:00:00. > :00:24.The time is just after 00:30am. Next, Talking Books.
:00:25. > :00:31.Welcome to Hay Festival. Now celebrating its 30th year. It brings
:00:32. > :00:35.together scientists, historians, novelists, musicians, all of them
:00:36. > :00:40.here to discuss their latest ideas and stories. Today I'm interviewing
:00:41. > :00:44.the multi-award winning author Elizabeth Strout. Her sixth novel,
:00:45. > :00:49.all of them receiving critical acclaim, but it was Olive Kitteridge
:00:50. > :00:56.that received the Pulitzer prize. Born and raised in small towns in
:00:57. > :00:59.New Hampshire and main, her latest book Anything is Possible explores
:01:00. > :01:03.the cost of extraordinary characters and their own small-time lives. --
:01:04. > :01:31.explores a cast. I stand to be corrected, but I think
:01:32. > :01:35.it was Chekhov who was asked by I think his brother, it was a hint
:01:36. > :01:39.about writing, and he apparently said, you know, the thing about
:01:40. > :01:44.writing is find the small detail that reveals the big story. I think
:01:45. > :01:49.Elizabeth Strout, if I may say so, follows in that tradition because
:01:50. > :01:56.what she does is tell the story of small individual lives and yet they
:01:57. > :02:02.seem to reveal a massive truth about the human condition, about the
:02:03. > :02:09.American human condition. And certainly her latest book Anything
:02:10. > :02:13.is Possible follows in that tradition. I read somewhere that you
:02:14. > :02:18.said it's not good or bad that interests me as a writer, but the
:02:19. > :02:22.murkiness of human experience and the consistent imperfection of our
:02:23. > :02:26.lives. We might want to talk about that in a little while. Anyway, here
:02:27. > :02:40.is Elizabeth Strout, her book is Anything is Possible. Thank you.
:02:41. > :02:46.Reading your books, one thing struck me, the extent to which geography
:02:47. > :02:50.shapes your characters, shapes the people, shapes the people you write
:02:51. > :02:55.about. Just describe some geography for us and how that shapes people. I
:02:56. > :03:00.think place is very important and literature because we all live in a
:03:01. > :03:07.place, so wherever our place happens to be, whether it's a city or rule
:03:08. > :03:12.or Maine,, which is both rural and non- city, or the midwest, we all
:03:13. > :03:18.live in a place and the place is part of who we are. And the time in
:03:19. > :03:22.history that we live in is also who we are. What I have written mostly
:03:23. > :03:26.about Akrotiri because I came from Maine many, many years ago and I
:03:27. > :03:32.came from many generations of Maine. But anything is possible. I put them
:03:33. > :03:38.in the midwest, its own kind of geography. There's nothing about sky
:03:39. > :03:42.in the midwest, it is just the sky, sky, sky. And when I wrote My Name
:03:43. > :03:46.Is Lucy Barton, as soon as I understood that her mother had never
:03:47. > :03:51.been on a plane before, something about that made me realise, OK, I
:03:52. > :03:55.see Lucy as having grown up in a tiny house surrounded by sky. And so
:03:56. > :04:02.that's her place of origin and then she moved and left and ended up
:04:03. > :04:07.living in New York City and crossed all these class lines. People talk
:04:08. > :04:11.about the flyover States, you fly over and forget about it. In a sense
:04:12. > :04:21.you are talking about forgotten people? Exactly. Do you mind reading
:04:22. > :04:25.a little extract? The bookies just started with place and geography. I
:04:26. > :04:29.think you've got a passage that does it for us. This is just from the
:04:30. > :04:35.very first part, where the man who used to be the Janata in Lucy
:04:36. > :04:40.Barton's school is driving around. This morning Tommy drove slowly to
:04:41. > :04:44.the town of Carlisle for errands. It was a sunny day in May and his
:04:45. > :04:50.wife's birthday was a few days away. All around him were open fields. The
:04:51. > :04:54.corn newly planted and the soyabeans too. The number of fields were still
:04:55. > :04:58.brown as they had been ploughed, but mostly there was the high blue sky
:04:59. > :05:03.with a few white clouds scattered near the horizon. The family had
:05:04. > :05:07.been outcasts, even in a town like this. The extreme poverty and
:05:08. > :05:12.strangeness making them so. The oldest man, a man named Pete, lived
:05:13. > :05:17.alone in their house now. The middle child was two towns away and the
:05:18. > :05:23.youngest, Lucy Barton, had fled many years ago. Thank you. So, we think
:05:24. > :05:28.here in England, in Britain, but we know America, and yet reading your
:05:29. > :05:32.books you understand that there's lots of America you don't know. When
:05:33. > :05:36.we look at America we see it through the big events, the elections and so
:05:37. > :05:40.on, maybe. Just to get an idea of these people who populate your book,
:05:41. > :05:46.let's say last year's election, which we all followed, would your
:05:47. > :06:01.people be Trump people or Clinton people? Well, the people are right
:06:02. > :06:06.about. Yes. APPLAUSE. Make that very clear. The people I write about in
:06:07. > :06:12.this particular book Anything is Possible, if they bothered to vote,
:06:13. > :06:16.some of them would have probably voted for Trump. But what is it
:06:17. > :06:22.about them, what would drive them towards that? Is it relationship to
:06:23. > :06:25.authority, relationship to power? I've always been interested in class
:06:26. > :06:32.in America and we don't talk about class in America that much, but it
:06:33. > :06:38.certainly is there. As far as I'm concerned, all my work has been
:06:39. > :06:41.about class but in My Name Is Lucy Barton I pushed it. She crossed
:06:42. > :06:45.class lines, which is a very American story and she ended up
:06:46. > :06:49.arguably a middle-class woman and I kept thinking, what does that feel
:06:50. > :06:58.like for her? But going back to her home of origin, these people are
:06:59. > :07:08.working class or even lower than that in some ways. Lower working
:07:09. > :07:12.class. And if you think about class not necessarily in terms of
:07:13. > :07:20.education, which is obviously a part of it, and not -- in terms of the
:07:21. > :07:25.power people feel about the destiny of their lives, then these are
:07:26. > :07:28.people who feel powerless. What is it about you that made you want to
:07:29. > :07:31.give voice to these people, these flyover people, people you don't
:07:32. > :07:38.normally hear from? I'm just so interesting ordinary people, the
:07:39. > :07:43.most ordinary lives you can find. So as I've written my way through my
:07:44. > :07:47.career, I find myself drawn more and more to the lives that don't have a
:07:48. > :07:51.voice. These are people who... They are just living their lives and they
:07:52. > :07:55.don't have a voice and I wonder about their internal lives, because
:07:56. > :08:01.all of us have our interior lives and they come up against, you know,
:08:02. > :08:04.the external world and it is always so interesting to me how we walk
:08:05. > :08:08.around with all of our different multitude of thoughts and feelings
:08:09. > :08:14.and that interact with the world. So these people who have just the most
:08:15. > :08:19.ordinary lives, I'm just so curious, what is it they're feeling or
:08:20. > :08:25.thinking? And living through. So when Lucy Barton comes back and goes
:08:26. > :08:29.back home after 17 years, she's doing much more. What is she doing?
:08:30. > :08:36.She's definitely crossing geography. Right. You say she is crossing
:08:37. > :08:42.class? Right. And she is also crossing well. She plays a welfare
:08:43. > :08:47.role in her family. She does. She has become a successful New York may
:08:48. > :08:52.be woman, so to speak, and she does go back after 17 years of not being
:08:53. > :08:56.home and visit her siblings in her childhood home. Her brother has
:08:57. > :09:04.lived there all of his life alone and he cleans the house for her,
:09:05. > :09:08.which is... Buys a new rug. Yeah, he buys a new rug, he wanted to nice
:09:09. > :09:11.for her. And then her sister pays a visit and she is quite
:09:12. > :09:15.confrontational and angry about what the story, why did you bother to
:09:16. > :09:20.come home? Sorry. I find that interesting. The three of them are
:09:21. > :09:27.together, 17 years they've been apart. But no one is celebrating
:09:28. > :09:31.what Lucy has achieved. No, no. Because in this sort of environment,
:09:32. > :09:36.and I know this from having come from Maine, which is a similar sort
:09:37. > :09:40.of background, because the white Protestant people from Maine that
:09:41. > :09:44.have lived there forever, as my family does, some of them moved to
:09:45. > :09:48.the mid-west a couple of 100 years ago and there's a similar kind of
:09:49. > :09:54.person. The point is that if you pull attention to yourself that is
:09:55. > :09:58.really disgusting. You're just not supposed to do that, so nobody is
:09:59. > :10:03.going to praise Lucy. So it wasn't envy and jealousy, it was just
:10:04. > :10:07.that... Well, she thinks she is better... Well, they think she
:10:08. > :10:11.thinks she is better. She fled and she became somebody different and
:10:12. > :10:16.that's just not what you're supposed to do. Who does she think she is?
:10:17. > :10:25.She doesn't eat up. At referee isn't flaunting her wealth or her success.
:10:26. > :10:28.No, she is trying to be pleasant. You said you were interested in
:10:29. > :10:33.ordinary lives and ordinary people. But the book is anything but
:10:34. > :10:39.ordinary. There is child abuse, post-traumatic stress syndrome,
:10:40. > :10:47.obesity, a character who calls herself I think Fatty patty, marital
:10:48. > :10:57.infidelity, voyeurism. This isn't life... In our sheltered way, this
:10:58. > :11:01.isn't life as we know it. Really? You might just ask some people in
:11:02. > :11:08.the audience. I wouldn't dare! You go ahead and ask. No, I'm just
:11:09. > :11:15.saying. Just saying that it might be a little more ordinary than we
:11:16. > :11:23.think. More common? Yes, yes, yes. It's quite depressing. You know, I
:11:24. > :11:32.wonder if in writing this, I mean, how did it affect you? Because it's
:11:33. > :11:37.a very ... Very troubled lives. I didn't find it depressing myself. I
:11:38. > :11:41.loved these people, I always loved everybody... One of the fun things
:11:42. > :11:45.for me in writing is that when I go to the page I don't judge my
:11:46. > :11:49.characters and it's just so freeing, because in real life we are
:11:50. > :11:56.judgemental and it just gets... We are judgemental. Yeah, people are,
:11:57. > :12:00.and it's so tiresome. So when I go to the page I just transcend it and
:12:01. > :12:04.I just think, here are these people, I love them, let me watch what
:12:05. > :12:09.they're doing and record it. I don't find their lives depressing, I find
:12:10. > :12:15.their lives real to me and so I record them. There is one character,
:12:16. > :12:21.Charlie, who says beneath it all people were bright, scurrying off to
:12:22. > :12:26.find garbage to it. -- people were rats. Again and very harsh
:12:27. > :12:31.judgement. They may be small lives, but in their own way. And I know you
:12:32. > :12:37.think this. In their own way they are trying to make the best best of
:12:38. > :12:41.it. Right. Charlie, who thinks that, has been in Vietnam and he has been
:12:42. > :12:47.completely decimated because of his experiences in the more a number of
:12:48. > :12:52.years ago. -- in the war. I am very interested in the idea that certain
:12:53. > :12:57.men can go to war and manage it and certain men go to war and can't
:12:58. > :13:01.manage it and Lucy's father wouldn't do it and that's what ruined his
:13:02. > :13:07.life. With Charlie, I wanted it reverberate, the sense that this mad
:13:08. > :13:11.in a later war, he just couldn't do those things that we had to do, and
:13:12. > :13:17.so his life has been damaged irrevocably. I read somewhere that
:13:18. > :13:22.you knew you were going to be a writer, or wanted to be a writer at
:13:23. > :13:28.16, and get your first book didn't come out... Till I was 43. 43. I was
:13:29. > :13:33.going to say in your 40s. Obviously 16 is very young. I actually wanted
:13:34. > :13:39.to be a writer since I was about four, actually. So about 40 years.
:13:40. > :13:44.Of apprenticeship. I was writing at a very young age. The mother gave me
:13:45. > :13:49.notebooks and said, write down what you did today, so I would. I thought
:13:50. > :13:54.in terms of sentences and I knew I was a writer from a very, very young
:13:55. > :13:59.age and then I just... I didn't, I just couldn't get it right. I
:14:00. > :14:06.couldn't find the muscular enough sentence to convey what I needed to
:14:07. > :14:09.convey. I couldn't do it until... People say in your prose nothing is
:14:10. > :14:18.wasted. Every word counts. That was a crafty with trying to master? I
:14:19. > :14:24.kept doing it and doing it. You mentioned the book My Name Is Lucy
:14:25. > :14:27.Barton, essentially about the relationship between a mother and
:14:28. > :14:31.daughter. In it there's a point in which the daughter is in hospital,
:14:32. > :14:36.hasn't seen her mum years and years, suddenly she wakes up in hospital
:14:37. > :14:42.and Marmie, as she calls her, is there and in the space I think five
:14:43. > :14:46.days they start talking and trying to understand and learn more about
:14:47. > :14:55.each other. Again, there is this pathos in this at least quite early
:14:56. > :15:00.on. She wakes up and says, Marmie, why did you come here? The answer,
:15:01. > :15:04.there is none. At least not straightaway.
:15:05. > :15:11.Right. Well, that is her mother. What can you do? There are some
:15:12. > :15:19.others that are not as committed to give as others. -- communicative.
:15:20. > :15:23.Her mother has and story, as well. But my particular feeling is that
:15:24. > :15:28.these are two people that love each other very much. -- mother has her
:15:29. > :15:33.own story. It is such a problematic relationship. There are many
:15:34. > :15:38.problems within their relationship. When I wrote My Name Is Lucy Barton,
:15:39. > :15:43.I made it porous in a way because I want readers to bring their own life
:15:44. > :15:48.experiences to my books, and they will. I mean, you will bring alike
:15:49. > :15:53.express to any book you read. But the more that is written, the more
:15:54. > :15:58.difficult it is for a reader to enter into the text itself. The
:15:59. > :16:04.hospital is in New York. So we are now in the city. At one point in the
:16:05. > :16:12.book, I think Agro one things of this, and she says she discovers the
:16:13. > :16:18.way some people in the city have a depth of disgust city people feel
:16:19. > :16:21.for the truly provincial. It fell to me like you were very much the kind
:16:22. > :16:27.of country girl, do you really feel that about the city? I do think
:16:28. > :16:31.that, yes the and I have lived in the city for 35 years. I have lived
:16:32. > :16:36.in New York City for 35 years. I love the city but I think that there
:16:37. > :16:42.are people in New York City who do feel a sense of propulsion for the
:16:43. > :16:50.truly provincial. But what you mean by the truly provincial? Because
:16:51. > :16:57.they are ill educated? What they find difficult? Clothes have a lot
:16:58. > :17:05.to do that. Clothes? Yes. I'm serious. The people, have a dressed
:17:06. > :17:16.in New York is very different to Maine, which... Dress is a very
:17:17. > :17:22.distinctive way of letting people know you are not really from the
:17:23. > :17:26.city, or, as a friend of mine said recently, I said, you know, my
:17:27. > :17:30.daughter, who has been born and raised in York city, my daughter
:17:31. > :17:36.told me you cannot wear pink any more. And my friend, who was also
:17:37. > :17:43.raised in New York City. -- born and raised in New York City. We are told
:17:44. > :17:49.that in America, there is not class. Well, there is. Why do Americans
:17:50. > :17:55.insist, then? Are they try to persuade themselves? They are try to
:17:56. > :17:59.convince themselves that there is no class. At this moment in history,
:18:00. > :18:03.class will be talked about more, because of the vertical situation.
:18:04. > :18:07.It has to be talked about more and people are beginning to recognise it
:18:08. > :18:15.as a real thing. But I think the whole American dream idea that we
:18:16. > :18:21.will accept anybody - and we will, or did... Do you think anything is
:18:22. > :18:30.fundamentally changed? We will see. When you talk about... Go on, say
:18:31. > :18:36.it. I can't. I am going to say. When you talk about this deep disgust
:18:37. > :18:42.that city people have, is that also why so many people in, how should I
:18:43. > :18:49.court, metropolitan America, the shock and horror that went around
:18:50. > :18:52.when that Donald Trump got elected? Right. Because they lived in a
:18:53. > :18:56.bubble. They didn't know people who would vote for Donald Trump. And so
:18:57. > :19:00.they thought, and this is so interesting because a number of
:19:01. > :19:07.years ago, I did realise that New Yorkers were provincial in their own
:19:08. > :19:11.way. Right. And they are. Because they think that the way that they
:19:12. > :19:18.think is the only way to think. And isn't that what we would think of as
:19:19. > :19:23.provincial? What happens to you, the 35 years of New York you have under
:19:24. > :19:39.your skin, what happens you when you go back to Maine? LAUGHTER. Well.
:19:40. > :19:46.People said hello. And I say hello! And they say how are you doing? That
:19:47. > :19:52.is just their nature. It is entirely a different culture. It is very
:19:53. > :19:56.interesting to me. I think because they have lived their long as any
:19:57. > :20:02.American has lived in America, and the culture is so distinctly
:20:03. > :20:07.isolated, and there is a sense of isolation. This community, but it is
:20:08. > :20:18.really about the individual. It just is. There is a sense of taciturnity
:20:19. > :20:23.and individual star. It reminds me of John Cheever from Massachusetts,
:20:24. > :20:26.and his mother wrote to him and said, Johnny, how come you have not
:20:27. > :20:32.told me have been winning all these prizes? And he said because he
:20:33. > :20:39.thought she would be ashamed of him. I read that and I got that. I
:20:40. > :20:49.understand that. I don't know if this is right, but you up probably
:20:50. > :20:54.best known for Olive Kitteridge. It is about a cantankerous old woman,
:20:55. > :21:02.for those who have not read it. It seemed to me like a lot of the book
:21:03. > :21:06.you spent hating her, God she is awful. If I was the husband, I would
:21:07. > :21:13.have run away. And then suddenly, I liked her. And I thought, when did
:21:14. > :21:21.Elizabeth Strout do that? Yes? How did that happen? You always liked
:21:22. > :21:28.her I presume. I knew she was badly behaved. I was aware of that.
:21:29. > :21:42.Describe what she does to her daughter-in-law's -- daughter-in-law
:21:43. > :21:48.is on the day of her wedding day. -- -- Maine. She still so bra and marks
:21:49. > :21:52.her sweater. That was a fun day at work. I had to tell you. --
:21:53. > :21:58.daughter-in-law on. I had no idea that was to happen. She doesn't
:21:59. > :22:04.because the daughter-in-law has her dress. And Olive Kitteridge was so
:22:05. > :22:10.excited by the dress, animated by hand, it was floral and pretty lips
:22:11. > :22:22.as she overhears the daughter-in-law Ins Offene -- insulting the dress.
:22:23. > :22:28.But one I went on the road with Olive Kitteridge, so many women
:22:29. > :22:40.leaned into me and said, how did you know? So I am just saying a lot of
:22:41. > :22:41.women want to do this. Ladies and gentlemen, Elizabeth Strout. Thank
:22:42. > :22:45.you so much.