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No, just water.

Where are you coming from?

I'm coming from the Rosie O'Donnell show and followed by a really nice walk around Washington Square Park where I used to walk when I lived on that square. Yes, and I went and I looked at the building and I couldn't even remember walking in and out of the door. So strange.

This was the late 60s when you were in there?

Yes. I was living with my boyfriend who I later married in his dorm room in the NYU student housing which is right on the park and we looked out over the tree top so she was very nice.

It's strange because we've lived down the village for a long time and it's been a lot of time since we went outside and was very young around Washington Square Park and then down to Washington Square Village which we still all the time. Which would have struck in fact as we're leading to the late 60s.

We were probably passing each other all the time if you know it. I'm going to go wash my hands because I've been falling off. Do you know where the restroom is?

It's probably right there.

Okay, be right back.

When was your daughter born again?

She always says I forget. 69.

69? So she was even a little bit younger than my son.

How old is your son?

He was born in 67.

Oh yeah.

Again, we used to be down there a lot. It suddenly crossed my mind. We might have actually passed past. Anyway, I was curious as a…

Cheers.

Cheers.

We survived it all.

Survived a lot as a matter of fact.

Yeah.

So I think about those early days in 1970. We were next door to that house that flew up on West 11th Street where the weathermen had their explosion. They were bombed out of our house that very day in fact.

Oh my goodness.

The wall just fell down from our building.

Wow.

Terrible. It was sort of like the end of the 60s.

Really?

Yeah. Right next door. Next door. To the so-called bomb factory.

Wow. I bet that was a shock.

It was a shock for my wife and for Dustin Hoffman's wife. They were both outside the building when it just blew up in their face. She just picked up our sign at nursery school and it was literally the end of the 60s and the end of a lot of... Well, not to get a one digression, but I must say the event itself then and thereafter had a strong effect not only on my family but also the people in the neighborhood.

Oh, I imagine.

About the 60s, there were so many of us. If we weren't radical, we certainly were borderline radical. After that, there was a lot of second thinking about whether the violence had any justification at all. Their mission when they blew up the house accidentally was to blow up the library at Columbia University. But you've gone through so much of this.

Yeah. The violence is not going to work. I mean, I don't care who's doing it. There's just no end to it. But that must have been such a shock because home is where you feel so safe.

Well, that's part of it. It's your home and your private home. But that's what I was looking to. It's a strong theme in your work. I mean, your opposition to violence has been a little closer to the people I'm talking to.

Well, yeah, I know in my own life what suffering it causes. And in a way, it just isn't radical enough. Violence is not radical enough.

And not radical enough. What about social change?

Well, actually, love is more radical than violence. And it's more subversive generally. And it's harder to do. And that's why people would rather have violence.

It's easier to pick up a gun or a bomb.

Much easier than actually coming to love somebody. Or just to be compassionate. It takes a lot more courage.

Let me also say this. It's sometimes hard to understand when I read your work the fact that you can love people who have been violent, brutal, perhaps even evil. I mean, you talk, for example, about your grandfather who was a devil, you say, in some way. And yet you...

I adored him.

Well, you say, not only forgive him, I guess, but you adored him.

I adored him. I adored him. And I still do.

How is that possible?

It's possible because he was a devil before I knew him. It was a lot harder to forgive my father, whom I knew, you know, in his devil-ness.

I see.

But with my grandfather. And that taught me that people do change. And they change radically. Because the man that used to shoot his gun at my grandmother and chase her through the cornfields was not the man I knew. The man I knew was very mellow, very thoughtful, very cornfields was not the man I knew. The man I knew was very mellow, very thoughtful, very loving of me, very happy to have me around, and very civil to her. So this was someone that I knew about almost as a... That earlier part, almost as a legend. And... that I knew about almost as a... That earlier part, almost as a legend. And…

You'd heard the stories before this.

Oh, yeah. Oh, I mean, yes. And they were told with such gusto, which was shocking to me. Even as a child. I mean, I couldn't really laugh, I have to say, because I loved my grandmother. And so in the telling of a story about her being chased by this wild man, who was an alcoholic, I didn't understand that either for many years. He was an alcoholic. And alcoholism had actually come into our family through our Irish line, the Irish, Scottish Irish drunkards, overseers. Which is another story about just how you get certain traits in your family. Anyway... But I loved her. She was a really sweet, long suffering, patient, good cooking woman. And so when people were laughing at her fear, I felt a chill. It was a real fear, obviously. Oh, absolutely. It was real. So I feel that I was born partly to heal that, to look at it and to see who they both were in essence. And I think who he was in essence, non-alcoholic and non-crazy and non-violent, was a basically thoughtful person. And a gentle person.

And he was the role model for Mr. Herbert?

Yes.

Well, it's very interesting. I find it a lot that you seemingly not only forgive but also love. And I suppose just moving ahead to the new book, which obviously to me is inspired by your marriage, which was terribly happy, you say, and then over and being friends and whatever, it's hard to comprehend that, I guess.

He's a very good man. He's a very, very good person. So it's not really hard. And I think what's really hard is just that you could care a lot for someone and not want to live with them anymore. And your life is calling you somewhere else. And that's pretty much what happened on top of just being really exhausted from being in the situation that we were in. It was too much. We should have known better. But we didn't. We were young and we thought that we could really... And we did. We changed Mississippi a lot. Especially my former husband and his colleagues. They saw that a lot of the desegregation, new laws were enforced. They represented people like... People who really reminded me so much of my parents and grandparents, really poor people, for the first time had someone to defend them. So it took its toll. But there's no blame. And that's what you...

Well, this is the question, I guess. Why isn't there blame?

It's because everybody gets really tired. And I have learned in my own life that...

Going back to your grandfather for a moment, with him I suppose it wasn't a matter of being tired but partly it was a matter of the...

Drunk.

Well, yes, but I was going to say also the acceptance, the traditionalness that this was an allowable approach in those times in that situation.

Well, it was because he had no other outlet for this kind of anger. If he had been angry at the white people who were actually the basic oppressors, he would have been killed right away. And he knew that. And so his anger got twisted and it was the very extremely remarkable African American man who was able to see what that was, that you had to be very careful not to misdirect the anger. If you were angry at the abuse of the overseer, the boss, whoever he was, to find some other way to deal with it rather than hurting your family. This is a very difficult thing.

And it was true in your father's day as well as your grandfather's day.

Oh yes, right. And some people handled it, you know, there were a few men who were known to be men who, no matter what, they never abused their family. Never. And they were of course really looked up to.

Have you been here before?

Never. What do you recommend?

Everything.

Oh good, okay.

Except for the spicy fried shrimp, oh boy, that's the one loser on the menu.

Okay, alright.

I just want to emphasize the specials that we have today because we recommend the CNC scallops that we serve with a celery root puree that's been emulsified with white wine and then olive oil so it has a consistency of creaminess, a little cream sauce, but it's not as heavy.

Did you say scallops?

Scallops, yeah.

Oh, that sounds very good.

We have a lot of beans and a kind of nest of chanterelle and shiitake mushrooms that are sauteed together.

I think I want that.

It's wonderful.

Yeah.

We also have a house-made veal, braised chanel and ravioli. Not in that case, though.

I'll stop.

Well, you can go out there.

No, but I should stop.

Scallops as well.

Scallops as well. Excellent. Shall I start you two with some salads perhaps? Green salad?

Well, does this come with some kind of vegetables that you said?

Just the beans and the mushroom combination.

Oh, yeah. Okay. If you have a small green salad, that would be good.

Anything else you drink an iced tea?

Iced tea would be good.

Yeah.

I got to start with the water.

Anyway, the new book, I realize that some of the stories go back to the earlier, mid-80s than today.

Yes.

What provoked you to do it now? What brought it together with you?

Well, you know, it was sitting on my desk for a while, all except the last story. And I was not going to publish it. And I was in Hawaii, and I was talking to a friend, and she said, I'm really waiting for your next book. And I said, well, it's there on my desk. And she said, what? This was Mililani Trask. I don't know if you know any Hawaiian politics, but she is a very fierce defender of the rights of Hawaiian people. And it started with thinking about completing it and how to complete it and what the significance of it is, you know. And I saw that in writing the memoir about my marriage, the other stories seem to be growing out of it. They represent, in a way, the freedoms and the difficulties that I encounter after leaving that marriage, which have been such a cocoon in many ways.

The marriage was.

The marriage was, because the man that I had married had been so, you know, just very protective and very present and very loyal in many ways, you know, just very dependable. And so after that marriage and after, for him it was impossible to maintain a friendship, which as an Aquarian, friendship is first. It comes before marriage even, you know. But anyway, so the stories I could see represented the freedom, but also some of the terrors, you know, of being outside of a marriage that had been very cocoon-like, at least in its early stages.

Did you ever think about connecting the characters and keeping the same names of the characters, whether factual or not, and make it more novelistic?

No, no, because I thought about doing that and then it didn't feel right. I wanted it to be just more the way it was.

Are they different people, would you say?

Some of them are, but of course some of them aren't.

Olive oil as well, is that also restorative?

Yes, absolutely, absolutely. And the little things that we do for each other when we love each other can have such healing. I mean, and you never really know sometimes where that's going to happen. I mean, who would think that the fact that someone liked the way you smelled when you had oiled yourself with olive oil, loved the way you looked shiny with olive oil, I mean, you know, how would you know that that would be such a healing thing, that you would suddenly feel seen, accepted, loved, natural, you know, that someone could see you and love you in your naturalness? And what an increase then in the degree of intimacy you would have with such a person. I mean, just that little thing, such a wonderful thing. So that was part of why I wanted to write these stories like this.

The first story came last?

Later, in any case. It did, because you know, it came after, you mean the memoir, the little one?

Yes.

Yeah, it came, yes, I think so, except for The Brotherhood of the Saved, that came absolutely last. Because I, by then, was ready to transform all of this into a story that was just fiction, just art, but with the spirits of my parents and my spirit in it, as we might have been had we done these things.

Could you describe what the, admittedly there are somewhat, there are different characters along the way, but sort of the arc of the characters, how they would change from 1984, or whatever the first one was, till now, in your eyes, is there really a big change?

A big change?

It's a change in, you know, how they grow, and how they perceive the world. I'm thinking now, let's see, of Suni and Anne, who in the 60s were in love with the same man. One was married to him, and the other one wanted to be with him, and then they had this whole thing with, you know, doing the 60s thing, where you all go off together, you, the other woman, the man, and the baby. You're speaking from experience, right?

Oh yeah. I mean, we tried everything, it was just so amazing. And then years later, you look back on that, and it's, you know, it was crazy. I mean, it was, but really good crazy. I mean, I don't mean, you know, it's a good thing to have done, because we were trying to see if we could do this, you know, this transformation that always had failed around us. We'd never seen anybody do that. We'd never known anybody who, you know, if you fell in love with someone's husband, and then you, you know, talked to the wife, and she said, well, maybe we can all work this out, and, you know, it's all very, you know. But then years later, they come back around, and they're older, and they realize that, you know, whatever they were working out with this man, they've done it, and now they're free. I mean, they're free, and they're going on to do something else. So one of them is, you know, going to listen to Guru Mai, and loves that life, the meditative life and the guru life. And the other one is telling about this young man who has appeared out of nowhere, and that she is having a wonderful time with, and it's a platonic relationship. I mean, you know, they just go on.

In any case, you haven't thought about publishing the book for a while.

It was sitting there.

It was sitting there.

Oh, and then the other thought was that I'm not sure I want to keep writing. I think that I feel like this is the end of a 30-year cycle, and it's a really good time for me to think about what I want to do for the other 30 years.

Really?

Yes.

In fact, you started writing 30 years ago. You started publishing 30 years ago.

Yeah, and it's been quite a while. So I felt that part of this is to sort of complete that cycle, and it really does.

It was published in 1970, so actually this is your...

And then before that, it was the 68th, my first poetry.

Yeah, so it's 30 years.

So it is 30 years.

Yeah, amazing. I mean, that's a lot of writing.

It's different a lot.

Yeah.

So I spend a lot of time now studying the Dharma, and I'm just really happy sitting contemplating. What is the thing inside now? What is the real internal imperative now? Because I don't want to be doing something that no longer really moves me, and I want to be sure that whatever is coming next is as essential as what I feel has gone before. I mean, everything that I have written in my life has felt really... I feel like I had no choice.

No choice?

No choice, yeah. And I have to say, I like that. I like that feeling, and I don't want to enter another cycle of writing because I know the commitment it takes without feeling that. So I'm just going to see.

You used the expression, no choice, but somebody came across one of the books where you said you called yourself a medium. I was wondering whether you feel that as well.

Well, what I was trying to convey... There's not this thing about channeling or no work, just sitting there. I mean, it all takes a lot of work. But what I was trying to convey was that, especially in The Color Purple, and to some degree in The Temple of My Familiar, I really fell into a kind of grace. I really felt I was in a kind of grace that permitted me to faithfully create what was really real about these people. And it felt like mediumship. It felt so... It just felt like they were there.

Was The Color Purple handed down to you?

It's not like it's handed down, but it feels like my ancestors were just really happy. Just really happy and really there. And I woke with them and I slept with them. And I just felt like... You know, just this absolute feeling of being lucky in that connection, that being able to feel them. I actually felt like both their child and in some ways their servant, because I felt like I changed my life entirely in order to hear. I was living here in New York and I went there. I lived for a while in the country. So I could really hear them.

Was there a moment when you were swimming?

Yeah, I was in New York.

Keep people with The Color Purple for a moment. I think you said at what point that it came while you were swimming, while you were running. It sounded quite almost mystical to me.

It was. I was so happy.

Could you go back and remember the actual moment when it began?

I think I was in New York. I was an editor at Ms. Magazine for a while. And I guess the unconscious was trying to work it out, because I had a dream in which I had bought a little tiny house in Park Slope. This was after I had left the big house with my former husband and I tried to live in a little apartment on Garfield Place. I bought a tiny little house. It was like 12 feet wide. It was a sliver of a house in Park Slope. And I was commuting back and forth. I had this dream in which I went down to the basement of my house. It's interesting because Jung had a dream like this, but mine is different of course. I went down to the basement of my house and discovered a door to a sub-basement, which I didn't know was there. And I went down there and it was just filled with people making things. And they were people I had never... I didn't know them. They all seemed to be South American. And they were all speaking Spanish. So I think that that particular dream eventually led to the Temple of my Familiar, where the people are Spanish-speaking and South American. But I think I knew that the deeper layer of my consciousness was trying very much to emerge. And then I started to hear snippets of dialogue between Shug and Albert, Shug and Sealy.

As members of your family or as characters?

As characters. No, not members of my family and not characters. Spirits really of themselves.

With names attached to them?

Not yet, no. Just a way of speaking. A tone of voice, an attitude. And I realized that they didn't really get through here. I could hear little snippets, almost like a radio, where you just pass by and you hear a little slogan or something. But that in order to get it really clearly and whole, I would have to be somewhere else. So I moved.

Actually, you were not swimming or running through a field when you thought it was boring?

Well, it started here, but then when I got there, that's when it really happened. Running through the fields, swimming, because they had all of the time, they had all of my attention. Absolutely. They really...

I mean, it's about serving your art.

Well, it's about knowing when to serve the art, I guess, whether it's just a delusion or a creative act that you have. And I think the foundation of it was love. I loved my grandparents and I loved my parents. It just was heartbreaking to think that somehow they wouldn't survive. I mean, who they were, the way they sounded. They wouldn't survive in a form that was really thankful to them and loving of them and not interested in caricature.

Only through art they could survive?

I think so, yeah.

Once you began to become very fast?

Yes, I did.

You heard it wrong?

Yes. And I wrote it almost like dictation.

That was part of why I read that, and why I thought the medium thing struck me again, as if you're possessed, in a sense.

Well, inspired. I didn't feel possessed. I just felt far possessed by love, maybe. But I remember there was an article in the New York Times Magazine section after it was published. And they actually photographed some of the pages of my notebook. I just had a little spiral notebook. Because you can see that it is just exactly, you know, it's just exactly. And that goes back, though, to being in a family where I had to hide things. I mean, I couldn't, I had to keep a lot in my mind. I mean, I don't, you know, it feels magical, but it really, when I thought about it, it was from a habit of really letting things form in my mind.

It was more practical than magical, maybe.

More practical. Absolutely. Yeah.

And the stories themselves, some of them came from your family's life.

These stories?

Yeah. Well, the stories in the Color Purple, for example.

Well, vaguely, what is more true to say is that it's the, it's more like the spirit. I mean, I didn't point to real facts exactly, often. Maybe a few. Like, for instance, my grandmother did have two children who died before she married my grandfather. Now, this had been, you know, part of the story of their relationship. But because I loved her, I wanted her to have her own children, so I just created some for her. And because she never went anywhere, I sent her, you know, off to travel. And, I mean, it's, it was so wonderful.

You were able to give more lives to her.

I just gave them adventure and, you know, travel and clothes and money. And, you know, I just gave them everything I could give them.

And your mother didn't actually get to read Color Purple. She was sick.

She was sick. She liked the movie, though. She liked the movie.

But anyway, you were saying that Color Purple and the Temple were the two books that you felt that about, that they came?

Yeah. Very strongly. So they're connected in that way, and it's even more full-blown in The Temple of My Familiar because often I was writing about people that I, you know, had no experience with in the flesh. I mean, I'd read things. I visited countries.

You said a while ago that, for about the 30 years, could you live without writing?

I didn't tell. I've always resisted the belief that, you know, whatever it is that you do, you have to do it always. And also I just want the feeling of freedom, you know, so that if there is more writing, if there's another cycle, you know, that starts, or if there's even one more book, it'll feel like a gift, you know, to me. It'll feel like, you know, great, I'm still connected. And it won't feel like, you know, labor, which I'm not really into. I mean, I work hard, but I wanted to feel that, I wanted to be more than just writing a book. I wanted to mean that I'm connected to creation, basically.

Well, you've produced a lot since Color Purple.

And always, in a way, you know, kind of tottering around in surprise, you know.

I mean, just really...

I don't know how many people know this, but there's actually a real ecstatic side to writing when you really are in the current, you know, with the rest of creativity in the world. Even when it's really horrible, like writing about, writing possessing the secret of joy, which was very difficult, I was so happy that I was allowed to write it.

Oh, can you imagine?

Can you imagine?And all that had gone into making it possible for me to see it, and to feel it, you know, and to be able to look at it without just running like, you know, a really very disturbed person that I was.

The best part is the actual writing of it?

Yes, oh, everything else is very far down the line. Like fame, success, wide readership, all those factors.

Like fame, success, wide readership. Yeah. You'll find this easily.

When you met Langston Hughes, what was fame to me? It seemed too far away, even in content play.

Well, it wasn't too long thereafter, when fame descended or ascended on you.

I don't think I noticed. My family always say, Mom, you are so oblivious, you never notice anything.

But it's true, I mean...

Well, the telephone rang more, there was more mail.

Well, there was mail, oh God, yes.

You know, I had to move to a bigger house and all that. But, yeah, it's, you know, when you're writing it and it's going well, and you really hear the people and you know that they're alive, well, you know, it's kind of like giving birth.

Really. It's sort of funny, a number of women who are novels that I've talked to have said something similar in Buggy the Bird. A number of male novelists and playwrights that I've talked to regard the creative act almost as if it were carpentry. Something like, for one, Athol Fugard is going on, a great letter. He gets out his tools, his utensils, and he sits there.

Wow.

And then there's Arthur Miller's another one, creating a table.

Right.

I don't find women I've talked to ever use such metaphors at all.

It's so organic when it's really working well.

Well, there's a basic difference between men and women, right?

Men and women artists.

Very interesting.

Well, maybe somewhere there's a woman who's creating a table which will turn into a novel, I suppose.

And I understand the love of craft, you know, I mean, that's also a joy. But what I like is when you get the craft and you kind of, you know, you know you have it.

You can write a sentence that does what it needs to do. And then you just, you know, go. I mean, it's like jazz. I mean, it's just like, you know, it just has a life.

Well, I'll just say, beginning with Color Purple, you wrote the rules. You aren't supposed to write a novel like that.

Oh, who cares?

Of course. But I mean, the craft is there, but it's your own adventure.

Right, yeah. Oh, and that's the joy. To create books that are just totally, you know, what they are. I mean, you know, they dictate everything. And, you know, I've tried to write a book that was used in Wednesday before. So I've probably thought about a week or two before I came over. I reread that piece in the Times Magazine some years ago by David Bradley. And I realized, I guess the date was 1984, he actually wrote it before the movie.

Yeah, oh yeah.

Could you picture what he would have written if he had seen the movie?

Oh, God.

Well, as you know, I got really wrecked over the cold.

Oh, yeah, sure.

And answered, you know, but still he would have made so much more out of it.

I'm surprised he never, maybe he did, in fact, come back.

Yeah. That's a subject.

Certainly what my surmise is that the book, the test of the book, including the prizes, changed your life. But then the movie also did that, don't you think?

Well, yeah, and it took a while to really get my legs back, you know.

You're welcome.

Because my life had been so quiet and, you know, I would write these books and go out on tour and then I'd come home and that would be it. I mean, I'd be right back into my life. And with the movie, there was a period of much more intense scrutiny and I was aware of all of the controversy. And it's just, you know, you just feel like something is kind of yanking on you when you know that there are people out there sort of discussing something that you did with just you and the people that you're creating.

You were happy with it.

Yeah.

You've changed your mind several times about the movie though, too. Reading that book you wrote about it seems to have changed you.

Yeah, well, I didn't like it at first because, among other things, it's like…

Well, it wasn't exactly the book.

No, no, but it never is. And I really, you know, I'm at peace with that, actually. And I also continue to really love Steven because I think it took a lot of love on his part as well as courage to actually do it. And I really think that we did, all of us working together, you know, on something that for many of those people was completely foreign. I think we did a really good job. Oh, yum.

Doesn't that look good?

Do you still want the radish I take away?

I don't want anything like that. Oh, this just looks great.

How about your publishers actually come in here?

Really?

They're in the neighborhood.

Oh.

When was the last time you saw the movie?

Oh, years ago. However, people in my family watch it a lot. I think still. Every once in a while, anyway.

It makes me cry.

The movie does, yeah.

Yeah, every time I see it.

The one and only time it did.

I really, it's a very moving film.

Oh, what a good choice.

And even though it wasn't a screenplay, it doesn't.

Well, some of it is because the man who wrote the screenplay would come and say, Oh, Alice, what about this? But no, it's not mine. I mean, I have my, the one that I publish is mine. And you know, I feel that because I was able to publish both the book and my own version of the screenplay, I feel better about the movie because I think for me, so much about life is about learning. It's lessons and things that you can learn from events. You can't control how they come out.

That's great because someone did tell me, you know, I never heard of Whoopi Goldberg and this friend of Robert's when I was with Robert said to him and to me, you know, that there's this wonderful woman at the Rose Theater, you should go and see her, you know, because he knew we were looking down and I loved her immediately. So, you know, he could very well have read this and thought, you know. At the same time, I'm not sure if it was before or after San Francisco, but she did do these various monologues at that point. I guess I just read the book at the same time.

It is. I agree. Yeah.

So, much of my work has been about encountering what is absolutely taboo, not just wife beating and child molestation, but genital mutilation, interracial level, all of that. It's been very exciting to write about what hasn't been written and to understand that by doing that you are making a mirror for people. That's what you said. And I remember also a couple of years ago, I had an idea for a book called The Book of Life. It was a book that I wrote and I had a panel discussion with some women's theater group of women playwrights. And the question I raised to all the women was Suzanne Laurie Parks in Wendy, Washington, and others. I said, are there any subjects that are taboo for you as writers? Right.

Right

And Suzanne Laurie spoke up right away. She said, any time that I hear that a subject is taboo, she said, that's what I want to write about. Yes. And I thought, in a sense, that's almost what you were saying.

The great nature of the controversy over it makes you want to write about it. Is that your follow up?

Well, it's about liberation for me. It's about seeing an area in which people are not free and having such a strong instinct for freedom and wanting people to have it, that it's almost unbearable to know that somebody is not having at least the possibility.

So, yeah. And then if you add to that, that there are subjects that are literally taboo. I mean, they kill people in some countries who even talk about female genital mutilation.

And, for instance, did you know the first woman, black woman, the African woman in South Africa, who publicly declared that she had AIDS, was stoned to death by her community? See, I mean, so something like that, when you hear something like that, you think, my God, you cannot then let all the rest of the women in this country think that if they say they're sick, they're going to be stoned to death. You cannot. So immediately, that would, you know, however, I mean, I didn't have to because there are all these other people now who are just as shocked, just as upset, and in fact, you know, they re-educated the people in the community, and they've had a big education campaign in South Africa, and they now consider this woman, you know, a kind of hero because she did have the courage. I mean, she'd been infected by her husband. And then, you know, to gather her courage and say for the first AIDS Awareness Day they had, and to be stoned, I mean, isn't it just?

Is that the sort of thing that you might want to write about?

Maybe, but I don't know. I mean, you know, I feel, you know, it's just, it's just that, you know, I really do get it that I've been given something really precious, and I have to wait. I have to wait until I really know, you know, that it's time to use it. I can't just, and when it's clear that this is for me to do, then I, you know, I can act. And see, this is what meditation does for you. It makes you able to wait. Also, there's a danger, I suppose, in people wanting to use you. I think of that anecdote about, was it Ford? Which butcher used your picture? People try all kinds of things.

What are the things that come across?

Well, the most painful one, actually, is just the people who want me to endorse books, I mean, and blurb things. And I do a lot of them because they are very, you know, necessary and important, but sometimes I feel it's just too much. I mean, I can't read all the books. I can't see all the films. I can't, you know, I can't respond to all the requests for, you know, whatever. And I actually had to change my assistant from a woman who was completely accommodating, tried to be, you know, at my expense, to one who was able to just say, well, no, she can't do that. Because, as you know, the need is great, I mean, you know, for the change that we need to have happen. And when people feel like you can help it, I mean, you know, and you can't blame them for wanting you to help, but there's just so much of me or you or, you know, whoever. But it's also meaningful to those writers, for example, that you would, you know, in the same way with Oprah when she does put a book on her program, it automatically changes lives.

Exactly, yeah. I have such admiration for her. You know, I don't watch television, but, you know, you don't have to. She's such a force, you know. You can't miss her.

I mean, you can't miss her. And her impact has been, I think, really incredibly positive and, you know, miraculous. I mean, here she is, this woman from Mississippi, and, you know, I'm just amazed.

Are you walking on a book tour? Is this a book tour?

This is. I go to, I do a Barnes and Noble reading tonight, and then I go to Boston, and then I go home for the weekend, and then I go up to Seattle and Portland, L.A., another weekend at home, and then I go to the south.

What are you going to read today?

I don't know. I just got to wait until I get there and I feel how it feels, and then I'll know. Another thing meditation does, it makes you in the moment. You trust the moment.

That's a good lesson. Can you always trust the moment?

Well, it's the only thing you have.

Yeah.

I mean, someone might stand up and ask, you know, a very offensive question or something.

Oh, they have. Believe me. Doesn't matter.

You don't respond with meditation, do you?

I respond with whatever is in the moment for me, and sometimes they're shocked. And sometimes so am I.

Tell me something. Why pretend? Do you point to any of the incidents?

Oh, God. My memory's not that good. But it's just that, um.

Dessert if you prefer. We have cappuccinos, espresso, lattes, regular decaf coffins.

One special dessert.

I don't think so. Not for me.

They're very good if you like dessert.

The dessert special today is like espresso creme brulee with sambuco whipped cream with a fast-fry cookie. Coffee or tea?

Coffee or tea?

You're going to have anything?

I'll have coffee.

Okay, I'll have tea. Do you have herbal tea?

Peppermint and chamomile.

Good. Chamomile.

Anyway, can you think of an incident?

Oh. Worst incident. Oh.

Do you have any information about the incident?

Oh. I can't really. I mean, there's so many, you know, that seem borderline. But not so much anymore.

I mean, I think when people would get up and, you know, try to tell me that I should not have made a movie of The Color Purple, or that I should not be involved in trying to stop FGM. But the funny thing is that, you know, when you feel like you're living your life as close to the way, you know, you have to, I mean, just because of your own spirit, and you answer out of that, it takes away the sting of the hostility. I mean, in other words, my point is always that, you know, I am just being. And this is what you get. And there's nothing I can do about it. And you're free to not like it.

Well, what about the people out there, including critics, who would say, why didn't you write another Color Purple?

Oh, good grief. Why? That's like saying, why don't you have another child? One is plenty. Really.

You haven't been happy with your critics at all, have you?

I have not had really good ones, generally. I mean, I feel like most of what they say is so superficial and boring, and it's not about what I'm writing about. And so often I have to say I don't read them. I mean, because it's as if they're writing about somebody else. When I have had good critics, I've enjoyed them. I mean, I remember there was a woman, Deborah McDowell, that I liked a lot, because she would, her criticism was very thoughtful. She sort of had a holistic view and knew some of the history. But you know, I feel the honest truth is that I don't think critics can help me. I really don't. I mean, I feel like I'm really doing the best I can do with what I see my job here to be. I mean, I really am. And I'm doing it in the way that, I have to say it this way, that my ancestors really like. And that they're tougher on me than critics are. Much.

You mean my Aunt Sally?

Yeah.

Whoever she is in this story. I don't mean that even, because she was alive when she said that. But I mean that I feel very much accountable to literal ancestors. I mean, people who have been dead for the hour long, they've been dead. And that to maintain the connection that I feel with them, you know, I have to maintain a certain level of, I don't know, commitment, fidelity, truth. And beside that, the criticism is just so sometimes beside the point, I mean, really.

Not to mention how painful it is to realize that you just almost completely misunderstood.

Well, that's the worst I would say.

It's very hard. I mean, when I learned that there were people who actually read The Color Purple and thought I hated anybody.

Especially men, especially black women.

It was so difficult. I couldn't understand how they could feel that way. I really...

And also the implication of that was, you know, difficult because, and I've seen this lived out. I feel that because of that criticism, I have been cut off from a generation of young black men. And I think this is a tragedy because reading me could have helped them. And I know it. So it's very painful. You know, because they've been really taught and indoctrinated that, you know, I hate them and that's all there is to it. And why read somebody who hates you and da da da da da da. And so it's only been in the last, you know, I guess five or six years that that has really changed. And I'm getting a connection to, you know, young black men who read for themselves and think for themselves. And are not so swayed by the older men who are more threatened.

Well, that's a good sign.

It is. Yeah. Also, I think because I've been really involved in the Mumia Abu Jamal case, been trying to get him out and, you know, so young black men who are politicized around that issue, you know, actually get to see me, you know, being active and understanding of that situation. And so it's helpful.

Did you watch the debate last night?

No, I was in the. I did something and then I went out to eat. So we missed it. Do you see it? Yes.

Yes.

It was just brought to mind one moment in which something said about that that man who was his name was dragged to his death in Texas. The subject was brought up and Bush said with kind of a sort of a kind of a silly grin on his face. He said, well, he said, we're going to kill it. We're going to kill the three people who killed him. And big smile on his face like, you know, he's a madman.

He is. He's a madman.

What a response. You know, he killed somebody every two weeks. I mean, I was reading that somewhere.

That's the point. He's going to kill three more. Actually, only two out of three had it wrong.

But he would do it with a sort of like a we got him.

Yeah, no, no, that's really terrible.

Yeah, I'm really I would like Ralph Nader and Winona LaDuke to be on the you know, to be heard.

You know, I think it's just absurd that we get to listen to these two people as if they're the only people to listen to.

They're not. Believe me. What's the interesting point?

If Nader was actually on that debate, I mean, he would. I mean, he never has a chance, of course, but he was like, pick up.

Imagine what it would be like just to have ideas that are different and views that are different.

Or a program. Exactly. And we're desperate for it. I mean, I mean, we deserve better. We deserve, you know, to hear all kinds of views. I mean, we're very varied as a country.

Why?

And I have to say, you know, I'm so I'm so moved by the fact that Nader just keeps going and he just keeps plugging away.

You know, the only future. There's no, you know, nothing there for him in a sense. But, you know, there is and it's for him and it's for all of us is to see that there is someone who represents us, because just as he's not permitted to speak in that forum, we aren't.

You know, and he makes us really see that. And that's really good.

All those people who really think we're living in a democracy.

I just wish Gore were a better person.

I know.

Sometimes I like him. You know, I mean, there's a way in which he's he can be very.

I'm sorry. I just I wanted to tell you that your story to hell with dying. I had a serious. I read it a hundred times.

You are so welcome.

I had a Mr. Sweet in my life. Bless you.

That all the time. I do. I get it often. I'm so glad. I love to see.

I know I even feel like I can identify maybe it's just because they come up to me.

But sometimes I feel I can tell the people who read my work because they seem a little freer. You know, they seem a little less burdened by, you know, the crap from. And I like that. I like that.

My son.

More.

This is a very interesting interview that you did with the woman I know, Eleanor Wachtell from the Canadian Broadcasting Company.

Did a telephone.

A couple of things. One was referred to your advantageous heritage, which we probably pretty much talked about. Sometimes you think that struggles about identity will never will never end. That was that. Do you mean that on a personal level as well as a.

I guess what I mean is that many people are unable to face their identity, and especially as it changes, it's not fixed. It changes. And so you you're you're asked to continually sort of reassess what it is.

Could you describe yourself now?

Well, a few of the things I know about myself is that I have a tri-racial. Tri-racial. Tri-racial. Black, white, Indian.

Yeah. African-American, Native American and Euro.

You know, the Scotch Irish part.

Probably tri-spiritual as well.

You know, I was raised as a Christian and, you know, now I love Buddhism and I love Earth religion.

You weren't Jewish when you were married to a Jewish man.

No.

No. That would have made it quad right.

That would have made it quite right. Exactly. And I also love both women and men and trees.

So that's three trees. They're all three. You can always hug a tree.

So and that's always changing. I mean, it's always it's always getting more. It's always, you know, it's very fluid.

And I think one of the reasons I love Buddhism is because one of its primary observations is that there is no self.

I mean, you know, that is just so we're all made up. We think there's a self. But if we sit long enough, another thing that meditation helps you with, you see that, you know, what you think of as yourself is always changing. It's always, you know, it's here and then it's not here. So that's what I meant. You know, just that, you know, the way other people see you, the way they need to classify you. People unfortunately just get stuck there trying to pin down something that's really always moving.

And always will move.

Yes, hopefully.

Because I find with myself that I love I love watching myself change. I love seeing that there's all there's more here. There's a bigger room to move into. There's and I don't know about you, but, you know, your dreams often will tell you that you're about to move into a bigger area. You know, in your what you can hold psychically and in your consciousness because you will start to dream about houses. And you'll be in a house and suddenly you'll go to through a door and there'll be a couple of rooms you never knew you had in your house.

Has this ever happened to you?

Yeah, as a matter of fact. And I wake up and I wonder where was that house?

You are the house. You are the house.

And some whole other area. Is this Freud?

No, this is just this is just paying a lot of attention to your growth. And understanding how your dreams are totally about you know what's going on.

I'll think on that.

Yeah, it's true.

But houses is not just because you want to get rid of our deadbeat tenant who doesn't pay any rent.

That's not what I dream about.

But houses is not because you want to get rid of a deadbeat tenant who pays nothing or hardly anything in rent.

You mean that's what you have literally literally.

So you think that you said you were dreaming about the house that dream about a house somewhat emptied house.

Well that's interesting. It's possible. It's possible. It's probably more personal. I think you're probably right. You never know.

Are you reading anything now? Any book at all recently?

Oh yeah. I'm always reading something. You know what the most wonderful book is by my Dharma teacher Jack Kornfield. And it's called After the Ecstasy the Laundry. It's wonderful.

Your ex-husband has read the book.

Oh yes. I've sent it before I would publish it of course.

What did he say?

He loved it. Poor thing. Oh I say that because you know he's just a dear person. It just ended. It just ended I say. That's all. Well you know it ended and then the friendship ended. And that's the hard part. And I think it was just too much on his part to maintain. I don't think he knew how. I don't think. I mean it didn't seem. You know when we were married his mother sat Shiva.

I don't know if that's in the notes but there seems to be more of a tolerance for just trying to cut things off.

And it doesn't work well. You know I mean it just doesn't. I think for him. I mean he is he he thought that emotionally it would be better and probably less painful or whatever. But I think after 20 years there is a sense that we both have of loss. You know because there there's nobody else on earth. That we can talk to about certain things that happened during the time that we were together there. Nobody.

Except you could talk about it in your writing in some way. Well you know I could. But you know what. When you don't have somebody who that you talk to that remembers. So you just kind of. You know it loses something even even in the writing. I mean I have written a lot and I think he he tends to he really love the folk language in Mississippi. He started talking like we used to see that we said well you actually sound more like a cracker. But he would you know he would talk the talk. And I think that was his way of trying to remember.

How was your time at Sarah Lawrence.

Well it was mixed. It was great for my writing because people understood what writing was. I loved you know my teachers. But it was extremely lonely. And I was you know probably the poorest student they'd ever had at the school. That was hard.

But you're saying I'm OK.

You are.

Ten eleven.

I had a book out last year a biography of Edward Albee.

Really. What's it called.

Edward Albee a singular journey. Simon Schuster wrote it.

You have a copy. I don't have with me.

I've done a number of books. That was the last one. Got very good reviews except in the New York Times.

Oh really.

Oh I was down in the country.

It's been a long time. Three and a half years on.

So what did you think after three years.

Well I began by liking his work and just found out so much more about his life. Among the playwrights incredibly interesting. And as in the title of Singular Life a singular journey a very lonely life in many ways. Adopted the age of two weeks and brought up by a very rich couple in Westchester and never never tracked down his natural parents. And so much of his work comes out of the life that he led up there in Westchester with his family.

Had no understanding of all at all. You know who he was and what he was what he wanted to write.

Gosh I had no idea but I dealt pretty deeply into it. It was not authorized but he was very cooperative. I've known him a long time. We talked just endlessly about his alcoholism. Just everything he wants.

Wow.

Imagine being that mind and that spirit in a house. In a house that nobody knew. That nobody knew what they had.

Well did they know what they had with you?

No. Come to think of it. No.

Maybe every artist is a singular journey. I think so. I think so.

Thanks a lot. Thank you. I appreciate it.

Well I will find that. I would like to read it. Because I found his work is very strange. Some of it is really wonderful and some of it I just am puzzled by. Some of it is puzzling. But also as I do point out in the book that almost all of it comes right out of his life.

Yes.

There is a certain twist to it. Somebody like Tennessee Williams you know how it comes out of his life.

You don't with all of it but in fact it all does.

I tend to be more trusting of work like that. Because I know that there is no choice.

You are dealing with the stuff. You are dealing with...

Well you have what you have. Talk about your family heritage. That is your heritage.

That is your material. Exactly. Right.

And it really is entrusted to you. I often marvel at the fact that I, coming from this little place in the countryside of Georgia, should actually end up at Sarah Lawrence as a place where I would start learning my craft. I mean how is that? Surely I am then expected by somebody who is all around me to do something with that. Not to honor this passage. Gosh. I don't think I would have made it.

Was that the first turning point? To Sarah Lawrence more than Spelman?

Oh I think Sarah Lawrence encouraged me because when I got there people, you know as Spelman I would say I am a writer. I am writing poetry. You can publish in the poetry magazine. But nobody really got how it is a passion. It is a hard thing. And at Sarah Lawrence with Muriel Rukeyser and Jane Cooper and all those people, it was, oh you are a writer. Great. Well here is a pen. I mean whatever.

Right. It just felt more like home in that way.

And they weren't afraid of my strangeness, whatever it was. I mean now that I am older I can see that when you encounter a young person who is somewhat strange, you know that there is a reason and that they are bringing whatever strange gift they are.

When you say strange, what do you think?

Well at Spelman I always felt I didn't fit at all anywhere. I mean I love poetry and books and music and I paid as much attention to Russian literature, Tolstoy for instance, as many of the other girls paid to make up and clothing and boys. So when I got to Sarah Lawrence I realized that everybody was already really what they were going to be. I mean they were just, the painters were painting, the writers were writing, the dancers were dancing, the singers were singing and nobody cared anything about makeup. Nobody wore any. Nobody cared very much about, I mean they had lovers but the lovers were not uppermost. The art was. And so to have teachers who accepted that and thought it was fine was so good for me.

And that's why in meditation when Muriel popped up I was really glad to see her. And I was glad to see that she was well. Because she and I, it's hard when you have nothing and people are helping you and if you have pride as well, which I always did, we would have battles.

So toward the end it wasn't as close as it had started out.

So it was great to see her and just to feel that that was completely healed.

In terms of work, the first novel came after Sarah Lawrence or during Sarah Lawrence?

After.

After, yeah.

Well I've enjoyed this very much more than I thought I would.

I do too.

Yeah, good.

Good to meet you.

Well, interviews aren't easy. I mean that's, having occasionally been on the other side of the fence.

Oh yeah, God, I was telling somebody how shortly after Martin Luther King was assassinated I went to interview Coretta. And first of all the machine, I thought it was working, I'm terrible with these things. And it had been running, running, running, and nothing was on it.

It's working.

And then I asked her a question which I thought was really important and I still think is important. It was about him dancing. Because he had a reputation for being a really good dancer, Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr.

And she was offended I think, you know. And I think she really misunderstood my interest. I wasn't trying to make him appear frivolous. I was wanting to share this life that he had.

He was someone who had a lot of life, I mean a lot of spirit.

And it wasn't all quote spirituality. It was spirit in the sense of fun. He had a really great sense of humor. And legend had it he was also a great dancer. And I really thought that was so lovely.

It's also a wonderful antidote to somehow great people you assume somehow they're more or less than human.

I know and boring and dull and can't move, you know.

So yeah, I have been on the other side.

I was just reading the review today of the book about Einstein. I was just reading the review today of the book about Einstein. It's called Einstein in Love. About Einstein and the various women.

Really?

It's a serious book.

Oh fantastic.

He had a lot of lovers?

Fantastic. What's the name of this book?

It's called Einstein in Love.

Go Einstein.

He was terrible to women too.

Oh yeah, I'm sure he was.

He ditched his first wife to marry his second cousin. Had many affairs along the way. And he would do it with children. You name her.

Yeah, well there you have it.

Rascal.

It's close to a rascal.

You have your driver outside.

Yeah.