Mark Haddon on his latest work "Leaving Home: A Memoir in Full Colour"

I think all writers and artists come from that group of children who feel slightly ill at ease in the world. [clears throat] It doesn't guarantee that you're going to be an artist or a writer if you feel ill at ease in the world. But I think those people who swim through life with grace like dolphins are not the people who become writers because the world as it is is entirely sufficient for them. It works for them. Whereas the rest of us, the ones for whom hours and days and weeks are puzzles that have to be solved, um the ones who are always taking the bonnet up and looking inside to see how things work for them. It's a very positive thing to say once upon a time or open a book and read once upon a time. Um because only people in that group want to make a separate parallel world. Good afternoon everyone. Thanks for joining this American Inspiration event presented by American Ancestors in partnership with Porter Square Books, Grub Street, and GBH Forum Network. I'm Margaret Tolett, the creator and producer of this author series, and the director of literary programs at American Ancestors. We're delighted you're with us this afternoon in the world of writing, art, and nostalgia, discussing one man's memoir, as well as the craft, the impacts of writing about the past. As good as this afternoon's talk might be, of course, the real education comes from reading the printed book, which my co-host David Samberg of Porter Squares Books knows all about. David, >> thank you so much. Um we are delighted to be here as we always do partnering with American Ancestors. We're delighted to have Mark um and uh from from way across the ocean uh and and and Claire who is a regular at Porter Square Books as both an author and a customer. Uh and so I'm so happy to be here with all of you in the uh Mark's evening and our afternoon. >> David, fantastic. I want to introduce uh Mark Haden is uh the author of the best-selling novels the red house and a spot of bother. His novel the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime won the witbread book of the year award and the Los Angeles Times book prize for first fiction. It is the basis of the Tony Award-winning play. He's the author of a collection of poetry, The Talking Horse and The Sad Girl and the and the Village Under the Sea. Um, he's written numerous children's books and has won awards for both his radio dramas and his television screenplays. He teaches creative writing for the Arvon Foundation and lives in Oxford, England. Uh, now I will also have the honor of introducing uh our guest moderator, Claire Massud. She has been with us a few times in this series and has um done some really wonderful book events both here and as David mentioned at Porter Square Books. Her most recent novel, this strange eventful history was long listed for the 2024 Booker and Giller prizes and for Franc's prefeminina. The book was inspired by family history and Ms. Massud has indeed published essays about family. Most are included in her book Kant's Little Prussian Head and Other Reasons Why I Write that is pictured here and we had a fabulous event with her um on that book u which I encourage you to look at in our archives. Her best-selling novels include the fabulous book The Emperor's Children uh The Woman Upstairs and The Burning Girl, both two of my favorites. Uh she's currently a writer and residence at Yale University. She has taught at Harvard University as well. She did that from 2015 to 2025. She is the co-founder of the Mediterranean Artists Project, an arts and ideas program in the south of France. I can't imagine a better guide for our journey today into memoir writing and into art. Uh so welcome to you, Claire. We are so eager to hear from both of you about leaving home and to also hear about the craft of writing memoir which so many in our audience are interested in. So over to you and to Mark. Welcome to both of you. >> Thank you so much Margaret and thank you so much Mark for um for joining us from across the ocean. It's wonderful to be with you and I'm so excited to talk to you about about your new book. You've written poetry, you've written screenplays, you've you've written all different genres, forms, but am I am I right that this is your first foray into memoir? >> Absolutely. And it was not intended. It's not something I ever foresaw. I was rather painted into a corner. I had I had long COVID and attendant brain frog for well almost three years and it gave me a very very small working memory. It was very very hard to write and I finally had to embrace something I tell creative writing students which is to sort of to look at the restrictions placed upon you and just um use them as a way of being forced to write in a different way which is often a really productive thing to do. It's what we often do in workshops when we're teaching creative writing. And I knew that I didn't have the brain power to pull down some great fictional plot from the ether. So why not use my own life because it was sitting there to hand and because I couldn't think in great arcs and we all know that thinking about a whole book is quite hard. There's so many connected pieces. You move something at the beginning and something something explodes or or falls apart at the end. So I decided to write about my own life and write in very very small fragments that I could put down on paper and then polish and then leave aside. So, I ended up with this fragmentaryary memoir. And because I'm a visual artist and I think in pictures all the time and my father took many photographs, I realized as I was doing it, I could add another whole theme through the whole thing of pictures, not necessarily illustrations, but pictures to go with what I'd written. >> Right. I mean it it is a it is um a a a comp utterly compelling and and deeply moving uh and amazing book but it's also two books in a way or three books because it is there's there are the chapters that are are narrated. There are the images that tell a a sort of parallel but not quite connected story and then there's the the whole um the whole and and just um just as a as a perhaps as a first question it might seem like a question that should come hour you know an hour into the conversation but I I'd love to hear a little about how you how it came together whether you wrote the chapters in the order in which they appear whether the illustrations um were done sort of, you know, as you were going along or whether that was the, you know, whether you wrote everything and then and then had how did it all how did all that um how did this work of art come together? >> Something very strange happened and it I think like like most teachers, I've often said things to people and assumed them to be true and only much much later along do I realize they are in fact true. And I often say to students when you're writing, don't think about the big stuff. concentrate on small technical issues and just worry yourself about that and sometimes the big questions resolve themselves in the background. I so I didn't think about structure because I had no spare brain for thinking about structure and something rather magical happened which is that the order in which I wrote all these fragments worked. It wasn't chronological. It jumped about all over the place, but it had a certain music to it. And we changed that order very very very little. Um, when it comes to the to the illustrations, I'd go back to something I learned when I was both writing and illustrating picture books for very very young children. I can't remember who said it to me, but it was a very wise thing which they said, which is that if you're writing a picture book text for young children, don't think about the illustrations. Don't ever hope that an illustrator will come along and fill the holes that you've accidentally left there. Write a text that stands up entirely of itself, that you could read aloud to a group of small children and entertain them completely. One of the benefits of doing that is that when the illustrator comes along, they have complete freedom to add something extra. They don't have to do the job of mopping up after you um and being your sort of your crutch. And I think that that principle applied to this as well. I tried to write a text that was that worked in and of itself completely and then I could add another layer of pictures to go with it. Um I'm [clears throat] wondering you you know uh whether we might be able to see again the the book cover and and maybe you tell us a little um a little Mark about that that image um of of I believe it's your small self uh on a on a we thought it was a tricycle but I think it's not a tricycle. um but also just about the um work if you will that you've done to this image because it isn't it isn't perhaps a as it originally was and and and and and maybe you could say we could talk a little also about the title of the memoir at the same time. Um >> um funny enough I have done many things many slightly unforgivable things to some images in the book most of which I took from encyclopedias I has as had as a child and I will probably see those a bit later but strangely enough I did very little to this picture. Those scratches you see on the surface are actually scratches on the surface of the 35 mil slide that that my father got made after a photograph. Whe whether it was my sister and I having some argument and her taking it out on the slide, I really don't know. It may just have been an accident when the slide got stuck in. I don't know how many people will remember those those slide projectors that were always wheeled out by fathers during some family event to throw the slides up on a cleared wall just above the television and everyone had to sit and watch as sort of specks of dust and pipe smoke wafted through that cone of light onto the wall. Yes. >> So this so this is this picture is pretty much as it was. One of the reasons I like it is a because it we if we cast our minds back there was a period before digital cameras when every photo had to be posed and it's no surprise that when you go back 40 years everyone looks reasonably happy in photographs because they had to be happy because usually your father was standing there with a camera waiting to sp to use up an expensive piece of film. So every bet every person better look tidy and well behaved. So there's me looking tidy and well behaved, but there's this suggestion of something wrong at the same time. And I like that doubleness. I also like the fact that the photos from my youth, and this will no longer be true for people growing up now because they're analog. You get the images, but you get the faults as well. And there is something for me very nostalgic and flavorsome about the things that went wrong with analog photographs whether it's sunflare double exposures or scratches like this. >> Yes, that's I mean it's it's wonderful. I love the word flavorsome. I it it there is this sort of richness and texture and and in this image it's so interesting that it was just as it were fate or perhaps you know your sister's tiny hand um with with with a I don't know whether a razor blade or a pen but but you know that that this is damage of of of decades standing but even aside from the sort of scratches there's that there's that kind of um what looks like a a little wand coming in on the left you you know on the left hand side of the photo and there's the sort of slightly bleached aspect of in the corner and and and and there's there is that wonderful um texture which evokes uh nostalgia, right? In some way it is there's something nostalgic about it. And um I I do I do want to ask you about the title Leaving Home, but I'm also wondering whether you might um whether you might uh I know you're going to read for us later from a little bit later in the book, but whether you might be willing to read to us from the beginning of the book where you where you talk a little bit about the complexity of nostalgia. >> So, as I said, the book's made up of tiny fragments. I'll skip the first fragment and I'll read you the second fragment. When I see washed out photographs of English life in the 60s and 70s, cardiganed grandmothers eating roadside picnics beside Morris miners, pale men sunbathing in shoes and socks on stripey deck chairs, rally choppers and caged budgery gars and faux leather poofs. I feel a wave of what can't properly be called nostalgia because the last thing I'd want is to return to that age and those places where I was often profoundly unhappy and from which I'd have been desperate to escape if escape had been a possibility. Why then this longing, this echo of some remembered comfort? It's not the people in these photographs, I think. It's what surrounds them. The feeling is as strong, if not stronger, when I see cars from that period which have been lovingly preserved. Hillman imps, Ford Capri, furniture, packaging, wallpaper, toys, crockery, a tin of Wattney's party 7, sheets of Letraet, chocolate cigarettes. Is it that as children we live inside a bubble of focused attention which gives everything inside the bubble a memorable fierceness? The way one could lie, for example, on a lawn and look down into the jungle of the grass to see earwigs and wood lice lumbering between the pale green trunks, like brontosauri lumbering between the ferns and jinkos of the late Jurassic. The way a ruck bedspread could become a mountain range stretched below the wings of a badly painted airfix spitfire. Or do objects in their constancy provide consolation in a world where adults are unpredictable and distant and unloving? >> Thank you. I feel that's such a um you there's that you encapsulate so much um you know in in that in that short passage which um evokes I think I'm sure for everybody listening and every reader evokes all sorts of um memories and moments of of of our own childhoods. Um but but but in in your case it's it's not it is this it's this paradoxical state of the of the of the objects that have some consolation and the memories themselves perhaps not so much. I I I I I wonder um I wonder if we might see the the one of the photos from your childhood which um which we have referred to as flame head and and and and um just you know uh maybe you'd tell us a little [laughter] about about that photo and and um I think that's you um on fire. >> That's me and my sister um one Christmas at home. I can see the Christmas tree in the background and and uh the little advent calendar. And strangely enough, that coffee table is actually supporting this computer at where I am in this very room now. >> Isn't that wonderful? >> I I didn't do this for the book. Um this was one of a series of of of pictures I'd amused myself by creating over the years. Looking at it now, I realize I mean, one of the subjects of the book is that my childhood wasn't hugely happy. And I I realized that I got a kind of perverse pleasure out of going back to mmentotos I had from the childhood and taking possession of them by doing something slightly irreverent to them. And that this is one of those pieces of irreverence. Funnily enough, when the Financial Times in the UK um published a review, they wanted a photograph to go with it and they selected this photograph and their picture editor got in touch with my publisher and said, "Can you tell me whether this picture has been doctorred or not?" [laughter] >> And she was she was quickwitted enough to get back to them to say, "No, it was a problem he had medically when he was a child." [laughter] >> That's brilliant. That's wonderful. Did you did you did you actually um I mean you've you've put in an a sort of collage image of flames. But did you also sing the the photograph there? >> Well, I I confess it's not analog. It is digital. It's Photoshop. But uh yes, there there are many superimposed flames on there. >> Yeah. It's so And that's your young you and your younger sister Fiona. That's right. And and there there were in this um in your house growing up there there were the two of you and your parents. Perhaps we could see just a a photo of the of your of your draw uh painting of the house. Um and you might tell us a little about because I think you know um many of the listeners are not in the UK. Some may not know um you know you're from Northampton. um we may not know exactly where that is or what it's like um or how this house might fit into that world and maybe you'd tell us a little bit about um both about this house and about where you're from. >> So it's about 50 60 mi north of London. It's in the Midlands. Um this would have been about 196061 when my father bought it. He was an architect and although he didn't actually design this house, it's very much a kind of architect's house. It's kind of suburban Scandinavian influence sort of modernism. Uh lots of um open plan on the ground floor and lots of cork tiles on the floor. Um for the time it was very it was very modern. It was very open. It was very it was very light. A a a strange and spooky thing happened. This this house sits at the center of the book and I was recently driving through Northampton, which I do very very rarely and I decided on the spur of the moment to to drive past the house. um not expecting any freon really because I've often gone back to places in my past and found that they were just just places. Um but I drove past this house to find that it was in the process of demolition. If I'd been a couple of days earlier or a couple of days later, it would have been as it always was or completely vanished. I had this odd feeling in my bones that the publication of the memoir might have actually caused some partial collapse of the house and there was only a stump there for me to photograph. It's um you know that's such a a a powerful uh uh serendipity or or maybe serendipity sounds too cheerful [laughter] but um you know such a powerful coincidence. It's it it's um you you you've mentioned that your your childhood uh wasn't perhaps especially happy. We might see just one more photo um of you with your sister and then and then maybe not some photos for a little while. You guys look pretty happy in that photo. Um, and but but but that's not the vibe of of the book. And and >> yeah, tell me about that. >> And this and this goes back to the way that photographs were always posed at the time, weren't they? No one ever took photographs of their children squabbbling or looking unhappy. You were all told to brush up and clean up and get the stains off your coat and stand on the lawn and look well behaved, which is which is what we did. The problem I think was that at the time my mother found looking after children very difficult. Um she said to my sister later on when my sister had three children of her own. I don't know how you cope with having three, I couldn't cope with two. I think she found empathy very very hard. Um and I think she was she was scared of challenge, of difference, of change. um she found it very difficult to discipline us for example um I think we understand now the best thing with children is to tell them exactly what the rules are and exactly how they'll be punished if they break the rules um so that there's kind of constancy she if we if to be honest we were very well behaved children but every time we weren't completely well behaved her reaction was to say you children have made me ill and then she'd go and lie down in a darkened room and and take painkillers So she was she was very absent emotionally. The double complication for my sister and I was that I was the firstborn. I was a boy and I was quite academic. So I had a bit of a a release, an escape at school where I got some affirmation. I couldn't get at home. My sister um and remember this was sort of a very monocultural English Midlands in the 1960s. She was the second born. She was female. She was less academic. Um, and to be brutally frank, she just wasn't treated as well as I was. I didn't get a lot of love or attention, but she got even less. I remember later in life, and this is a a sign of what my mother was like, uh, my sister said to my mom, um, why does dad hate me so much? And my mom said, as if this was some kind of explanation, you have to understand that he only wanted one child. >> [laughter] >> It's in the book and it and and it's astounding to read and it's astounding to hear you say um aloud. Um but um uh I guess you you just mentioned your father and and he he doesn't um in that moment come out any more warmly than your mom. So So would would you like to tell us a little about the the sort of household configuration? So um it was a fairly loveless marriage I think. I mean elsewhere in the book there is a rather beautiful photograph of my mother before >> the full they got married and she seemed confident and very good-looking. Um and there's a light sort of coming off her which we never really saw again either in photographs or in real life. There was something very missing in the marriage. Um, I think we all almost without exception take the behavior around us when we're children to be the simple fact of what life is like. And it's only later you look back and you start to see the ways in which you diverge from other families. The ways in which things are wrong or not quite right or simply strange. And I began to realize and when I was a teenager that there was literally no affection between my parents. I simply don't remember them even touching each other a hug or a kiss or anything anything like [clears throat] that. But in in addition to that of course it being a very very traditional sort of patriarchal society at the time. My father was very absent. He was out at work and I think he sp and he played rugby. He was a very good sportsman. So he had reasons to be out all the time during the week and then reasons on a Saturday to go and play rugby and church on a Sunday. And so every he was absent most days for long periods. There was also I mean you you I know that um and you you write about your grandmother, your paternal grandparents and and your um your your your grandmother did show you and your sister affection. It's it sounds like she she was maybe more indulgent, but there didn't seem as though there was much love lost between um your your grandparents, your paternal grandparents and your mother. >> No, there was a ferocious class dynamic going on here, which I'm sure is true of societies all around the world. Um we spent most time when we were with grandparents with my paternal grandparents. Both sets of grandparents were very workingclass, although one set of grandparents would have been rather affronted by by that description. So my parents rose from quite poor backgrounds to become welloff in a way that left them sort of slightly at sea, not knowing who they were. And there was a kind of particularly in my mom's case a kind of nervous snobbishness about wanting to be fit in and not wanting to be judged which had everyone on tent hooks. And what was wonderful going back to my paternal grandparents house both for me and for my sister was the fact that they were comfortable in themselves. We were allowed to have a bottle of milk open on the table. We were allowed to eat uh fish and chips and with slices of heavily buttered white bread. And um grandpa used to roll his own cigarettes and drop ash all over the carpet. So making a mess really wasn't a problem. And I think it was that it was that ease with with in which we found real comfort. >> It's it's so interesting because I I feel as though this in a way it's a narrative of the midentury, right? the the the the social mobility um which was so I mean wasn't that the whole thing about John Major when he was elected prime minister is that he was the first sort of you know middle class person to to become prime minister and and an example of social mobility in in in Britain that you didn't have to have gone to eaten to you know to to to then of course there are more recent prime ministers who all did go to Eden so that's a different matter but um but but but but the the the sort of complic lications or the toll of that is so it's so interesting, you know, the sense that your mother was not um at ease in her skin and was not um and but you mentioned that it wasn't a a bookish household and maybe you'll tell us a bit how maybe about your start not so much with books but with science and then how you how you became a writer. Well, let's let's let's deal with that class thing first because I think it's a very very common story for people to rise socially and that's seen as a sort of generally as a a very positive thing. We like the idea of social mobility but so often the end of that journey puts people in a place where they are very ill at ease. My mother was ill at ease because she didn't want to be judged uh by those around her. Uh my father it was slightly different. He I think he wanted to be at ease with people who read translated novels and had big book places and used sub clauses in their sentences and had university degrees but he wasn't there and he wasn't quite comfortable enough with that place where he wanted to be. Um so his answer and so many parents go down this route. They they try and solve a problem that they have by getting their children to solve the problem for them. So I was sent off to to boarding school and which is I think is a place where he would have wanted to go. He was a he was a very tough sporting man and I think he would have been absolutely thrilled by being sent to an English boarding school in the middle of the countryside to play rugby and have cold showers and and put up with a kind of bullying atmosphere. He he would have been absolutely in his element much more much more than I was. to go back to the the the starting writing thing. I think all writers and artists come from that group of children who feel slightly ill at ease in the world. [clears throat] It doesn't guarantee that you're going to be an artist or a writer if you feel ill at ease in the world. But I think those people who swim through life with grace like dolphins are not the people who become writers because the world as it is is entirely sufficient for them. It works for them. Whereas the rest of us, the ones for whom hours and days and weeks are puzzles that have to be solved, um the ones who were always taking the bonnet up and looking inside to see how things work for them. It's a very positive thing to say once upon a time or open a book and read once upon a time. um because only people in that group want to make a separate parallel world and that that that was me. But because it wasn't a bookish household, the other world for me was science, particularly maths, um cosmology, and this will show how specific a nerd I was. I was obsessed with paleo anthropology, the study of fossil man and fossil homminids. And I dreamed one day of working with the Leaky family in the older VI gorge in northern Kenya digging up oustralopythecus bones. Um well >> quite quite a niche job. There weren't many openings for that particular job and only later when I was uh I think what I got from that science was two things. One was um a sense of awe at the size of the darkness surrounding us. How much we don't know, how much there is to know and how much we'll never know. And yet the knowledge that you could piece by piece reach out into that darkness and solve a few of the puzzles and expand that you know that that spotlight of human knowledge. It was only when I was uh studying for what were called O levels then uh at the age of 13 when I first started reading poetry um the poetry particularly of the Welsh poet RS Thomas and I realized that I could get from writing something that I previously got from science a sense awe at the the great gulf of what we don't know and yet a way of making some kind of answer some kind of inroad into that darkness by just getting the right words in the right order. In fact, I still vividly remember the the first poem that really hit me in this way, a poem by RS Thomas called um a peasant, which began uh Iago Prit Aloud, just an ordinary man of the bald Welsh hills who pens his sheep in a gap of cloud. Only in retrospect did I look back at that opening of that poem and realize that itself it's an image of illumination of looking up and seeing the clouds part and seeing something very distinct and clear and sunlit high up. And that's what it was for me. It was a moment of illumination. The fact that you you know you can take these words that you've just heard on the bus or in the shop and you can take them home and you rearrange the order. And if you rearrange the order just right, you can you can set off fireworks in a stranger's head. I I know it's amaz it's it's an amazing um thing. I I remember as a child when I realized that the the stories that I loved that first my mother read to me and then you know I I read myself but that that somebody had made them up that you know that they hadn't always been there but somebody had made them up and you think oh my goodness that's a thing people do I could I can do that you know it's a it's so um two questions simultaneously when did um drawing or making you know making artworks come in and Um, and when do you remember when you first wrote something that wasn't sort of homework for school, something that was creative? Do you remember that drawing? My sister and I have always done it because my dear father was an architect. Um, he never drew with us, so it wasn't really something we learned from him, but I think because we knew he did draw both at work and at home, he'd occasionally draw pictures of animals or particularly landscapes, buildings, and very, very occasionally people, we just assumed that drawing was something that grown-ups did. And I think most most kids realize it's something kids do, but they don't see grown-ups doing it. So, they sort of put it aside after a while. So drawing's always been there for me as another something I always done in the background. Um as far as writing as should we call it proper writing not for school writing. I think when I when I was a student I wrote and this was a massive misstep. I started writing dreadful poetry. Um and unhelpfully the poetry review actually published one of the poems which only encouraged me to carry on down that but terrible sentimental path. I think they should have stopped me in my tracks. They were not very good poems at all. Um but at the same time I was I was writing for children as well. I had this idea which is truer now but was in fact not true back then that if I wrote and illustrated books for children then it would be a kind of way station towards being an artist and being a writer for adults. Um, ironically, I didn't realize because I was a stranger to this world. At the time, there was a an almost uncrossable gulf between writing for children and writing for adults. And paradoxically, I think along with books by Philip Pullman, I think Curious Incident is one of the books that actually help build a bridge across that gulf >> across it. So, it's so um it it's so interesting because of course the books that we read in childhood are the ones that shape us and and um shape our sensibilities. And you know, you actually refer to a number in in the memoir, you refer to a number of formative children's books uh for you that you know that were that that that clearly retain as you know the ones in my childhood cannon do for me. They clearly retain all their power. um for the whole of our lives. So the idea that there there would be some gulf between you know some artificial gulf. It's a it's it's a little bit like your mother's social anxiety about um about not you know not saying the right thing or not being seen to do the right thing. It seems so it seems such an absurd um imposition. I wonder if we might look at there's a there's a photo of um h the reasonless churning dread photo um just just just [laughter] to to give to give our our our gathered audience a a sense of um the visual of of you um of you and your dad there. Um and and maybe I you know maybe that is uh there's this one and then in a minute there's another one that that that I think of as the boredom box. But maybe you would tell us a little because um there's wonder and then as you said there's the the slight misfit feeling um but but but in your case it seems as though reasonless churning dread you know was part of has been even maybe till till now part of a a a fairly anxious uh temperament um depression and so on. I wonder if you might um be willing to talk a little about that. >> What amuses me now when I look at that is that I definitely did feel a reasonless churning dread. But of course, I didn't have the name for it then. What what amuses me is the rather adult sophisticated description of reasonless churning dread. In the same way that I think we take our families for granted, we think they're just the wallpaper of the world when we're little. We take our own um mental interior for granted, I think, as well. And in fact, I to be honest, and this will sound absolutely barking mad, when I was young, I looked at the adults around me. Um, no one ever really talked about what they genuinely felt. They chatted, but they never really talked. They never really communicated anything really important. So, two things which will sound particularly mad. one, I assumed that I knew I knew I felt uncomfortable in myself, deeply uncomfortable sometimes, but I reassured myself that when I got to 18 or 21, um, I would be like everyone else. And quite clearly, they were perfectly happy and calm and contented and everything would be fine because I'd hit that plateau. Spoiler alert, that's not true. Um, and the other thing was I genuinely don't didn't think of other people having an interior life until I was I don't know 10, 11, 12. I thought it was just inside me and then the rest of the world. Um, so it was a bit of a shock to to discover that other people had the same experience of being a human being in the world. The other things in this drawing, the the building you see behind me, behind me and my father, is actually an architectural drawing by him. >> Ah, I wondered. I wondered. Yes. >> Yeah. So, he's wearing the Northampton Saints rugby club tie. That's that's a very prestigious rugby club for whom he played. Um, and then there's a there's a an advert of the time for some kind of microwave or oven in the background >> with complete with a a a sort of mother figure in a in a stylish apron and high heels with, you know, >> and a and a very stereotype mother figure as well. I think that's what she was trying to be. >> Yeah. >> In fact, I think so many women of that time were forced to be that that stereotype. individuality was not and eccentricity was not encouraged. >> No, no, >> certainly certainly not outside London anyway. >> No, I mean, you know, I I remember this is years ago um Alice Monroe uh saying that when she was young, you you were always supposed to be available in your suburban neighborhood. If another mother stopped by, you were always supposed to be have coffee, you know, have coffee going and be ready. and that she um she uh I know she's a you know it's complicated figure now but she she um not unlike your mother uh would retire officially retire to her bedroom to rest so that she that's where she would be actually writing um and and everybody thought she was sick the whole time but she wasn't actually sick she was she was writing so it's an interesting parallel actually [laughter] >> maybe this maybe this is a good moment to say that I think very important uh dynamic both in the book in our lives was that mom um hitched her wagon to the patriarchy completely. She felt that she should be I don't think she wanted to be a mother, but she had to be a mother. There wasn't really a choice to choose not to have children wasn't wasn't an option. Um and she would be a sort of homekeeper and a and a wife. And in fact, as she said to my sister, when I married your father, I decided to agree with him about everything. um to make life easier, which of course never makes life easier for anyone. And then of course the next generation of women came along like my sister and they went off and they had jobs. Some of them decided not to have children. Some of them decided not to get married at all. And that was that would have been really hard for people like my mom and of her generation to look at a younger generation enjoying the freedoms that she had willingly given up in return for well perhaps not very much at all. And I think it takes a great deal of bravery to say you go. You you enjoy those freedoms even though I've denied them to myself. And sadly for my sister, my mom reacted by being quite embittered about um seeing someone enjoying those freedoms. And that would that made life very very hard not just for my mother but more importantly for my sister as well. >> Do you how does how does your it seems from the book you don't you uh your sister's present but you don't um talk you don't write so much about her. I mean I we have a sense of her family and so on. Um h how does she May I ask is how does she feel about about the memoir? Does she feel >> she was she was an enthusiastic contributor. In fact there there are some things which are a little too um revealing for me to have put in. So I I got lots of material from her. She's also she has a better memory than me. So she was a very good fact checker. I mean I think she's found publication odd but as writers we all know the publication is odd, isn't it? you there's this sort of horrible bump in the road and you go from ouch everyone is looking at me and then that rapidly turns into oh why why are people no longer looking at me so she's she's had that bump in the road but then I've had that bump in the road too and that's true of books whether they're memoir or not you're suddenly the focus of attention and then you then you return to that strange solitary subterranean life of a writer again >> yes but particularly strange for her who who didn't I mean who contributed to the book but didn't write the book. So, so it has gone through >> I hope that well she will already be getting some of the same feedback that I'm getting which is been hugely uplifting. We we haven't talked about the end of the book yet but it deals with my parents' deaths. Um and I put a lot of effort into making sure they were comfortable, making sure there were no problems for them, visiting regularly even though there was really no love going in either direction. so that when they passed away for me it felt like the account had been settled I'd hopefully done the right thing. What I hadn't understood until watching my sister go to this is that whilst the death of a loved parent can be extremely painful for obvious reasons, the death of a parent that didn't love you can be even harder because you know that's the point past which you will never get an apology for the way they treated you. And that was difficult for my sister. So while it gave me closure, it left something permanently unresolved for my sister. But I but we've both had lots of messages from people who've been in those situations. And I know when you write it in a book, you think it's true. That's why I put it down there. But somehow when you hear that people getting in touch to say that happened to me, too. That has a a whole other level of validation to it, which is hugely uplifting. So I hope my sister's benefiting from that as well. >> Absolutely. I mean I I think you know that um we'll we'll come back we'll come there I feel when we get to towards the end of the book which um which there are a few things I want to ask about first and and and um you know having having um having I I feel as though that um health of various kinds is is something that is a recurring theme in the book. mental health and physical health. Um, and and and I also, um, it seems important to to bring in another key character in this memoir, which is who is your wife. Um and and um and who who seems um to to have been a a rock in your life, a a real um a a a real soulmate, but also in a way, I don't know if protector is the right word, but somebody who's who's looking out for you in ways that that hadn't happened uh perhaps in your childhood In the same way >> I was I was asked in an interview the other day why I didn't write more about my my wife and I said it's because we get on so well I said there's no conflict there to generate really good material on the page if you get on well with someone was it de Montalon said happiness writes white you need you need unhappiness to generate material both in a memoir and and in fiction to go back to the health thing yes um I've suffered quite rocky key mental health um throughout all my life and I deal with that in in some detail. One of the huge ironies however is that two breakdowns that I had centered on extreme health anxiety. The first one a fear that I had MS and the second one that I had skin cancer. I mean they were hugely debilitating. Each of them took about 18 months out of my life during which I was incapable of doing anything really. The irony was that um about five years ago um I discovered to cut a long story short that I had very narrow cardiac arteries and I was rushed into the hospital here in Oxford. Thankfully a very very good university hospital uh where I had a triple heart bypass. Very interesting. Um I found it hugely useful material. Um, but the irony of it was that I came out of it with no real health anxiety at all. >> And I've heard this story again and again and again that people who are terrified of either their ill health or indeed of death, a brush with death or a brush with really serious ill health is so much easier to deal with than the fear of that in the abstract. >> Yes. Um maybe we could see a picture of you. We have a picture of you in that moment um just after your uh surgery looking um oddly I mean you look you're asleep but and hooked up to many machines but you look oddly well. [laughter] >> Maybe you don't think you look well but >> I'm on a lot of very pleasant and and comforting drugs at that point. In fact you can see the morphine driver in my right hand there. No wonder I look relaxed. It's but but but but it's um it's an it's an interesting what you say about this experience is is is so interesting because of course you you did have I mean when you discover I mean you're a runner right you're I I don't know whether you're do do you run still or again now >> I'm I'm slowly making my way back to it after three years of long co during >> but there is no there is no place I'd rather be than in the middle of a forest. just in the middle of a long run far away from other human beings. >> But maybe running with your wife, too. >> Oh, no, no, no. I think I think most runners know that there's nothing worse than being just faster than someone or just slower than someone. The only person who's ever going at my pace is me. >> Is you. Well, but but but maybe that was something that that um maybe the fact that you were so fit. I mean, I think did that make you less afraid of this or were you just was fear when you had to have this surgery? Was fear even part of it or was just it's you have to have it. You didn't think about it. >> It was strangely I mean the fact that I was a runner meant I knew that something was wrong and I got in there before I had a heart attack. So practically it was very very helpful. The odd thing was I felt as if I was at the eye of the storm. It was very hard for my family for and for for our two boys. They were clearly very anxious, but I'm I'm also someone who likes to know the facts. And I met my surgeon and I asked him for his statistics and I said, "I need to know how many times you've done this operation and how many people have died." And I vividly remember him saying, "Since coming to this hospital 5 years ago, I've done 140 of these operation. One man died and he came in as an emergency and he was very sick indeed." And that's at which point I felt at ease. Strangely, I also always feel at ease in hospitals. I put it down to the fact that and indeed in prisons I uh interesting >> because I went to way to boarding school. I'm used to that strange phenomenon of mostly men packed into two smaller space like like broiler chickens. Um uh and when I'm in hospital with sort of meals coming around on a trolley with everything timetabled with people in uniforms, it it harks back to something I know very very well and know how to deal with. Ditto. When I do prison visiting, I've taught quite a bit in prisons and as soon as I step through the door, I I have an odd recollection of the same atmosphere at my boarding school and I think I can handle this place. >> Wow. I Yes. I I don't know what it says about your boarding school. Um but it's but you know I I I as a teacher I always say to my students everything is a balance of of freedom and constraint and I feel as though it seems as though certain sets of constraints don't feel oppressive to you or at least feel familiar in ways that for some people they might they might feel alarming. We might have a a quick look thinking of freedom and constraint. There's a a a cartoon you've done uh that's in the book of of your sort of dual writer artist self and and it's it's essentially a sort of super ego um super ego and id or maybe not maybe it's super ego and and ego but I but but I but I'd love to um maybe you'll tell us a little bit about this image but also about um about the the experience that you spoke of at the beginning of our conversation which is you know I think fairly swiftly on the heels of your I mean not immediately but fairly swiftly on the heels of your of your bypass operation came long co and and just you know h how that psychologically how that uh and for your for your work how that was has been and and what it's like to to emerge from it. People who look at me from outside, even friends, people who know me quite well, think of me as highly productive, but my experience on the inside, even when I don't have long COVID, is my wheels spinning in the mud, not getting enough done. I think the truth is that I work in short, highly productive bursts. Um, and I wish I could tell myself that the time between those bursts is just useful time leaving my brain lying. But I think the same drive that creates those bursts of high productivity can't be turned off. It just runs all the time. So when I have days in which I can't do anything, I'm I'm berating myself. I'm always that figure in the in the orange sweatshirt berating the person the other version of myself who's not doing anything. And of course when I got long co that only exacerbated that doubly exacerbated by the figure of the writer in the background who in [laughter] this case I've stole a silhouette of Agatha Christie at her desk tap tap tapping away. One of the most prolific writers in the world. Yeah, there's there's nothing worse than hearing about other writers churning out great reams of work when you're uh just chewing the edge of the table in frustration because nothing will come. I I I I get it. I you know, you think, how could they have finished another one? How can how can I have finished another book? But there it is. Agatha Christie, who's who's tapping so zealously away? I'm I'm interested though that um that that is I mean this experience this image is still does that seem still a reflection or do you you don't by now have a super super ego that tells the the you sweatshirt to cool it and leave the guy in the chair alone. >> No, sadly I I think there is something pathological about my writing and I suspect about quite a lot of other writers. You know, it would be so much easier to be someone who's content with just sitting on the sofa with everything as it is. But I think you're only driven to constantly create other small parallel worlds if there is a fundamental restlessness that you can't get rid of and that you can't turn off. And it's there all the time. And it is there for me. I've I've given up thinking that I'll finally become an adult at some time, be content, and uh be able to sit back and do nothing. I think I think it's going to be with me for the long haul. I the real shock I have to say of the long co was that I'd always rather smuggly congratulated myself on choosing well or uh being chosen by the career of a writer so that people around me who are doing every other job had to retire uh or they'd find it hard that their their physical body would become less useful, more frail, but I would still have my mind and I'd still be able to write. The real shock of longco was to realize that your brain is a limb or a faculty like like any other and that that can become injured temporarily. So that that put me in my place. >> Yes. Yes. I I I can imagine. I mean I think it's very humbling, right? It's very humbling to realize that that that you don't have control over this and that you >> um but but it has but it has essentially um lifted. Is that true? >> I think so. Yes. And I should say the other solace is because because I paint and I make sculpture um and I draw that is a lot easier to do when your brain is small. And I've always been hugely grateful that I've got that to fall back on. I do feel a little bit of being like sort of a child in foundation stage at school. I always want to go home at the end of the day having made something >> and if I can't make that something out of words, at least I can draw it or paint it. I wonder um if we might um just as a as a as a last image um look at there's a there's a a drawing you made of your father sleeping uh late in his life and um it's it's a it's an amazing drawing and I and I wonder um you know maybe maybe we could talk a little about that about the the care you took uh of of your parents at the end of their lives which I mean that's the book ends really with the death of your mother. Um the the it is a sort of braided it goes be the book goes beyond the death of your mother but but but these late years of your of your parents who who were complicated figures um each in a different way. Um and and yet for me as a viewer, this is such a powerful uh image of of of vulnerability and uh you know, I I I but I'd love to hear how you experienced it and in what spirit you you made this work of art. >> It's very layered and I remember putting this on Instagram a few years ago and and people saying something to the effect, you must have loved your father very much, which felt odd. I remember he would often I visit him and he'd be sleeping and he would often look like this and I uh I thought that would be a beautiful drawing to do and I'm really glad I've done the drawing. When people say it's a tender drawing I can see that but it's a little bit like the act of writing itself. You you create the tenderness in the making, don't you? >> It's it reminds me that drawing and writing are rather like acting. You sort of you put on a mask, you read lines, and your job is not necessarily to get something out of your heart. Your job is to entertain the people sitting in the seats out there. And that's true of writing a really good paragraph or it's true of doing a drawing that really works. Um, but the there's not it's not necessarily true. There's a hopefully there's a truth for the people who see something and that experience rings true for them but it's not necessarily you honest and true according to what was going on inside you at the time. >> So it's a complicated and it's a layered picture for me. >> I I I I understand I um it's but it is it is interestingly very moving. I just want I'm I I'm going to ask something else about it, but I just want to say for our our guest, our our our audience uh guests, please please do uh feel free to ask your questions. Um you can ask them in the Q&A uh which is I think at the bottom right of your screen and um we we will I will be happy to share them with Mark who I know will be happy to answer them. Um but I but but when I so this is just almost a process question about this about this drawing um which has such beautiful and precise lines and and um was it is that is that actually like the order of the of the sections in the book. Can you just draw that essentially freehand or does this involve um repeated revision? >> Uh no mostly freehand but I had to take it from a photograph. Um, even though he was asleeping, he wouldn't lie still for long enough for me to draw him in real life. But it's it is >> and I've often I mean I can draw, but I've I've always been very jealous of people who can draw very quickly and very loosely straight off the cuff from life. Um, I take my time. I guess I draw in the same way that I write and that I write slowly. And I don't think I'm a very good writer, but I think I'm a really good editor. I'll get something down and then I'll rework it. I I've described it many times and I've stuck to this image because it feels right. Editing for me is like I always go back to the beginning every time I sit down in the morning and I I comb through the writing. It's rather like you have a long-haired dog and you've taken it out for a muddy walk. You bring it home and you get you get a comb into that those mud that muddy hair and you you keep combing and keep combing until the the comb runs smoothly. And that's the feeling I have from writing. It it it it starts off as a very muddy dog indeed, but you keep on combing it until you get that lovely smooth flow and then that's when it starts to work. >> Oh, that's beautiful. That's a lovely metaphor. Do you do do the drawing and the writing um do they feel different? Do they do something different? Do those two forms um serve you differently or or or potentially in similar ways? Um well in one level it's it's sort of boringly economic. I mean I write books which go out into the world and are read by thousands of strangers and there's a wonderful feeling about that and it's gloriously democratic and you know that your books might be bought by people they might be taken from public library they might be lent and shared around and I love that feeling. Whereas drawings I do I sell very few bits of art and I give mostly give them to friends. So, it's a very different kind of transaction. Um, and if I had to choose one, if I was if I was pinned in a corner, um, I would have to say writing is more important to me. That's the thing that has the biggest reach and might even still be in the world after I'm gone. So, that's really important. But at root, I think they're both very similar in that what you do is you make some kind of mark on paper. you step back and you take off your maker's hat and you put your audience hat on and you say, "Does it work? >> If it doesn't work, how will I change it to make it work?" And it's it's going to the paper with your maker's hat on, stepping back with the audience hat on, and just saying, "Am I moved? Am I edified? Does it do something to me?" you you write about this in the um in in the memoir uh when you talk about your your uh you wrote a I'm not sure I can't remember whether it's two one or two um novels for for adults um that weren't published before Curious Incident um and and you know you you you then um and then and then with the with the a sort of prompting from your agent you you embarked on what became curious incident. Um but but but you you talked about um you talk about your your cleverness or desire to be clever having been an impediment in those early books and and and I wonder I mean you know I this is this is maybe and then there are there are some questions I now appearing that I must ask you but um from from audience members but I but is it you know it's you were you were um am I right you graduated from Oxford at 19. Yeah. Is that correct? Right. So, so, so you were um I graduated from college in the US at 20. And you know, I spent my years in high school. Everybody say, "But you're a year young, but you're a year young." Um, and I and I think, well, no, I'm not. I'm just the age I am. But but but but it is it is a sense of yourself that you have in the world when you go through school in that particular relation to the other kids. And and I I I just I was curious about whether whether over time your writing has changed as your sense of yourself in the world also changed. I mean, you you make a sort of light-hearted remark about um about having put in in um in your in Young Boon, what's his first name anyway, is um >> Christopher Boon and his um having having put in him sort of aspects of that that were in your earlier novels, but that read differently because they were in his voice. But I wonder if you >> I should I should I should at the risk of absolutely terrifying uh writers who are starting out out there in the audience. I wrote five novels at least five finished novels which I threw away before Curious Incident novels of slowly decreasing dreadfulness. Um and my agent took me on on account of the last one of those and was wisely said I could get this published Mark but I think you could write something better. And the thing that I wrote was was curious incident. And yes, I I was a rather conceited young man, I think. And I thought the job of writing novels was in part to show people how clever I was. What it took it what really worked for me was remembering something I'd learned when I was writing for children. When you're writing for children, you cannot spend two pages describing the weather. They need to be entertained at every point. You need to hold their attention. And I think it took me a long time to learn to apply that to adult fiction. Um, and I think we all know some adult writers who could be could well learn that lesson as well by being for children for a while. >> Um, and indeed curious incident itself because because I knew I had this terrible self-defeating tendency to lecture readers to show off. I discovered that I had a narrator who had the same desire to show off. So um if you go back to the novel you can see that it's split into alternate chapters little lecturettes and narrative inter interle between the two um and those lecturettes are basically me being given free reign the whole book goes showell showell showell all the way through um as far as it has just my position in the world changed and is it represented in the way I write no I what I hope I hope there's one constant which is empathy. Empathy towards people particularly people who are different or troubled or troubling. Um so and and yeah I hope it's hope it's a constant rather than a development. Yes. Well, that I mean that is certainly true of all of your work that I I haven't read everything but yes, everything that I know um and of this memoir also and I and it's something that is that we haven't discussed and and I actually have to turn to the questions from the from the audience but but is your work with the Samaritans which um which seems so much part of that and and also your work when you were young um with with people with disabilities um physical dis disabilities. So um uh but let me just you can hold that and maybe come back to it. But I just here is one of the the um the questions. You mentioned that your books often bridge children's literature with adult fiction. Do you take that same approach to your drawings and art? >> Um I I think Curious Incident sort of institutionally bridged that gap. I think it it made the publishing world along with particularly with Philip Pullman's books realize that they weren't two separate parts of the continent with a great gulp running between them. Um, ironically, I I I haven't written for children for a very long time and I do feel that all the all the books I've written since then are for adults or for an adult version of myself. Um, but yes, when I'm drawing I find myself sliding all over the place. I still have I think it's partly because Your hand has a signature style to it. And although when I write now I write as an adult for adults, I've never quite shaken off the signature style of drawing for children. So there is a sort of a childish edge to some of my drawings. But of what I quite enjoy is the fact that if you draw something quite dark but with that childish edge to the to the shape of the line, it adds a a peculiar uneasy freon to it. And that's true of some of the pictures in the book. >> Absolutely. I was reminded with some of the pictures. I don't know if you remember Glenn Baxter um >> who died only a few days ago sadly. >> Oh, did he? Did he? But but his but that that sort of um it at at once uh yes slightly nostalgic uh vibe but also this this this um sometimes surrealist but always you know always edgy uh humor uh that that is that is I think you share your some of your some of your drawings share with him. Um so uh just maybe two two minutes um two minutes on the on the Samaritans and then and then I might ask you to read something for us but but um just maybe about the role of the role of your pastoral work in your life. >> So the Samaritans for people who don't know it outside the UK is um a a confidential anonymous uh helpline for people who feel distressed or maybe even suicidal. And I do the training is very good. We're all trained volunteers and I do one just under four hour shift every week in which in the simplest way we just we just listen to people without any judgment without any cheering up without any advice and without any steering people or moving them on. It's just listening. It's um and it is very simple and very radical. It's it's I think of it as like opening the little doors of an advent calendar onto entirely random lives throughout the UK. You could be talking to a high court judge one minute and then um someone who's a homeless alcoholic the next uh or someone who's um profoundly psychotic in a psychiatric hospital or someone who's an abusive marriage. It is from my point of view it's it's utterly fascinating and a privilege to be granted a sort of a view into those lives. But something I always say about it and I'm sure this is true over there as it is here. There is a great movement to persuade people to talk more to open up. We encourage people to talk all the time. What we don't do enough I think is encourage people to learn how to listen. Listening is it took me a long time to learn it but listening is a really really useful skill. Um and I I wish more people understood it. How to listen without saying things will get better. How to listen without saying something similar happened to me. Um learning to listen without trying to change the subject. I've learned that the answer to so many of life's difficulties is simply to say, "Tell me more about that." >> That's beautiful. Thank you. Um well, maybe I I know we would love to listen for just a couple of minutes to you if you uh would be willing to read us a little from the book to uh finish our our conversation. That would be a gift. Thank you. This is section 34 from the middle of the book. It seems appropriate. Relates to everything we've been talking about. What does it mean the injunction to not speak ill of the dead? Which dead? For how long after their passing are we meant to hold our tongues? And does speaking ill mean telling lies or telling the truth? I recall reading a long time ago a wise dictim every teacher should remember that the pupils in your class will grow up and go out into the world and tell everyone about you. It's true for all of us. The people we interact with every day aren't just actors in our lives. They are, for better or worse, the means by which our names will live on in the world. And it's especially true of parents. I've not been a perfect father. I've been badtempered, impatient, and oversensitive when wrestling with problems of my own. But I've always tried hard to be a good one. And I've been guided in part by the cautionary example set by my own parents. Talk to your children. Listen to them. Say sorry when you make mistakes. Wish for them to be happy and kind and to find something that excites them. If you can, give them the tools to do these things. Don't expect them to fulfill your ambitions or settle your debts. The irony is that mom in particular was obsessed with what other people might think of her. Someone in their village was kned and I addressed my next letter home to Lord and Lady Haden, not realizing how upset she would be in case someone would think they were mocking their newly elevated neighbors. Fit in. Don't make a fuss. Don't complain or rebel or seem unnecessarily different. Propriety was everything. The house was meticulously clean and tidy. Fiona and I were always washed and combed and well-dressed. Fiona was rebuked as she slipped into a Northampton accent. They brought a large antique 18th century oil painting of an anonymous local gentleman in a heavy gold frame. To some people, mom joked that it was one of her ancestors. To others, she said nothing and let them assume precisely that. Like Dad, she'd risen a long way and found herself in a place that never quite felt like solid ground. She assumed other people would judge her in the way that she judged them, by the way spoke, the way she dressed, the cream carpets, the framed maps of the county. I don't think it ever occurred to her that people might look at her and ask, "Was she kind? Did she care about other people? Did she love her children?" Thank Thank you, Mark. Thank you, Claire. Uh just to to be able to have this share this portrait of um a parent, a child, an artist, a writer, uh really magnificent. And and of course, everyone who was here today knows that you just got a tiny tiny taste uh of this beautiful book which you can get. Um, and so to be crassly commercial, I'll tell you that you can get it from Porter Square Books. And thank you again both so very much for sharing this with us. And back to you, Cla Margaret. >> Oh, thank you, David. It's great to be in partnership with you and Porter Square Books and Claire and Mark. Transcendent. Um, remarkable. What a tremendous conversation. I'm so glad we are going to be able to post-produce this and share this widely in the future. Um, I also want to thank another partner. Grub Street here in Boston is one of the nation's leading creative writing centers, offering online and in-person classes, events, and a community for writers. They're on a mission to make creative writing accessible to people from all backgrounds, genres, and career stages. You can learn more at grubstreet.org. We are delighted to be in partnership with them. Our thanks also to GBH Forum Network for their promotion, post-prouction and archiving in the months to come of this talk. And back to my organization, American Ancestors. If you're researching a community, a person or a family, my colleagues are here to help. They are great listeners. They are great researchers. You'll see on screen some of the coming educational programs hosted by our Brew Family Learning Center, uh, which Kathleen McKenzie, our tech producer tonight, um, heads up all of our educational programs. We thank her for tonight. Um, as a free service, Kathleen's and my colleagues, our genealogologists, offer a chat service, so you can chat with them and they'll help you with your genealogy issues. Um, better yet, please visit us at our new exhibition space in the family heritage experience at 97 Newbury Street in Boston. Later this month, we're opening up an exhibition of black patriots, as in uh, black Americans who fought in the American Revolution. Our mission in all our endeavors is to inspire, educate, and connect people. Um, David Sandberg and I are most grateful to both of you, our guest authors, Mark and Claire. Um, you two are the best of the best and it has been such an honor and a privilege to hear from you. Um, thank you also again to Kathleen McKenzie and to our audience out there. We are so glad that you joined us. We applaud your interest in family history, in art, in literature, in writing, in the good work of the Samaritans, and of being good, kind people in this somewhat nutty world. So, we thank you all and we hope to see you soon again. A good afternoon to all of you. A good evening to all. And again, Claire, Mark, humbled. Thank you so much. [snorts]