Blair is a chatbot and is a,
[18:17]you know, another element of AI that comes into the novel. And in such a crazy way.
[18:22]In such a way that those, you get about eight or nine text exchanges between Alice and Blair
[18:28]of the course of the book. And, um, you know, they're, they're a spine of suspense that you
[18:34]have certain you really learn things about what happened in the car that day. And what Alice has
[18:38]been doing as you read those texts. And, um, but I wanted them also to convey this kind of
[18:43]uncannyness, this uncanny valley feeling of AI. Um, with Blair is this kind of very rational
[18:51]friend of Alice. And, you know, the research I did for the novel that those, you know, the
[18:57]bot come bots and what they're doing to young people was a huge concern. Just, I got completely
[19:02]absorbent. Yeah. Well, so there's so much by that's absorbing. And something that you just said
[19:08]made me think when you read that epigraph from the beginning of the book about how AI won't
[19:14]mourn for you. I don't want to miss quote you. But what's interesting is those exchanges as,
[19:19]as well as being suspenseful, tear your heart out when you get to the end of them. And so there's
[19:26]something very, um, it's almost like you're playing with your own epigraph because you do feel so
[19:32]much in how that exchange goes down. But, um, I'm not, I'm going to, I'm going to move away from that
[19:38]because I don't want to spoil anything. But what I do want to say is, um, I have to ask a fun question
[19:44]and move, not that these aren't fun, but move a little bit outside of the book. Um, because we're
[19:48]not the only people I was, I'm happy to am proud to be one of the first people who found
[19:53]absorbing, but then so I'm really very fancy found and absorbing after me. You're pretty fancy.
[20:00]And you can you talk about being chosen as an Oprah Winfrey book club pick and what that was like and what that phone call was like.
[20:08]Yeah.
[20:09]So yeah, it's been completely crazy.
[20:13]And the story.
[20:14]So the story begins.
[20:16]When, you know, the novel was picked up I guess about a year ago, only a year ago.
[20:21]And you know what that time frame means.
[20:23]Yes.
[20:24]And a new publisher and I that I hadn't worked with before at a new age and after four novels for reasons we won't go into.
[20:33]And so early copies that advanced reader copy was going around and starting I think in February.
[20:40]And the book was supposed to publish in October and which meant, you know, there's a long runway.
[20:45]Like you could get on, you know, try to get in most exciting books of the fall or whatever.
[20:51]And everything was going well.
[20:53]I was loving everything at the new publisher.
[20:55]And then in May, I get an email and early May from my editor saying, we need to talk about something and call me.
[21:02]I'm like, oh my god, what did they discover about me.
[21:05]So I call and she says, look, looks like we may need to bump publication to July.
[21:12]And you know how this is supposed to be in October.
[21:15]Like what it's May, we don't have any chance to get on any lists of anything.
[21:19]Are there even going to be reviews?
[21:21]What is going on?
[21:22]My heart is just sinking.
[21:24]And I say what's going on.
[21:25]And she said, yeah, there's just some things going on.
[21:29]And there's a lot of things with scheduling of other titles, just kind of stumbling.
[21:33]I call my agent and she goes, what?
[21:35]So she calls the editor and then calls me and says, yeah, there's some things.
[21:41]And I have no discussions going on.
[21:46]I'm very upset.
[21:49]And the editor also emails and says, there's a couple of dates.
[21:53]Can you be out of town?
[21:54]Can you go on some trips and leave the state in this state?
[21:56]We're going to do some pre-publication publicity things.
[21:59]I said, okay, well, at least they're going to do something.
[22:02]And then I'm telling the long version of the story, just because it's kind of fun.
[22:06]And then the next weekend, I'm in DC for the Penn Faulkner Awards.
[22:11]I was judging an award, a novel award this year.
[22:15]And I have a publicity call set up with my wonderful publicist and who at the moment I was hating.
[22:22]And it was for two o'clock on the Friday.
[22:25]And a Zoom call and she emails and says, Bruce, the Zoom is kind of glitchy.
[22:30]You're going to get a phone call instead.
[22:32]It'll be from a number you just make sure you pick up.
[22:35]Fine. So I'm literally ironing a shirt.
[22:38]I turn off the iron right before two.
[22:41]Sit on the bed, just in such a bad mood.
[22:43]My phone rings.
[22:44]I go, hello.
[22:46]And I hear this voice.
[22:48]And it says, Bruce.
[22:50]And I said, yes.
[22:52]And she goes, Oprah Winfrey here.
[22:54]No way.
[22:55]It lay.
[22:56]And of course, I've written a novel about AI.
[23:00]So my suspicion, I can't interrupt.
[23:03]But she just said I'm calling about Coppipipity and just
[23:07]singing songs the way through the call.
[23:09]And I don't remember very much about that.
[23:12]But you could probably think you can listen to it.
[23:14]I can't bear to watch myself on video.
[23:16]But she records her call so you can, yeah, don't go on.
[23:20]And I know she was on her way to visit the new pope.
[23:24]I do know that.
[23:25]And then I went out to Seattle to do her book club.
[23:29]She does it at the Starbucks World Headquarters.
[23:32]So we did an hour-long book club out there.
[23:35]And then we did segment in the CBS mornings.
[23:38]But the thing is, she knew the book cold.
[23:40]She just knew it.
[23:41]Like I would say these things.
[23:42]She said, well, not really.
[23:43]Because later, Marlai does blah, blah, blah.
[23:46]She was like a graduate student.
[23:48]She had all these stickies in it.
[23:49]You know, it was just amazing.
[23:51]And so yeah, it's been incredible.
[23:53]So when you got off that phone call in the hotel room,
[23:56]did the agent, did your agent and editor then call you back?
[24:01]And say like, we were in a loaner.
[24:03]Yeah.
[24:04]And I Oprah said, Oprah said, who did you think it was?
[24:09]And I said, well, I thought it was my publicist.
[24:11]And she said, your publicist played you.
[24:14]No.
[24:15]Yeah.
[24:16]Which she did.
[24:18]So yeah.
[24:19]And then of course it was just a love fest.
[24:22]Oh my god.
[24:23]That's amazing.
[24:24]But it is, you know, it was weird.
[24:25]Because it, I'm used to having, you turn in a manuscript.
[24:29]And your book comes out in two, two and a half years.
[24:32]Right.
[24:33]And so this was just a very different experience.
[24:35]It felt like this massive wave just hitting me.
[24:39]And just completely sweeping everything away and nuts.
[24:44]Well, I have two questions then about that.
[24:46]And then I will stop.
[24:48]Question one is, how is that impacting your writing now?
[24:52]Or what are you working on now?
[24:54]Yeah.
[24:55]And then on the other one.
[24:56]Well, the answer is, you know, the problem
[24:58]is I keep talking about these people.
[25:00]And it's really hard for me to get into my new people.
[25:03]Yeah, it's difficult.
[25:05]I've never had this.
[25:06]I mean, it's not.
[25:07]I wouldn't call it writer's block,
[25:08]but I would call it this, it's slow.
[25:10]Yeah, it's, I have to have a certain kind of mental space
[25:14]to get into my writing.
[25:16]And at the moment, it's just been tough the last few months.
[25:20]Is this the last we've seen of these people then?
[25:24]Because I can imagine that it's not.
[25:27]Maybe not.
[25:27]You know, I maybe there will be, I can imagine going back to them.
[25:31]Yeah.
[25:32]Because you know, Laura lie, no spoilers,
[25:35]but at the end of the book,
[25:35]Laura lie gets this offer and it's very intriguing and very dark.
[25:41]And she's very tempted.
[25:43]Yeah.
[25:43]And I, there was a strand that came to me
[25:45]at the very end of writing it.
[25:47]And I just, I'm actually kind of interested
[25:50]in exploring it.
[25:50]So maybe so.
[25:51]Maybe.
[25:52]I would love that.
[25:54]And then my last question is, how did you come to the title?
[25:58]That was my title, almost from the very beginning that the first title
[26:04]was the lucky five, which came from the headline
[26:08]of a newspaper article about a plane wreck
[26:11]that I was in when I was in college.
[26:13]I was in my brother-in-law.
[26:14]I was flying a small plane and crashed with me
[26:17]and a few family members in the plane.
[26:20]We were all totally fine minor injuries,
[26:23]but there was a little newspaper article that came out
[26:25]on this tiny little small town paper in North Carolina,
[26:29]the next day that says lucky five escape crash
[26:32]and that always stuck with me.
[26:34]And so that was going to be the title.
[26:36]And then once I, once I really started drafting it,
[26:39]it was, I just got interested in those issues
[26:43]of moral responsibility.
[26:45]And I needed a word that would really capture that.
[26:47]So culpability is what stuck.
[26:49]And my agent didn't like it,
[26:51]but couldn't think of anything better.
[26:52]My editors didn't like it,
[26:54]but couldn't think of anything better.
[26:56]So we stuck with it.
[26:57]I really like it.
[26:58]Oh, good.
[26:59]Yeah, I'm like, whoop her like this.
[27:00]Yes.
[27:02]More importantly, exactly.
[27:04]So who has a question?
[27:07]Yes.
[27:08]So I'm very awestruck that you say that you're up a cancer
[27:14]because you don't know what that means.
[27:17]There are plotters, people who plot an outline,
[27:19]and then there are panthers who write
[27:21]by the seat of their pants.
[27:22]You're a plotter, right?
[27:24]I just learned that too, cancer.
[27:26]And I find fascinating about that.
[27:29]Is that, I've now in the middle of a printable book.
[27:33]Oh, that's my first novel.
[27:35]Yeah.
[27:35]But so it seems to me that the gifted school
[27:39]and this one and the certain degree of a printable book
[27:42]are also ensemble pieces.
[27:45]So you have something that connects a bunch of people
[27:50]sort of radiate in the gifted school at a school.
[27:53]And then this is the AI and the accident.
[27:57]And I find it so interesting that you're
[28:00]able to sort of plunge in with all these characters
[28:04]and make it happen.
[28:04]And what I wondered is, are you aware of always thinking
[28:10]in terms of an ensemble group joining around a particular top?
[28:17]And you seem to, you know, like schools, you know,
[28:20]that's a huge thing.
[28:21]And AI.
[28:24]And so I just wondered, is that do you take a social problem
[28:28]as it were?
[28:29]And then find sort of people who can illuminate it
[28:32]from different angles?
[28:35]Yeah, it's a wonderful question, especially starting
[28:39]with a burnable book, which often, so my first two novels,
[28:41]a burnable book, and then mentioned a fire,
[28:43]are historical thrillers set in late medieval England?
[28:46]And then it was only in my third novel,
[28:48]the gifted school that I bumped up
[28:50]to think about, you know, gifted parents
[28:53]and contemporary issues.
[28:56]But yes, I, you know, I really, I would put my novels
[29:00]in one of my big inspirations.
[29:02]I cut my teeth on reading Charles Dickens
[29:05]when I was in high school in college.
[29:06]And basically I was a Dickens completist by the time
[29:09]I had graduated college.
[29:11]And I love big, complicated, messy stories
[29:15]with a whole bunch of viewpoint characters coming
[29:18]into, you know, people will live in completely different
[29:21]continents and then by the end of the novel,
[29:23]their stories will really be interlaced.
[29:27]And so I think that that is, and I also,
[29:29]in my day job, I teach medieval literature
[29:31]at the University of Virginia.
[29:33]And I have always been inspired by medieval narrative
[29:37]and stories within stories like the Canterbury Tales
[29:41]or Baccaccioes to Cameron or the 2001 Knights,
[29:45]where, you know, stories can relate to each other
[29:48]and different characters can have different stories
[29:51]that take them from A to Z and come together.
[29:56]Yeah.
[29:58]Well, that's the challenge.
[29:59]Yeah, that's the,
[30:00]challenges to bring all those, you know, when you're juggling all those balls, to bring
[30:04]them together. And often again, I will write myself into a corner where things just
[30:10]aren't working. I have to back out. I have to back the car out.
[30:14]I don't know how you do it, but, you know, well, thank you, Grandma.
[30:19]So I have a question about the mechanics of your right. How long did it take you to
[30:25]right, and do you have a readers group? Yeah. Yeah. So this basically, this took
[30:32]about a year, a calendar year. And I wrote it in a very different way. I didn't often
[30:36]I'll give, I'll write maybe 30 or 40 pages, then I'll give them the people. This novel,
[30:44]I really just kind of went in a hermit hole and wrote the thing. And from start to finish.
[30:50]And I, you know, so I had a solid first draft in about a year, then I gave that to readers,
[30:55]then maybe another six months, nine months before I was ready to send it out. And I have
[31:00]very trusted readers that I'll send things to. One of them, I, it was in third person.
[31:08]The novel was Noah's voice was in third person. And my friend Jim read it and said, Bruce,
[31:12]you know, I'm really feeling this in first person. You should just try it. And I never
[31:17]write in first person. And I did. And I think it made all the difference. So I, having
[31:22]really critical, I have very thick skin when it comes to my writing. And so I like, I like
[31:28]getting savage comments. I had an editor a while ago at Riverhead who wrote me a 15 page single
[31:35]spaced at it. Followed in the second draft by an 11 page. So, yeah. Questions.
[31:52]Yeah.
[31:53]So I think you got me on the first question. I was struck by the balance of, I think,
[32:00]this sort of main plot and the big questions introduced by that plot. What do you spoke to
[32:06]beginning, you know, the morality of AI, this car accident, who's called a ball, or what's a couple
[32:14]of what was you said, the balance between that and this sort of more micro human family dramas. And
[32:20]sometimes those things intersect. Sometimes not. You know, I think like the subplot, the sun's
[32:27]being an elite athlete, the pressure of sort of, yeah, elite sports and how family can direct
[32:33]all of this energy, you know, toward, yeah, for a quarter of the siblings and how that affects
[32:39]their relationships. And so some curious as you're writing, if you're consciously thinking about
[32:45]that balance and being, you know, too on topic of the main plot and making sure you're sort of
[32:51]introducing these other human stories or if it is more just a natural process for you.
[32:58]That is a really interesting question. Yeah. Like, whether I'm, oh, everything needs to be about
[33:02]AI, right? No, I guess I'm not. I think of the characters as complete people. And they have
[33:10]complete lives, parts of which have nothing to do with the, with the story I'm writing, right,
[33:16]or only tangentially to do. And I think Charlie's athleticism, of course, is one of the issues that
[33:23]no is worried about is the threat to that, to hit the threat to him as an elite athlete. And that,
[33:29]my kids both played college soccer on that kind of level and not quite on Charlie's level. But
[33:36]I have always, I was always like a kind of psychosac or dad when my kids were growing up. So I had
[33:42]that in me. And I think, you know, a relationship between a father and a son. That's something I know
[33:48]that I can do. And it helped, I think, with, you know, Noah's admiration for Charlie.
[33:53]And then the way Charlie falls in love with this other character, Dizzy, the daughter of the
[33:58]tech billionaire next door. I think, you know, his athleticism is gorgeousness as part of
[34:04]his appeal to her. And so that, you know, plays. So in some ways, and maybe this is the way of
[34:10]answering that question. And I'm sure anybody writes it like you probably have this too, where
[34:15]you've, there's something not quite working. And then you figure out one little thing. And it
[34:21]solves all these other problems. It's like a slot machine where you sudden, and that often happens
[34:27]with me. It happened in this, this novel, the big one was Lorelei when I figured out what she did
[34:32]for a living. And it's also often figuring out people's careers that make them click into place
[34:38]for me and solve all, you know, suddenly give me other storylines, give me other ways of resolving
[34:44]things. Yeah. I'm curious if after living in the world and researching AI, if, you know, how,
[34:53]you have the pieces of Lorelei is writing and the moral question she's asking. In your personal
[35:00]You change your opinion about AI writ large or what happened?
[35:05]Yeah, that's a tough one.
[35:08]Because I was so ignorant when I started out.
[35:13]I wasn't even thinking, like I said, I self-driving cars, whatever.
[35:19]People weren't even describing that as AI a while ago.
[35:22]It's just machine learning or whatever.
[35:26]And so, as I started researching and interviewing, doing a lot of interviews,
[35:32]there's a lot of bouncing ideas off of people.
[35:34]I had people in particular parts of AI read what I was doing to make sure I got it right.
[35:41]One of the things I learned is that everybody in that world,
[35:45]or most people in that world have something called a PDU number,
[35:48]where it's the percentage chance that they think AI is going to kill us all.
[35:53]And a lot of them will laugh it off.
[35:55]I'm like, oh my god, no, this is ridiculous. I'm at a 2%.
[35:58]The 2% is pretty high.
[36:01]Yeah, so I started out as a zero because I didn't really know.
[36:05]And now I'm like a seven or eight.
[36:07]I think so.
[36:08]I've met a 20.
[36:09]No.
[36:10]There are 30s out there.
[36:11]What do you call a PY?
[36:12]What do you do?
[36:13]Percentage chance I'm doing.
[36:15]That's basically a shorthand for that.
[36:17]I have to write something.
[36:18]So what's your opinion?
[36:19]Yeah.
[36:20]And so I, but I,
[36:24]the thing that scares me about AI is less the killer robots coming for us.
[36:29]And more misinformation.
[36:31]What are use energy use for data centers, right?
[36:35]Those are the things that scare me.
[36:37]And, you know, just absorbing them into the other kinds of scary things going on in our world right now.
[36:43]But I also feel like there's, you know,
[36:46]in this, the theme of this book.
[36:49]And so how many of you have,
[36:51]I'm sure many of you have ridden in a Waymo before.
[36:54]Okay.
[36:55]So I'm scared of that.
[36:56]Okay.
[36:57]So many people say that.
[36:58]The windows, do you read it, Ubers and lifts?
[37:01]I'm scared of that too.
[37:02]Okay.
[37:03]So you're not being the control over here.
[37:05]You're not allowed.
[37:06]Because you know,
[37:07]when I think about this,
[37:08]like, you know,
[37:09]I think when's the last time you were in an Uber or a Lyft
[37:11]where the driver did not start texting for their next ride?
[37:14]Yeah.
[37:15]Well, you know, driving you down the 10 or whatever.
[37:18]And then I say that right?
[37:21]The 10.
[37:22]Yeah.
[37:23]That was really.
[37:24]Thank you.
[37:25]And, you know,
[37:26]there've been these studies about self-automated cars,
[37:30]about Waymo's,
[37:33]about the number of passenger hours,
[37:35]comparing them to lifts and Ubers.
[37:38]And there's no comparison in terms of safety.
[37:40]But the safety of the passengers and the safety of,
[37:43]pedestrians, bicyclists and so on.
[37:46]So that to me feels like kind of revolutionary.
[37:49]You know,
[37:50]as Laura Lai points out in a country
[37:52]where we lose 40,000 people on our highways every year,
[37:56]you know,
[37:57]is there a way to save those lives?
[37:59]And that's also AI.
[38:01]So I'm not,
[38:02]you know,
[38:03]the book is not,
[38:04]is not an op-ed,
[38:06]but it is trying to think about these issues
[38:09]from a lot of different angles.
[38:13]Oh, yeah.
[38:14]So you think it would be,
[38:15]do you think it says that in that positive
[38:17]or in that negative or just the time at all?
[38:20]All right. Time will tell.
[38:21]It's impossible to say,
[38:22]I am no futurist.
[38:23]I am merely a medievalist.
[38:25]I don't know.
[38:26]Yeah.
[38:27]It's so in here.
[38:28]I just want to,
[38:29]um,
[38:30]because, you know,
[38:31]obviously,
[38:32]this book sits right up the cross-section of AI
[38:35]and family life,
[38:37]and sort of teams growing into young girls.
[38:40]It's so,
[38:41]all of these issues are so prevalent.
[38:43]I'm centered in the book.
[38:44]I do,
[38:45]you know,
[38:46]just as you're an academic,
[38:47]and you're always dealing with
[38:49]a new class of students,
[38:51]how much,
[38:52]or, you know,
[38:53]if at all,
[38:54]was your thinking influenced
[38:57]or shaped in any way
[38:59]by conversations with your students
[39:01]and sort of how they're,
[39:02]uh,
[39:03]how they're seeing all this,
[39:05]this sort of like the brave people
[39:07]in front of them,
[39:08]and I don't know how different
[39:09]that might be in front.
[39:10]Right here.
[39:11]Yeah.
[39:12]Um,
[39:13]you know,
[39:14]it's interesting because
[39:15]the,
[39:16]um,
[39:17]particular strand of AI,
[39:18]worry around chat GPT
[39:20]and large language models,
[39:21]isn't so much a part of the book.
[39:23]You know,
[39:24]we've got the chat mod going on,
[39:25]so that's part of it.
[39:26]But I wasn't really thinking in,
[39:28]in terms of this plot
[39:30]about LLMs and slot
[39:33]and plagiarism and all those issues.
[39:35]But the book is dedicated
[39:37]to my students.
[39:38]And I,
[39:39]for two reasons,
[39:40]one because I always
[39:42]learned so much for my students.
[39:43]And every time I go
[39:45]into a class,
[39:46]there'll be a new reading
[39:47]of a passage
[39:48]that I thought I knew well.
[39:50]Um,
[39:51]and so I'm always learning
[39:52]as much from them as they do
[39:53]for me.
[39:54]But I also dedicated it
[39:55]to my students
[39:56]because I worry about them
[39:57]and I worry about the loss
[39:59]of writing.
[40:00]The gift and the craft and the magic of being able to put words together sentences together on the page and the slow patient work that that takes.
[40:09]You know, an AI is a massive threat to that right now. It just interrupts that process and it speeds things up in a way that is not good for our brands and the same is true of reading.
[40:24]Like, I'll now I know students have admitted to me to like they'll upload the course readings into Chachi PT and say what are three or four cool things I could say about this text.
[40:35]No way, of course, of course, of course, that should happen. And, you know, so, you know, we're thinking about as a faculty we're thinking about this in a lot of different ways.
[40:45]Do we, what do we do? Do we want to think about curricular time, for example, an average student who does 15 credit hours at a university is only in class 12 hours a week.
[40:57]Why couldn't we think about reading labs and the same when writing labs in the same way we think about chemistry labs get an extra three or four hours when you're in an analog space.
[41:08]Maybe we bring in cookies and milk and mats, right? It's reading time, but I'm serious. Like if there's a way we can just think about slowing down and stretching things out and sitting with these things because we're, you know, a lot of people are losing that that ability to concentrate, which is not just AI.
[41:26]It's also just the digital world, but I think AI is exacerbating it and may also give us an opportunity to push back in a different way.
[41:36]It's very high horse.
[41:39]Oh, good. Oh, I do that with my students all the time.
[41:44]Amen.
[41:45]I'm a big believer in that. Yeah. Creative writing classes do that.
[41:48]Yeah. Right. Yeah. Where you read up all our portion of your story.
[41:52]I have my students read in middle English. They have to read Chaucer.
[41:58]When you, when you named the girlfriend, did you purposely do it because of the Greek mythology?
[42:07]Yeah. So this is the girlfriend. Charlie's girlfriend is named your RITICY, DC for short.
[42:13]And the answer is no. And it's that I named her your RITICY because there was this girl in high school who was the daughter of this really rich guy lived up the road.
[42:24]I was a fancy private school, but I would see her at parties sometimes. And I was a little bit obsessed with her. And I've just always loved the name.
[42:32]But you, you name a character, you RITICY and she falls in love with this one of your other characters and kind of leads him into danger.
[42:41]You're going to get accused of kind of being ponderous and heavy handed. So I had to have this one scene where Alice is standing at the door,
[42:49]sitting at RITICY and Charlie, putting sunscreen on each other. And Noah's there too. And Alice, you know, the trouble middle kid.
[42:57]What's her name. And Noah says he RITICY. And she goes, let boats well. Right. So that, that was the one little scene I put in there to say, and I don't know why I just didn't change her name.
[43:08]That was not intentional at all, but it was inevitable.
[43:13]Yeah, this might be repetitive because Laura, you started off with this topic of looking at this homeless as an examination of a marriage. And I was obsessed with that from the beginning.
[43:25]Obviously with the plot and what happened at the beginning was riveted by that. But, you know, when you're saying you're obsessed with Lorelai.
[43:33]So I just, a follow up question to all that is sort of like, how did you, did it just come to you doing view her with this Jesus elevated incredible woman with these, I don't know, I wouldn't call mental illness, but she's death.
[43:47]Yeah, she's suffering from OCD and she has that that's part of her personality part of her life or challenge.
[43:54]Like Noah's really in touch with that. Yeah, he wants to be in touch with that. So it's just fascinating to me.
[44:00]You know, how did you come up again again, it might be repetitive because you address this.
[44:05]But sort of how did you.
[44:08]It's such an amazing depiction of relationship. Oh, thank you. So how did you come up with this idea of so they've come from different backgrounds, but also she has these things going on.
[44:19]Yeah, but he's just like obsessed with her. Right. So is this so fascinating just a few of any insight into how that came together for you.
[44:28]Well, there's always a question of what quirks you give your characters, right? What weird little things about them you want to bring out and what makes them unique.
[44:36]And with Laura lie, I suppose one of the things I did once I felt like she was going to be in that world.
[44:44]I didn't really think of her as a genius initially. I just thought maybe she just works in that space. Then I just started reading a lot of biographies of kind of tech geniuses people have made breakthrough discoveries in that world.
[44:58]And thinking about.
[45:00]personalities and the rosies and how those relate to relationships and so on.
[45:06]And I wanted to make Lara a lie.
[45:08]I didn't want to make her predictable.
[45:09]I wanted to make her kind of larger than life, but also, you know, unrelatable in many
[45:17]ways, but for Noah relatable.
[45:20]So yeah, it was a challenge.
[45:22]Yes, yeah, just deeply, you know, she spends all day thinking about safety by how to
[45:29]make the world safer and better.
[45:31]And she's also obsessed with keeping her kids safe to an alarming extent, right?
[45:37]So she's the ultimate snowplow parent, you know, is clearing the way for her kids, but
[45:43]without knowing the damage she might be doing as well.
[45:45]Yeah.
[45:46]Question.
[45:47]Do you get inspiration from your students?
[45:51]Does someone ever like say something that you're like, would be good?
[45:54]I should have that.
[45:55]Or like, maybe not especially from my students.
[46:00]I get it all over the place, like all off and just be sitting in the coffee shop and
[46:04]suddenly these two people next to me will be talking and I'll open a new document.
[46:08]You know, just stealing things from every day like, you should write that no, not really
[46:18]no.
[46:19]My kids do sometimes, yeah, but not so much my students, because I don't, again, I,
[46:25]I don't teach creative writing at UVA, I teach on the literature side of the department.
[46:31]And so I don't really have that identity as a novelist in the classroom.
[46:36]So.
[46:37]Yeah.
[46:38]I was seeing her in high school and she's actually in an AC or seminar that is, it's
[46:48]all the writing.
[46:49]Oh, good.
[46:50]Yeah.
[46:51]Cool.
[46:52]Is that, you know, you write, you have a first draft of your novel by the end of the
[46:56]year.
[46:57]And this, yeah, it's very, very long to be in it.
[47:02]And I have started this, these first two months of school have been really planning the
[47:08]plot and characters and I were just starting to write like, my homework is on, I was
[47:12]like, right, my next like 2000 words and I'm writing it in the first person and I guess
[47:18]my question is, as a, as a writer, how do you continue on with the portion of your writing
[47:27]and whatever field of your political back and thinking between things like how do you
[47:31]push yourself to keep continuing because even in my first couple thousand words, I always
[47:35]find myself feeling like I have to constantly go back and I can't finish and I, I guess,
[47:41]mid-op to a row and maybe writing this for the rest of the year and how do I enjoy that
[47:46]process and keep going and not get stuck on these parts where I feel like everything can
[47:51]be changed and if I said it all a different way, it would be better.
[47:55]I can tell you're already a writer like this is what you said right there because often
[48:01]young writers will say, you know, and what I'm doing now, like it's going to be, it's
[48:04]so good and it's going to be perfect and I'm going to send it off and, but the fact that
[48:08]you're already hard on yourself, that's stay there and I think that it's a nice balance
[48:14]and you chime in here.
[48:15]What is your, what are your tricks, you know, keep going, tell the story that you want
[48:18]to think of yourself, and don't you think of yourself as writing a novel, think of yourself
[48:22]as telling a long story, right, and that, that will make it less ponderous in some ways
[48:28]like you're not a novelist with a, you know, writer hat, you're a, you're a storyteller.
[48:34]I think that makes it, makes it so that the stakes don't feel as high.
[48:39]But you know, think about when you go back and revise, there's all kinds of ways of dealing
[48:46]with that.
[48:47]There's a wonderful fairly recent book by Matt Bell, do you know this book, refuse to
[48:51]be done?
[48:52]It's a really wonderful book on revision and it's, it's simple and, and just some good,
[48:58]good hints.
[48:59]So I would recommend that, but good for you for doing that.
[49:03]I think that what you just said about think of yourself as telling a long story is some
[49:10]of the best advice I've heard.
[49:11]I think that's excellent advice because then it's just something that I often do.
[49:16]When I'm writing as I read out loud, almost as if I was going to be telling someone this
[49:21]whole story.
[49:24]And I think it's a really comforting way to read and write.
[49:27]Also something that I always, when I start my next 2000 words or whatever it is, when
[49:32]I get up to do my work the next day, I'll let myself go 500 words back, but not all the
[49:39]way back until I'm done with that draft.
[49:42]And then you can go all the way back when you sort of know where you're going.
[49:47]Oh great.
[49:51]Oh great.
[49:52]Thank you.
[49:53]Oh yeah.
[49:54]Oh one more question.
[49:55]Yeah.
[49:56]Yeah.
[49:57]Yeah.
[49:58]Yeah.
[49:59]Yeah.
[50:00]question maybe but have you ever said the cat or say the cat?
[50:05]I've never read it. I know what you're talking about.
[50:07]Because I just finished writing a book and I said it all for the editor.
[50:11]And she says, she says read, say the cat.
[50:15]So I did and I realized that say the cat is a very structured way of doing it.
[50:21]And I just wondered whether you just write what you're going to write.
[50:27]Or do you think, okay, it's three quarters of the way through.
[50:30]Or do you say the cat doesn't so, you know,
[50:33]which is all the great books.
[50:35]You know, so I just wonder whether you can.
[50:38]I don't know.
[50:39]You just kind of instinctively you're going to know.
[50:43]I'm not a formulaic.
[50:44]I don't like formulaic novels.
[50:46]I don't think I write formulaic novels.
[50:48]I also don't like cats.
[50:52]I'll read this older book that, you know,
[50:56]she never read, say, the cat.
[50:59]But there are different quarters of the way.
[51:02]There's the same changes, you know.
[51:04]Interesting.
[51:05]Who am I to gain?
[51:06]Yeah.
[51:07]Yeah.
[51:08]No, I just don't know it.
[51:09]But I know it.
[51:10]But I've never taught from it.
[51:11]Yeah.
[51:12]Right.
[51:13]Well, I just want to say to you thank you so much for the wonderful questions
[51:17]and for your presence.
[51:19]You're a writer, rather than a writer for so long.
[51:21]So thank you.
[51:26]I was saying that, and we'll say good night,
[51:28]but I was sorry not you guys have.
[51:30]He has wonderful books to sign.
[51:31]But, you know, one thing that happens when you write is people
[51:34]always ask you what you're reading.
[51:36]And you never really have an answer
[51:38]because it's so stressful in the moment.
[51:40]But since I read this book and I read it really early, I read it.
[51:43]I think you sent it to me in like February or March.
[51:45]Very early.
[51:46]It wasn't even a galley.
[51:47]It was like had a little yellow cover on it.
[51:50]That has been the book I say, you have to read.
[51:53]It's so wonderful.
[51:54]He's really one of my favorite writers.
[51:56]So this is a pleasure.
[51:57]Thank you.
[51:58]Thank you so much.
[51:59]Yeah.
[52:00]Thank you so much.
[52:01]Thank you so much.
[52:02]Thank you for telling me.
[52:03]It actually made me want to go back to like the same class
[52:06]and take a lecture.
[52:07]Oh, yeah.
[52:08]But yeah, we are both here to sign.
[52:11]Both people said that they're on the server.
[52:13]Beautiful.
[52:14]And thank you for being here.
[52:16]Congratulations again.
[52:17]Thank you.
[52:18]Thank you.
[52:19]Thank you.
[52:20]Thank you.