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Kevin Brockmeier is the bestselling author of the novels The Brief History of the Dead and The Truth About Celia. He is also the author of the story collections Things That Fall from the Sky and The View from the Seventh Layer. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, McSweeney's, and The Best American Short Stories anthologies, to name a few. He lives in Little Rock, Arkansas.

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BP: Your novel The Brief History of the Dead is fairly compact (something like 252 pages). Leo Tolstoy's War & Peace, by contrast, is 1,465 pages in the 2006 paperback. Lately I noticed novels are trending shorter. So I wondered: Are there any benefits to writing a compressed story or novel? What -- if anything -- would those advantages be?

 

KB: I suppose that the shorter forms permit a clarity of line and allow for a more singular emotional effect than the longer ones do. As a reader, I find that there's a big difference between the books I'm capable of finishing in a single sitting, or at least a single day (although I actually did read Anna Karenina in one single marathon session when I was in grad school), and the books I have to absorb piece by piece over many days or weeks. And I have to say that many of the great big books that everyone celebrates as the crowning achievements of modern literature strike me as tedious and bloated and ultimately exhaust my patience.

 

Look, I love War and Peace and Anna Karenina and The Magic Mountain, and more recently I loved Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, and The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll, and Cryptonomicon, all gigantic ambitious novels that venture widely across time and space. But the novels I love the most, the ones that best live up to my vision of what a novel ought to be, are all relatively short books, between 200 and 300 pages, that bring such compassion and sharpness of vision to the world and to the creatures that inhabit it that every single aspect of experience seems to blossom open between their pages and I feel this almost holy awareness of the wealth and sadness and beauty of existence coming at me in a single powerfully contained burst---novels such as James Agee's A Death in the Family, Walter Tevis's The Man Who Fell to Earth, Chris Fuhrman's The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping, John Williams's Stoner, and Bohumil Hrabal's I Served the King of England, to name a few.

 

I think that in my own books what I'm struggling to do is replicate that experience; though I may not succeed, that's my aim.

 

BP: I read in your biography that you taught for a while at the Iowa Writer's Workshop. What was that like? What are your thoughts on writing workshops in general? Do they offer aspiring writers much-needed community? Or are they, as some critics have charged, cookie-cutter writer factories?

 

KB: I'm not going to say that it never happens that workshops frighten writers out of their best qualities. When I was in grad school, I had one classmate who came into the program writing what I thought were deeply interesting, idiosyncratic stories marked indelibly by her own individual way of perceiving the world and left it writing dull, careful stories in the sub-Raymond-Carver minimalist mode. (That was my take on the situation; I suspect she would say that she matured and grew into her own voice.) But I think that far more often writers walk out of a workshop (a good one, at least) with a richer notion of what they're capable of achieving, and also a helpful sense of what it's like to write to a specific, highly responsive audience.

 

I don't know that any workshop can magically transform you into a better writer---that's slow work, and it has to be done on your own, mainly through lots of writing and lots of reading---but I think it can and should turn you into a better editor.

 

As for what it was like to teach at Iowa, I'll say that it was intimidating. It was the first time I had taught at the graduate level---the first time I had taught at all in several years---and initially I wasn't quite sure what my role in class ought to be. The students there are all such talented critics, and I knew I was never the sole authority on whatever topic we happened to be discussing. I found my footing after a while, though, and I did my best to respond honestly to every story we discussed on its own terms. I'll add that one thing my semester there reminded me of was that I'm capable of using language extemporaneously, something that it's easy to forget when you spend every day alone in front of a computer, slowly attempting to polish a handful of sentences.

 

In any case, I'll be returning there to teach again next spring, and I plan to offer the same classes I offered in 2005: the standard graduate fiction workshop and a separate workshop for students writing children's or young adult fiction.

 

BP: Most authors read an eclectic range of books. Many even draw inspiration for their own writing from the writings of others. I noticed in The Brief History of the Dead that the epigraph, taken from James Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me, is central in the plot of the novel. What is the book you find yourself returning to again and again for inspiration? Put another way: What's your favorite story, or the one you enjoy the most, and why?

 

KB: I have a long list of favorite novels, and another long list of favorite short stories---and I mean that quite literally. I keep an ongoing list of both my fifty favorite novels and my fifty favorite stories, in alphabetical order by the author's last name, and with asterisks beside my current top ten, all of which I'm constantly updating and reconsidering. This is just one of the ways I waste time when I really ought to be writing.

 

I suppose, though, that if I were to name my single favorite novel, it would be The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino. And if I were to name my single favorite short story, it would be "The Thistles in Sweden" by William Maxwell. Both strike me as ideal pieces of fiction: wholly absorbing, flawlessly crafted, with a tone that's slightly fantastic and tender and even joyful without ever losing sight of the pain and melancholy in the world.

 

BP: Your story "The Year of Silence" appeared this year in Best American Short Stories 2008 (edited by Salman Rushdie). What inspired you to include a secret message to readers in Morse code as part of the story's deeper structure? And what, in general, does this story mean to you as you re-read it now?

 

KB: It was the Morse Code bit that gave birth to the story, actually. I had this notion of ending a story with  the words dot and dash repeating in a long sequence. It was the verbal effect that appealed to me---a string of abrupt one-syllable words, meaningless on the surface, or rather with all the meaning wrapped up in the simple sound of the letters; words that were almost confrontational, but that contained a little Easter egg message inside them if you bothered to crack them open. The sound of the words still seems more significant to me, though, more to-the-point, than the message itself. The idea lingered with me for a while before I found a story that I thought would suit it: a story in which a city achieves and later dismantles a system of perfect silence.

 

Of course, I'm thrilled that Mr. Rushdie selected the story for Best American, and earlier this month he even hosted a reading of it at Symphony Space in New York City. That said, I'm not sure that "The Year of Silence" is one of the strongest pieces in my new collection. My own favorites are "The View from the Seventh Layer" (which is the title story), "Andrea Is Changing Her Name," and "A Fable with Slips of White Paper Spilling from the Pockets."

 

BP: I ask this question often: John Gardner once wrote that the question he was most asked was, "Do you write with a pen, a pencil... or what?" He said he thought this question delved into the mystical aspect of writing, brought up the "kinds of things compulsive gamblers are said to worry about," and questions, at its deepest level, whether there is in fact any hope for success in the world of a writer. So I have to ask, do you write with a pen, a pencil... or what? Is there any hope, and, if there is, what is your best advice to students and aspiring authors?

 

KB: I write using a word processing program (WordPerfect Version 12, for what it's worth). Then, when I've finished a story, I print it out and revise it with an ink pen (a Cross ball-point with a fine black tip, again for what it's worth) before I type in my corrections. I'm a typist of little technique---I still get by using just two fingers---but I write so slowly that it's never been a problem.

 

The two pieces of advice that every working writer would offer every aspiring writer are to read as much as you can and to write as diligently as you are able. Those are recommendations that I think nobody would question. Aside from that, I think it's useful to discover whether you're the kind of writer who moves a story forward sentence by sentence or paragraph by paragraph; they're two different ways of conveying meaning, and knowing which one suits you can help you find your voice. I find it useful to remember that the best writing usually has a kind of music behind it, flowing along underneath the prose, and it's good to allow your sentences to find their own particular rhythm and adapt yourself to it. But then, too, there is this piece of advice I read recently from Antoine de Saint-Exupery: "If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea."

 

Dennis Lehane is the bestselling author of Mystic River and Gone, Baby, Gone. Mr. Lehane graciously agreed to take some time and answer a few questions for "Ask the Writer," including his thoughts on the movie business, his upcoming novel The Given Day (Sept. 2009), and whether there is in fact any hope for the aspiring novelist.

Just what does it take to make it as a writer? What are the perks and pitfalls of a writing life? And, perhaps most importantly, does Dennis Lehane hate ballpoint pens? Read on to find out.

Q:  In your forthcoming novel, The Given Day, you vividly bring to life an expanse of Boston history, from the Spanish influenza outbreak to the Police Strike of 1919. What was it like to write such a sweeping, complicated, and intricate novel?

A:  The short answer is it sucked. I would strongly recommend nobody ever attempt a historical epic. It's for crazy people. Way too much hard work. I'm glad it's done. I hope it's good.

Q:  What is your favorite aspect of writing, or of being a writer? Can you think of a specific story to go along with that part of your writing life?

A:  Sometimes, you go to your desk first thing in the morning and there's nothing in your head but the lyrics to Viva Las Vegas. Yet, somehow by the end of the day, you've created characters from nothing but ether and had them walk around doing interesting things. That "somehow" is why I love what I do. I also like having a job that doesn't require shaving. I enjoy being able to crack a beer at work if I feel like it. If I wore pajamas, I could spend my entire work day in them; I don't wear pajamas, but the principle still applies.

 Q: Events in The Given Day sometimes eerily parallel 21st century America. As I read the book I came to understand that this is not the first time America has faced such broad insecurity. To what extent did these parallels--the immigration tensions, terrorism threats, and economic uncertainties, to name a few--inform your writing for a contemporary audience?

A:  The parallels reared their head very early. I had no hand in that; the gods wrapped me a gift. All I had to do was put it to paper; editorializing or commenting on the parallels in any fashion would have been redundant. History proves that, time and time again, fear or the perception of powerlessness produces fascist impulses in people and societies. The more afraid you are, the more vicious and infantile you usually become. I don't think I say anything revolutionary in that regard with The Given Day, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be said and said as much as possible.

Q:  Two of your previous novels--Mystic River and Gone, Baby, Gone--were made into major Hollywood films (to critical acclaim). How was your experience with those films, from preproduction to premier, and how do you view the relationship between film making and publishing?

A:  Film and books share a narrative identity, but that's about it. Film is passive entertainment; books are active. Film is interpretative of the book it adapts, but the book itself is procreative in a way that film can't be. Put another way, if a film is an omelet, the book is the hen. My experience with film, thus far, has been overwhelmingly positive. I've been blessed with two terrific scripts, two exceptionally talented directors (who, oddly, both came from an acting background) and their interpretations have been respectful of the source material without making the mistake of being reverential. Can't say enough about Señors Eastwood and Affleck really--both were true gentlemen in every sense of the word, both were very determined to deliver visions of my novels that were decidedly un-Hollywood, and both invited me into the process at the earliest stages and kept me involved through the premieres and, in the case of Mystic River, well into awards' season. In both cases, outstanding omelets.

Q:  John Gardner once wrote that the question he was most asked was, "Do you write with a pen, a pencil... or what?" He said he thought this question delved into the mystical aspect of writing, and questions, at its deepest level, whether there is in fact any hope for the young writer. So I have to ask, do you write with a pen, a pencil... or what? Is there any hope, and, if there is, what is your best advice to students and aspiring authors?

A:  Why wouldn't there be hope? You wake up, you decided you want to tell a story, you try that thing. Right from Jump Street, you are involved in an act of creation and what's more hopeful than that? Where people make a potentially catastrophic mistake is to think they can take shortcuts. Sorry, but there aren't any. No matter what the How To Write a Bestseller books tell you (normally written by people who've never written bestsellers; interesting) or the "10 Tips to Writing the Perfect Thriller Every Time!" articles in writers magazines, the truth is that this is hard, hard work. It is not for the lazy or those who confuse wanting something with earning it. Good writing is about depth--depth of character and structure and insight and language. If you're not willing to accept that and earn your keep, well, maybe there is no hope. But if you are willing to work, then, heck, there's no reason you can't be the next Toni Morrison.

      I write with a pen and it's got to be a rollerball. I hate ballpoint like I hate cilantro. In fact, if ballpoint was all that was left in the world, I might never produce another line.

Benjamin Percy is the author of a novel, The Wilding (forthcoming from Graywolf in 2009), and two books of stories, Refresh, Refresh (Graywolf, 2007), and The Language of Elk (Carnegie Mellon, 2006). His fiction and nonfiction appears in Esquire, Men's Journal, the Paris Review, the Chicago Tribune, Glimmer Train, and Best American Short Stories, among other publications. His honors include the Plimpton Prize and a Pushcart Prize. He teaches in the MFA program at Iowa State.

What follows is an interview from 417 Magazine, which has been cut down and modified into an oral history. My lunchtime conversation with Mr. Woodrell took the better part of an hour. He arrived at 11:30, and I interviewed him for this feature. Then we just talked and ate a little lunch. Turns out he likes L.A. and lived at one point in San Francisco. He lately had returned from speaking in Jackson, Wyoming, in the valley of the Teton Mountains. He loves the Russian writers, Lev Tolstoy and Feodor Dostoevsky, and he even drew some inspiration, early on, from Isaac Babel's stories about the Red Calvary.

Someday I may transcribe the whole thing, which would be a long process, but for now I'll re-print what the editors of thought would work best for their issue. If you ask me, the talk was fascinating and worth devoting more words to. Another wonderful, in-depth interview with Mr. Woodrell is available on NPR, where he discusses Winter's Bone. A full list of his books is available on Amazon.


What It Feels Like to Ride with the Devil

by Daniel Woodrell, as told to Ben Pfeiffer

Woe to Live On came out in 1987 and disappeared with scarcely a trace. I thought that was the end of it. It's the lowest-selling book I've ever written, even though a lot of people love it. It slowly worked its way into people's hands. There was a woman at that time who was a reader for a producer in New York; he was looking for something about war. She pushed that book; he decided to try something else. But she remembered it. Ten years later she was working for Ang Lee, he's shooting Sense & Sensibility, and he allegedly says, "Get me a war movie next."

She remembered the novel and had a copy, because it was out of print. He read it and said yes. The first thing was the title. The people at the studio said they will not have a movie with Woe in the title. They had to go to a lot of trouble to find a title everyone was comfortable with. I'm not crazy about the title myself... The movie's is Ride with the Devil.

They were very nice to us all along: James Schamus, currently the head of Focus Features, but then he was our screenwriter, and Ang Lee. I got to go to the set a few times, and I watched them shoot the raid on Lawrence, 300 horsemen spread out, riding down a hill into an encampment. This was a pretty amazing spectacle. It was exciting to see actors and actresses using my dialogue. I could see how well the lines worked, if at all. It's the ultimate test of dialogue.

In the end, they were amazingly faithful to the original novel.

Keith Ferrazzi is the best-selling author of Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship At A Time. When I worked for Keith in college, I had time to interview him about how building professional relationships, and about how Never Eat Alone can be applied to college life. The interview is two years old (almost to the day) and was first published on my old site. I have reprinted it here as part of my Ask the Writer series. This interview is about college only; writers interested in relationships and Never Eat Alone should follow this link. Although most writers hate to admit it, relationship building is important in finding a publisher. Business plays a key role in writing and in the university. As an instructor, I highly recommend students check out Keith's advice below.

 BP: Are fun and professionalism mutually exclusive? College students have a lot of fun, not necessarily drink or sex, but also simply keeping late hours, watching movies, playing games, and so on. Yet many still manage to maintain solid GPAs and social networks. Can fun and professionalism co-exist at college? Where is the line between excess self-gratification and overwork?

 KF: Having fun and being professionally successful are absolutely not mutually exclusive. The problem is when people get the impression that they have to overdo the fun in college because they won't have a good time once they start full-time jobs after college. And that couldn't be further from the truth. In fact, most of the work I do with organizations is helping their people build stronger personal relationships within the firm, so they work better together, and, frankly, have more fun together at work. We practice what we preach in my firm Ferrazzi Greenlight, too. We're always doing things like touch football, outdoor boot camp workouts, and having parties at my house. Getting to know each other better through fun stuff like that actually adds to our respect for each other as professionals and people.

BP: In college, it seems that many students don't start networking until they reach their senior year: as if college is separated from the rest of life somehow (many people say that leaving college means entering the real world--implying that college is part of a fake world, or that it isn't true life.) Is what they say true? If so, what can college students do to enter the real world long before they are forced to?

KF: If by your senior year you don't already have relationships with working professionals who have mentored you and given you internships, then you won't be "networking." You'll just be job-hunting. If I could only give you one piece of advice it would be this: Build it before you need it. Start during your first year - and if you're past that, then just start now! - getting to know the people who can help you get where you want to go. Too many college students tell me they don't have time to start building these relationships. That's absolute B.S. You don't have time to meet or have a discussion on the phone with one - just one - working professional per month whom you admire, someone you respect and want to be like someday? Of course you can do that. It's all about choices. If you choose to hide behind the veil of "If I get good grades, then I'll get a good job" nonsense, you're job-hunting will be difficult, painful, and unforgiving. And don't use excuses like, "I'll never get a sweet job like Johnny because my dad doesn't own his own company like Johnny's dad does." That's bogus, too. My mom was a cleaning lady and my dad was a steelworker. I wasn't born with a silver spoon. But I chose not to let that hold me back. You can make your own nepotism. You can get access to people who can help you achieve your dreams. But you have to decide to do that and start now. Build it before you need it.

BP: It seems that college students are less likely to behave professionally in social situations, and some are completely disrespectful (come to class unshaven, disheveled, hung-over, or even drunk, attend guest lectures in pajamas, text message each other during tests, watch Lost trailers on their video iPods, etc.) What are your suggestions for impressing upon these students the importance of reconciling their social and academic lives?

KF: That's your call to go to class hung-over and un-showered. Just don't expect to be able to go to your professor when you need a reference letter and her write about how you have your act together. You're missing out if you think you have to disrespect authority to be cool with your peers. You're also not getting it if you think you have to act overly uptight to be cool with professors and industry professionals. There is a balance you can strike where your friends will respect you and older people will also be impressed. Honestly, just look at how most college kids act. You don't have to do much to really stand out as the good egg.

BP: In the last chapter of your book, Never Eat Alone, you write, "Balance is B.S." The chapter deals with the myth of balance between work and private life, and introduces a new theory--that business is human, and that all relationships should be treated as such. Is the same true for college life? How does the theory that work-life balance is a myth relate to academia?

KF: Here's an example. How much do you know about your professor's family? What about her career aspirations and dreams? What does she like to do on the weekends? If you had a personal relationship with her, you'd know things like this, and she'd know these things about you. All it takes is showing up at office hours and besides asking a couple insightful questions about the coursework at hand, mention that you know you can learn a lot from professors just by getting to know them, even aside from the actual coursework. Ask to have lunch. Heck, do your closest buddies a favor and invite them, too, because ten bucks says they wouldn't think to do this. Get to know your professors as people and they'll help you get into grad school or land jobs because they will care about you. And you'll probably learn more in their classes, too. 

BP: In closing, what are your final thoughts on building professional, mutually-beneficial relationships in college? Are there any experiences you have had--either when you were in college at Yale or later experiences with college students who have approached you--that would help to illustrate the importance of relationship building?

KF: Last year, a student from UC San Diego met me at an event for our fraternity, Sigma Chi. We had a brief conversation, and he asked me if I'd talk with him again to give him some career advice. I told him to read my book, Never Eat Alone, and then talk to my assistant to get on my calendar to join me for a workout at Barry's Bootcamp. It took him several months of calling back to get that next meeting to sync up, but we had a good talk then and were in touch intermittently after that. When spring came, he asked me if he could have an internship in my company. We didn't have any spots for paid internships, but he agreed to move to Los Angeles for the summer and work for us without pay. Well, he did good work, actually got me to speak at the World Business Forum, which was awesome, and got to build relationships with everyone in my company over the summer. Guess who we called when a paid position opened up this year? He's been working with us all year part-time and will start full-time when he graduates this summer. And it all started with him seeking help. Most college students are afraid to ask for help, but they just don't get it. There are so many people out there who, like me, are happy to help and want to help others succeed. Many more want to help than don't want to help. Don't be afraid to ask the people who can help you in your career aspirations. The worst anyone can say is No.

I had been very nervous about meeting Mr. Zukav before the interview, but as soon as I shook his hand and began to talk with him, all my nervousness melted away. Born in Pittsburg, Kansas, Mr. Zukav graduated from Pittsburg High School in 1960. Following graduation he attended Harvard University. In 1979 he wrote Dancing Wu Li Masters, which won the American Book Award for Science. In 1989 he wrote The Seat of the Soul, a book about evolution and happiness in life. The Seat of the Soul became a national bestseller, remaining on the New York Time's Bestseller list for over one hundred and thirty-nine weeks.  His books have sold over four and a half million copies and been translated into sixteen different languages.

GZ: So. I'll start by asking you a question. What is a famous person?

BP: Well, I'd have to say it's someone who is well known, maybe? Or has changed the world?

GZ: If Osama Bin Laden where someone that you knew, would you want to interview him as a famous person?

BP: Probably not. I would say that would be infamous. Is that close?

GZ: Yes, that's very close. What I'm sensing is that for your project you want to speak to someone who is the most well known positive influence that you know. That's important because fame is not. But being a positive influence in the world is. There are many people who are famous and are not positive influences in the world, and there are many people who are positive influences in the world--much more than I--who are not famous. So it is valuable to realize [pauses] it is valuable to realize what is important and what is not. Now, what does it mean to be a positive influence?

BP: Well, I would say it means to try and teach other people and show them what's good--right and wrong--things like that.

GZ: That's close. Intention is what makes a positive influence or a negative influence. Intention. For example, you may want to teach somebody how to hurt other people [pauses] or you may want to teach somebody how to help other people. In both cases you are teaching someone, but there is a big difference between someone who teaches people how to help and teaches people how to hurt, and that difference is intention. So if your intention is to be constructive instead of destructive, or to share instead of to hoard, or to contribute instead of to exploit, then your intention is a positive one. And my feeling is that you want visitors to your website to have the benefit of the people who have positive intentions [coughs].

BP: That's pretty much it, I think. You said it a lot better than I could have.

GZ: How do you get a positive intention?

BP: By trying to accomplish something good?

GZ: Yes, you choose it.

BP: Yeah.

GZ: You have to say 'this is what I intend; this is what I will do if the universe is willing for me to do it.' So an intention is not a wish, and it is not a hope, it is the conscious use of your will. You know what will is?

BP: Yes.

GZ: So your parents tell you 'you will do this' and you say to yourself 'I don't want to do this, but I will do it only because they tell me I will do it.' Or you say 'I will not do that.' Both of those are uses of your will. That will is very important because that's what allows you to make a choice. The choice that you make is the choice of intention. Do you see?

BP: I see.

GZ: Now, it is one thing to decide to have a positive intention, say, to help people. But have you ever decided to do one thing and then found yourself doing another?

BP: [nods] Uh-huh.

GZ: Tell me about when that happened to you [coughs].

BP: Oh, I can't think of a specific time, exactly, but I'm sure it's happened before.

GZ: Can you give me an example?

BP: I'm trying. Well, like when I said I was going to study for a test, but then I ended up doing something else instead.

GZ: Perfect example. Perfect. You set the intention to study for the test, but then you suddenly woke up to the fact that you weren't studying for the test you were doing something else. That happened because although you set the intention to do one thing there was a part of you--that you didn't know about--that had a different intention. And that intention was to watch a ball game, or to go running, or to do something else besides study. If you don't know about those parts of yourself, they choose your intentions for you.

BP: And you can't control them.

GZ: Exactly. Exactly! And those are your compulsions. And your fixations. And your obsessions. In other words the parts of your self that are 'out of control'. Somebody says something, and suddenly you're angry.

BP: You don't know why.

GZ: You don't know why. Even if you set the intention to be a peaceful person, you're suddenly enraged. So choosing your intention is not so simple, because to choose it and really be able to choose it consciously you have to start to become familiar with yourself, with all the different parts of yourself. And when you decide to do that, you decide to become the master of your own life. Some people think that being the master of their own lives--

BP: [shuffles with the tape recorder]

GZ: Is it alright?

BP: Yeah, sometimes it stops though and I have to check it, sorry [laughs].

GZ: Some people think that they are the master of their lives if they are the ones that decide when they get up in the morning, when they go to sleep at night, where they go during the day, what they do for a living, what clothes they wear. And they say to themselves 'I am a master of my life if I can do all those things' because some people can't, like a prisoner. A prisoner is in jail. A prisoner must wear the clothes that the jail says, the prisoner must get up when the regulations say to get up and go to sleep when the regulations say to go to sleep, and cannot travel where he chooses when he chooses. 'But I,' some people say, 'am a master of my life because I can do all of those things.' But these people are not masters of their lives as long as they cannot control their anger, or their jealousy.

BP: As long as they don't know themselves, right?

GZ: Exactly! Exactly. As long as they feel that they are less important than other people, or if they feel that they are more important than other people. Or if they feel that they are attractive, or not attractive. They're controlled by these things, and they're just as much in prison as the person in a penitentiary. Do you know what the word penitentiary means?

BP: Nope.

GZ: To be penitent. It means to think about things. So originally people were put in prison to think about things.

BP: What they did.

GZ: That's right. So you might say that while you are out of control in your life you are in a penitentiary [laughs softly], where you have time to think about what you've done, like hurt the people that you love, like...become angry when you have set the intention not to become angry. When you decide to start to know your self, so that you can be out of this prison, that's when you begin the process of being a master of your life [coughs]. And it's never too early, and it's never too late to start [smiles].

BP: I see what you're saying.

GZ: It's better to start early [laughs], but it's never too late to start, because it's always good to get out of prison.

BP: Yeah.

GZ: It's better to get out of prison earlier than later, but the important thing is getting out of prison, and that's what happens when you get to know yourself, so that you can choose your intentions, and hold, even while you are feeling all of the things that you are feeling inside yourself. Is this making sense to you?

BP: Uh-huh [nods]. I understand.

GZ: When you do that, you start to become a positive influence in the world, and then if the universe wants you to be a famous person the universe will make you a famous person. It's not you that does it; it's the universe. And if the universe doesn't want you to be a famous person, you won't be a famous person, because the universe will always provide for you what is best for you. The important thing is not whether you are famous or not, but what your intention is [pauses], and if your intention is to be a positive influence in the world, and you really want that enough, you will start to do the work that is necessary to learn about yourself. And if you do that long enough, you will begin to feel the results.

BP: I've read your book, your first--well, not first, but The Seat of the Soul--and I also have Soul Stories and Dancing Wu Li Masters, and I haven't started those yet, but I'm going to. I read it, but pretty much I just want to hear about your life story and how you got to where you are because I understand that you were in Vietnam?

GZ: This is my life's story.

BP: It is?

GZ: Yes, what I've just told you are the most important things that I can share for your website--[pauses. Something is beeping.]

BP: Is it you or me?

GZ: [chuckles]. It's for me [long pause]. You know that I was in the army, when I was about your age. A little older--not much. And at that time, I was a very different person than I am now, and the way that I changed was exactly the way that I have described to you.

BP: Getting out of prison.

GZ: Getting out of prison.

BP: And learning about your self.

GZ: And learning about myself. Some people can learn about themselves and decide to stay in the army, but when I learned about myself, my life began to change. This is what you can share with your visitors to the web site. These are more important things than...history. History is temporary, but when you make changes in yourself for the better, that's permanent.