“In common with other great scientists,” Gillian said. “Edison, for example. Ms. Jackson?”
“I must write every day, wherever I am, even when I’m on tour. I used to write in longhand, using ballpoint pens with the ink color-coded to the mood of the chapter. Now I take a notebook computer with me everywhere and select different fonts and colors to suit the scene I’m working on. I’ve written on private jets, in the Green Room at the Letterman show, on a yacht off Baja California, poolside at resorts all over the world, even between holes on the Old Course at St. Andrew’s. I’m incorrigibly sociable and don’t mind being interrupted when I write, even in the middle of a sentence, but before the day is out, I must complete at least one perfect page, sometimes three or four, maintaining an average of two, thus one book a year.”
“Remarkable dedication! Mr. Turnbow?”
“Callie, I envy your ability to multitask. I can’t write when I’m on trial, though that doesn’t happen often anymore as I only take the occasional case that really interests me. When I’m not on trial, I go to my upstairs study, put a ‘Do not disturb’ on the door — and my wife and the kids and even the dog respect that sign, I can tell you — and write on an old manual typewriter for no more than six or seven hours at a stretch. I play Mozart symphonies while I write. Loud. My teenagers complain about the noise, to give you an idea, but I just remind them who paid for all their expensive junk. When I revise, I cover the typewritten sheets with scribbles in longhand. Then my secretary at the law firm puts them into the computer, ’cause she’s the only one who can read my writing.”
“And do you bill a client for that, Mr. Turnbow?” Muriel Bates asked softly.
He turned to her with an amused expression. “No, I do not.” Pause. “But if I could find an excuse to, I would.”
“And what about your working methods, Ms. Bates?” Gillian Godfrey said.
“Months and months and months of research, often including travel, always involving the great research libraries. Libraries like this one, so my compliments to you and your staff, Ms. Godfrey. The research is the fun part. Then, everything compiled and organized, a month or two of full days at the computer. Writing the thing is sheer agony, but it justifies the pleasure of the research. Truthfully, I’d write nonfiction, real history, if it would pay me, but it wouldn’t, more’s the pity. My most recent book is a contemporary romance, quite outside my usual historical mode, so I spent almost as much time on writing as research. Got a tax-deductible Panama Canal cruise out of it, however.”
“And finally you, Professor McDougall,” Gillian said. “How do you manage?”
“Terrible work habits. Driven by deadlines. Desktop computer. Write in odd moments on no set schedule. Write fast, don’t revise much, do no research.” Cosmo McDougall smiled with appalling self-satisfaction.
“No research, Professor?” Gillian Godfrey said archly. “But your political thrillers have been lauded for their authenticity.”
Cosmo shrugged. “Well, I do read the paper and check out a few websites. Other than that, I make it all up. Politics is politics. I just take my experiences in academe and transfer them to the world stage.”
“Aren’t you afraid your colleagues will recognize themselves?”
“They never have yet.”
“What about you, Professor Bosworth? Do you get any ideas from academic politics?”
Bosworth’s mouth twitched. “I loathe academic politics. The university doesn’t represent the real world. It’s a refuge from reality. Outside of the natural sciences, the university’s a playpen for middle-aged adolescents with crackbrained radical ideas they’d like to impose on the impressionable young.” A few gasps greeted this, one audible hiss, but no actual boos.
“Glad you’re leaving politics out of this, Amos,” Cosmo McDougall said, to general laughter.
“Another general question for all of you,” Gillian Godfrey said. “You were selected for this program because of your great popular success, but sometimes today’s mainstream literary world makes a sharp distinction between literature and popular culture. Will you still be read in a hundred years?”
“I’ll settle for being read right now,” Callie Jackson said airily. “I have no illusions about literary immortality.”
“Actually, though,” Muriel Bates put in, “it’s not for us to say what reputation we might have a century from now. Did not Shakespeare write to entertain a mass audience? Was not Dickens the bestseller of his day?” This drew a smattering of supportive applause.
“Nothing more fickle than reputation, is there?” Cosmo McDougall mused. “Counselor Turnbow and I were speaking on this very subject earlier this evening, and he pointed out that everyone knows John Updike and many remember Ogden Nash. But what about Richard Armour? Totally forgotten.”
“Not totally,” Gillian Godfrey said. “He was a wonderful humorist. Wrote It All Started with Columbus.”
“Always ask a librarian,” said Callie Jackson.
“And I believe we still have some of his books in our collection.”
“Left-winger, was he?” Amos Bosworth muttered.
“Would a couple of football players volunteer to carry Professor Bosworth’s hobby horse back to the lab so we can proceed?” Cosmo McDougall said, earning him laughs from the audience and a glance of pure hatred from his colleague. “Relax, Amos. I’m only joking. The university finds a place for all strains of opinion.”
“Really?” Bosworth snapped back. “I checked the library catalog for some of our finest conservative writers and political thinkers, and what did I find?”
“A well-selected book collection, I’m sure. I hear they didn’t buy your book, but you might be pleased to know they don’t buy mine either. Which is a good indication of their taste.”
Gillian, looking a bit unnerved by the sniping, said, “Of course we’ll be glad to add Professor Bosworth’s book to our collection.” Somewhere, Stephen mused, Edie Yamamoto is cringing. “We believe in supporting faculty authors and are open to all shades of opinion on controversial issues. Now, I think we have time for some questions from the audience.”
Several people had already lined up behind a microphone set up below the stage. Stephen thought the third questioner in line, a stunning beauty in tight, low-cut jeans and belly shirt, looked familiar. Could that be Willy Ames? He almost nudged Vanessa but decided it wouldn’t be wise.
A law student engaged Turnbow on an obscure legal point from one of his novels and received a brief, jargon-free answer. An enthusiastic middle-aged lecturer asked the standard question about where the five writers’ ideas came from and got the usual trite answers. Then Willy took the mike, and things got interesting.
“Professor McDougall,” she said, “for a long time you resisted blurbing your fellow novelists’ new books, but lately you seem to be doing it more frequently.”
McDougall shrugged. “Well, some of them are friends of mine.”
“I often wonder about jacket blurbs,” Willy went on. “They aren’t compensated, are they?”
“Certainly not!” said Muriel Bates, apparently outraged.
“Not with money, anyway,” said Callie Jackson.
“I can’t imagine what you’re suggesting, Callie,” Gresham Turnbow said with heavy-handed irony. “Seriously, though, jacket comments aren’t just paybacks or tokens of friendship, at least not when I do them. They represent an honest attempt to guide my readers to a book I feel they might enjoy, and I trust the same is true when someone blurbs me.”