Best Of: Harrison Ford / Novelist Francis Spufford

the star of Star Wars and Indiana Jones, is now in his 80s, and starring in the series

“shrinking as a therapist who has Parkinson's. So far, the show's writers haven't shared”

with him the progression of his character's disease. "So like a true Parkinson's patient, I don't really know what's coming." Also, we'll hear from British novelist Francis Spufford. His new novel follows a young woman in World War II London, trying to survive the blitz, navigate romance, and fight time-traveling fascists.

"I knew that I wanted to write a fantasy which very deliberately had, as its protagonist, as somebody who was really strongly in favor of Nylon's, lipsticks and invitations, and David B. and Coolie reviews the new film Peaky Blinders, which is a follow-up to the

“hit British TV show of the same name. That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend."”

This is Fresh Air Weekend, I'm Sam Brigger. Terry has today's first interview.

"Is there anyone who doesn't know who Harrison Ford is? Probably not. Not after starring in the original and the sequels of Star Wars, the Indiana Jones movies and Blade Runner. He's in his 80s, but in the last three years you might have seen him in the final Indiana Jones film The Dial of Destiny. Their prequel to Yellowstone, called 1923, and his current series Shrinking. Three seasons of Shrinking are streaming on Apple TV, and it's been renewed

for a fourth. He plays the therapist, Paul, who heads a practice that includes two other therapists, Jimmy played by Jason Seagull, and Gabby played by Jessica Williams. Paul is at an age where most people have retired, but he doesn't want to. At the same time, he thinks

maybe he needs to. He has Parkinson's disease. At first, the symptoms were relatively

minor, but they've progressed. His hands shake so much it's difficult to put the toothpaste onto the toothbrush. Even more problematic because it affects his work, his shaky hands are making it difficult to take notes when he's talking with patients. Michael J. Foxes in a couple of episodes playing a man who has a more advanced case of Parkinson's, and is very depressed. They first meet at a doctor's office where they're both patients. Paul

is a gifted therapist, but it's hard for him to express emotion and he has a dark and cynical sense of humor. In this scene from the current season, season three, Paul has returned to work after taking some time off because a UTI was causing hallucinations. So this scene is from his first day back at work. He's telling Jimmy, he thinks it might be time to retire. In the past, Paul had asked Jimmy to tell him when he thought it was time. Now Jason Seagulls

“character Jimmy speaks first. Hey, that was your first day back. Really great. I think it's”

time for me to start being a therapist. Do you call, I'm not going to fall for that one twice? No, I'm serious. It took going away, coming back to see it. It's time Jimmy. I'm supposed to say that it's time. It's time for you to retire, Paul. I'm not the way I saw this going in my head.

I'm going to mess you up. You mean so so much to me? I've always wanted to tell you this

one thing. I'm going to say it. He's just Jimmy, please. I'm not leaving now. I got patients to notify. I've got no furls to make. It'll take months to wind down this practice. You'll only get to say goodbye once and it's not today. My one piece on the way home. Let's go. Harrison Ford, welcome to for a share. It's such an honor to speak with you. Thank you for being here. Well, I'll kind of give you a thank you for having me. Some people are surprised

that you're continuing to act in your 80s and Paul says after his Parkinson's has gotten worse in his thinking of retiring. He says I love my job more than anything and I don't know who I am without it. Do you relate to that or do you know who you are without your work? Yeah, I guess I do. But without my work, I really wouldn't know what to do with myself, really. With your time? Well, I suppose I could film my time, but I don't know what else I might do that would give me the kind of

satisfaction and the kind of challenge that the work I'm doing does give me. I really do love the work.

the people change in the mission and the opportunity change and it just makes for an interesting

“way to live your life. And I love that you play your age because it's frustrating when like a”

beautiful woman plays somebody who's ugly by just not wearing as much makeup, but she's never ugly

or a young person has to play an older person by putting on prosthetics. Like we have talented people who look like they're supposed to look can we cast them, please? Well, I felt that way when I was deaged in Indiana Jones. Sometimes it works and I thought it worked in Indiana Jones that deaging person, but I'm happy to be the age I am and I have no impulse to hide it. Well, speaking of Indiana Jones, so dial of destiny was like 2023, it was released and you know,

“you're still like super strong and agile in that and then you had to go from that to not long”

after doing shrinking. And so in shrinking you're physically compromised because of the Parkinson's disease. What was it like for you and your body to be action hero strong and then your hand are shaking too much to take notes? Well, I mean it starts with the head of the characters,

what's in his head, what's in his mind and I've always aware of this physicalization of a

character and the Parkinson's or the various symptoms of Parkinson's do help characterize the fall. So it's an opportunity to use another means to create the character. Michael J. Fox is in this series and you meet a doctor's office, he's really depressed. Did he give you advice about how to play the role and didn't really, you didn't ask him for advice? No, because every case is different and my case is not yet described to me fully. My writer is present

symptomology and characteristics as they are writing and so I'm sort of living with the symptoms

I have been last described as having. Yeah, I mean the thing about Parkinson's is that it affects everything but it affects different parts of like there's a whole long list of things it affects, but everybody gets a different number of them and a different variation of them. Right, right. What tremors everybody gets, yeah. So like a true Parkinson's patient, I don't really know what's coming. Oh, that's interesting. Even like what the writers have in store for you in terms of your

symptoms. Yeah, I have a general sense of how far it goes this season but nothing specific yet and that's just the way our show works. We get a script probably. If we're lucky a couple of weeks ahead of time but normally maybe just a couple of days or a week ahead of time. Did playing the role make you think about your body in a new way and think of what it would be like to not be able to control your movements? Not specifically, I'm to be honest. No, there's parts of it I haven't

“thought through yet, really. And I think that might be similar to how I might react if I did have”

Parkinson's. I would want to know certain things and other things I would just not want to know. So is to not obsess on them? Who's so is to not be looking for them just right? Be happy enough with what you got. Paul, your character is a very cynical sense of humor. He's really funny, very dark retorts and you have a very funny sense of humor. I heard you're on Conan's podcast and you may Conan and like the whole team left like so much and so hard. Do you

ever punch up your lines or add like funny lines because honestly like your sense of humor so good?

but you know it's a collaborative atmosphere and feel free to bring up any idea I have.

Can you think of a line that you added and one of your movies or and um oh I guess the most famous the one most well known and perhaps illustrative of of where it comes from is the line in Star Wars where Princess Leia tells me that she loves me and I say I know instead of saying I love you too which is the scripted line simply the impulse was to be more in character and George Lucas who had written a line was not so not so happy that I didn't give you the the original version

but I really felt strong about it and so he made me sit next to him when you previewed the film

in a public movie theater in San Francisco and it got a laugh but he got a good laugh and so he accepted it and loved it in. So one has to play another scene from shrinking and this is from

“the first season I think it's the pilot actually so Jimmy who's one of the therapist in Paul's”

office and he's played by Jason Seagull he's really annoyed with his patience for not changing when he's told them they have to change and stop doing the thing that's making them miserable but this is just an expression of his disorientation and grief because his wife died a year or two ago in a car crash and and he hasn't recovered he hasn't been himself since her death so this is the scene where he's talking to your character Paul and explaining why he's so angry and also you'll

hear Jessica Williams as therapist Gabby and Harrison Ford you speak first. Hey kid how are you doing normal you know it's normal day normal day doing it doing it normal style you know what I was thinking Paul said about how you're just doing it normal style. What do you think you guys ever get so mad at your patience that all of a sudden you just want to shake him. Well we don't shake him. No I know I know I'm rooting for him

I am I'm like come on you f*** up person you can change and then they just never do compassion fatigue

we all hit those walls yes questions you listen you stay nonjudgmental and you don't make that face. Sorry we just look we know what they should do you know why because that's pretty simple I get said what I do this thing maybe don't do that thing we know the answer don't you ever want to just make them do it great idea we just rob them of their autonomy any chance they have to help themselves right and we become one psychological vigilantes oh my god I'm like sensing the sarcasm but

that sounds kind of badass. I like that scene a lot um so you have an experience like the body

“symptoms of Parkinson's even though you have to portray them in your role but you have experience”

a whole lot of injuries that you sustain making movies including on your last Indiana Jones film in 2023 so I'll run through a list of things that I've read and you can confirm that you've had this you're ruptured a disk in Indiana Jones on the Temple of Doom you tore a ligament in the fugitive in Star Wars the Force Awakens a hydraulic door closed on you and you broke your leg and entered your ankle and Indiana Jones on the dial of destiny you entered your shoulder while

you were rehearsing so how are you dealing with pain pretty good sounds it sounds um like I'm accident prone. Oh not to me it sounds like you're in movies where you do dangerous things and of course you'd get some injuries. Yeah it's running jumping falling down. Yeah there you go

“and I gave it the office it's put it that way but could they made you do it?”

No nobody makes me do it you know I make the choices of whether I want to do something they'll

it's by definition not a stunt. But that doesn't mean it's not risky. Well what it means is that

I want the audience to be with the character through the activity that we're talking about I don't want to have to hide the face of the character because it's a stunt guy I want them to feel the blow. I want them to see the anxiety I want them to be there when the decision is made or when the decision is missed I just want them to be there and that takes me being there to bring them

“along I think. We're listening to Terry's interview with Harrison Ford he's now starring in the”

series Shrinking on Apple TV. We'll hear more of their conversation after a break I'm Sam Brigger and this is fresh air weekend. So after being an episodic TV like Gunsmoke and the Virginia and anything like the FBI why is that one of them? Oh there were lots. Yeah yeah so then you got the part in American graffiti where you're somebody who loves to raise cars and it's not a big part but it's a significant part and American graffiti kind of tangentially led to star wars you were a

carpenter in between because you weren't getting enough work so you were working for Copola

“as a carpenter doing something in his home or his office. Well actually I was working for Dean”

Tavalaris who was Francis's art director and Francis had moved into new offices at Goldman Studios and Dean had designed an entrance to the offices and Dean needed somebody to install it and so he asked me if I would do him a favor because he couldn't find a carpenter to get it installed. I said that I would do the job I'd be happy to do the job but I only wanted to work at night because I didn't want to confuse the people in the office about whether I was a carpenter

or an actor. You want a carpenter to be your side gig you were an actor. Yeah well I wanted them

“to think of me as an actor. I was there sweeping up I was just finishing the job when George”

Lucas walked in with Richard Dreyfus who had been an American graffiti. We had all of us who had been an American video had been told that we would not be considered for the far wars because George wanted new faces and here he is having the first interview with Richard Dreyfus and I'm standing there in my carpenter's work belt sweeping up the floor but it turned out to be a fortuitous occasion because weeks later I would end up being asked if I would do them a favor

and read with the other actors who were being considered for the parts. So you'd just be feeding

them the lines. That's right. But he was auditioning your partner right you. That's correct. I never

was told that I was ever to be considered and then at the end of the process I guess they ended up with two groups of three people that were in the final consideration and I've always been amused that in the second group of the character of Han Solo would have been played by Chris Walken. Oh. I would have I would have loved to see that. Oh but that's so interesting. You saw my favorite act. Are you so great? Are you guys lying to reading? They're so unusual.

So you're surprised you got the part. Yeah, thrilled. So I'm going to play a clip just so we get in the

moment. So this is the scene from Star Wars the first one in which Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker

and you as Han Solo along with Chubaka are on the Death Star and R2D2 and C3PO are there with you as well and where you find out that Princess Leia is being held in detention and is likely to be killed and the person the android breaking the news to you is C3PO who is portrayed by Anthony Daniels.

about? The troids belong to her. She's the one in the message. We got to help her. Now look, don't get me funny ideas. The old man wants us to wait right here. He didn't know she was here. We just found a way back into the detention mark. I'm not going anywhere. They're going to execute her. Look a few minutes ago he said you didn't want to just wait here to be captured. Now all you want to do is stay. Marching into the detention area is not what I had in mind.

But they're going to kill her. Better her than me.

She's rich. Rich. How powerful. Listen, if you were to rest you were the reward would be

one. Well, more wealth than you can imagine. I don't know. I can imagine quite a bit. You'll get it.

“All right. So what's your reaction to hearing that?”

It seems like a long time ago in a galaxy far far away. Right. Did the script make sense to you without being able to visualize Chewbacca or R2D2 or C3PO or the special effects? You didn't have, you just got what's called the sides. You know, like your part. And you didn't have a larger context. So it was probably hard to actually have an idea of what the film was like. But when you saw the film for the first time

with the special effects and with the Android and with the, you know, like stirring music behind it,

what did you do? I was blown away. I mean, I was, I was really shocked by the power of the film. When I saw it, you know, that we shot in England and our English crew were not used to something like Star Wars. And so they were pretty sure that it was going to be a disaster. And we weren't far from that opinion ourselves, the actors. But it, you know, did okay. Well, yeah, did okay. Yeah. Elton John once asked you if you're going to write a memoir.

“I think that was after he wrote his. And you, I, I, I've read that, that what you told him was that you”

didn't want to tell the truth, but you don't want to lie. And I thought that was an interesting

position to take, especially in time when a lot of people share absolutely everything.

Yeah. Can you say more about that? Well, I don't think Elton was, I thought I had the best answer. Because he is brutally honest about himself. And I, I'm not prepared to be brutally honest about myself. Is it out of self protection or protection protecting other people or both? Probably both. Yeah. It's just, I just don't think it's anybody's business. So anyway. So I said, I'll go for you to be interviewed all the time,

like in this interview. And and you have things that are like really private. I've tried to, like not invade your privacy. You know, you've been very gracious. And and I,

“it's always a struggle. I think to know how to control this volume of information about yourself.”

Well, it's, it's been great to talk with you. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you coming back on our show. Thank you. Harrison Ford co-stars in the series shrinking. It's streaming on Apple TV. He spoke with Terry Gross. Peaky Blinders was a British series that premiered in 2013 and ran for nearly 10 years. It starred Kilian Murphy long before he won an Oscar for starring in the movie Oppenheimer.

As Tommy Shelby, an urban youth gang leader in Birmingham, who rose to political power in the early 20th century, despite a poor background. The series created by Steven Knight developed a strong following and now is back with a movie-length sequel with Murphy returning to star. Our TV critic David B. and Cooley has this review. During his decade on the BBC period drama Peaky Blinders,

Kilian Murphy matured visibly as a man and also as an actor. Steven Knight wrote such a challenging and nuanced role for him as gangster Tommy Shelby, that it wasn't surprising at all, that when the series concluded, Murphy was tapped as star as Jay Robert Oppenheimer by Christopher Nolan. It also wasn't surprising if you devoured all six seasons of Peaky Blinders, that Murphy would be not only willing but eager to revisit the

character of Tommy Shelby one last time. Especially when the script is written by Knight and brings

personal and historical challenges. We last saw Tommy Shelby in the final episode of Peaky Blinders

“in the 1930s. Prohibition had been repealed in the U.S., the Nazi party was rising in Germany,”

and Tommy's volatile brother Arthur was about to die. The movie Peaky Blinders the immortal man jumps ahead to November 1940, when England already is at war with Germany. A munitions factory staffed by women in Birmingham, Tommy's hometown, is bombed by aerial strikes from the Nazis and claims more than 100 victims. Tommy has long since secluded himself far away, isolated in a remote farmhouse, haunted by wartime memories and what he fears are family ghosts. But the bombing brings

a visit from his sister Ada, played by Sophie Randall. She informs him not only of the devastation to burning him, but the fact that his estranged son has taken control of his old gang, the Peaky Blinders, and is making new and dangerous moves and alliances. Tommy, you've got to come back with me. Speak some words of the graves of the dead and speak to your son before he gets himself home

by the law or lynched by the people. Ada, I see things. Yeah, you always did, but since Arthur died.

Since Arthur died. Since Arthur died, it's like a dawn on me and it's gone oven. It can't close it. Tommy would prefer to stay distant and uninvolved, but the recklessness of his son Duke, played by Barry Kieogen, leaves him little choice. Duke meets with Beckett, a British Nazi

“sympathizer played by Tim Roth, who finds in Duke an important and agreeable collaborator.”

Their meeting begins with Beckett handing Duke a British pound note. Yeah, you can keep that. Freshly printed can't have hit five pound note. It's plenty more

with that came from. I'm much more £350 million more. It's my job to introduce the money into the British

economy using organised criminal gangs, so Peaky Blinders gets a 20% cut. That's £70 million to use as you see fit, but be ready for the anarchy that comes after. I'm ready. Yeah, obviously Berlin would much prefer it if I was talking to your father. Once that's in play very early on, Tommy Shelby finds himself having to take sides and do battle.

“Either defending or betraying his own country, and either saving or opposing his own son.”

The stakes couldn't be much higher, or in writer Stephen Knight's hands more unpredictable or gripping.

He always populates his dramas with terrific actors and vibrant characters. And in the immortal

man, we get delightful return visits from, among others, Peaky Blinders, series players, Rebecca Ferguson, Steven Graham, and Paci Lee. And most of all, we get Knight's brilliant approach to his period dramas, the way he folds the fictional and the factual. He's done it so well, so many times, for so many outstanding TV series, and I've given rave reviews to most of them. A thousand blows, the veil, house of Guinness, all the light we cannot see. And some that alluded me at the

time, which I've caught up with, and have been delighted by. Like Taboo from 2017, which featured great early performances by both Tom Hardy and Jesse Buckley, who just won a best actress Oscar for HamNet. You can watch the immortal man all by itself, but if you're uninitiated in what's come before, you shouldn't. All six seasons of Peaky Blinders were available on Netflix, and there are only six episodes per season. So even if you start from the beginning,

you'll get to this new movie sequel before you know it. Like any good Stephen Knight drama, and they're all good. Peaky Blinders is addictive, easy to consume, and impossible to forget. David B. and Coolie reviewed the film Peaky Blinders the Immortal Man. Coming up, novelist Francis Buffer talks about his new book "Nun Such" about a young woman in World War II London trying to survive the blitz and defeat time-traveling fascists. This is Fresher Weekend.

am I. Two of my most enjoyable reading experiences over the last 10 years were reading Kohokia Jazz,

a 1920s noir crime novel set in an alternate American history, where a sovereign majority in indigenous nation-state thrives in the middle of the United States, and Golden Hill, a novel set in 18th century New York. If I had to make a list of my top five great American novels, Golden Hill would be high on that list, despite the fact that it takes place before the country was founded, and its author is a Brit. Now that author, my guest, Francis Buffard, has written

another incredibly entertaining book. It's called "Nun Such." It takes place in London during the war, as a city must try to survive the blitz, the eight-month bombing campaign led by the Nazis

that killed over 40,000 British. Iris Hawking's a young independent woman is trying to survive

the nightly attacks while push against the society's constraints that would keep her in a secretarial pool until she was safely married off. Her ambition seeks something much more expansive. While her independent side fights against it, she finds herself falling in love with Jeff, a young man working in an even younger broadcast format. Television. Oh, and did I mention she

“has to fight off magic time-traveling fascists who want to travel in the past and kill Winston Churchill?”

Yes, that's there too. An magical land called "Nun Such" and "Angels" and a lot more. Francis Buffard got to novel writing on the late side in his fifties after writing on fiction.

He's also written light perpetual, a novel that imagines the lives of five real-life people

if they had not died as children in the blitz, and an unauthorized book in the Narnia series, which were officially written by CS Lewis. He also wrote a memoir called "The Child That Books Built" about his early escape into reading, and unapologetic, while despite everything, Christianity can still make surprising emotional sense. Francis Buffard welcomed a fresh air. Thank you for having me.

So, I'm clearly not British, but I understand to some degree the foundational importance of the blitz on modern British identity, but can you illuminate just how important that history is especially for Londoners? It's the epic moment in the history of London as a city. It comes in a heavily mythicized form with politicians invoking something called the blitz spirit over the decade since which is a kind of rather misleading image of total social consensus

and kind of spontaneous mass virtue, which of course is very flattering if you're British. It's nice to think that amidst the complications and bits of shame and horror in our history, especially the imperial side of it, there should be one moment where we did the right thing. You've professed your love for the CS Lewis Narnia books, and in those books the children discover the land of Narnia because they're sent out of London in the country for safety during the war.

Iris, your hero will discover Nunsuch, this fantasy land, because of the war too.

“Did you think of your book Nunsuch as in conversation with the Narnia books?”

Exactly that. I was wanting to have a conversation with Lewis and with the other members of the inklings, his writing circle, who through the period of the war were writing these cosmic thrillers motivated by, I think, a very similar sense that there was something unearthly about about the ruined city, a way in which it seemed quite natural for people to be pushed to the familiar edges of their experience and then beyond it into something unearthly or

magical. But also I had a specific loving argument I wanted to have with CS Lewis because I am a devotee of the Narnia books. I have been since I was a child, but because I love him, I'm allowed to be annoyed with him as well. And I wanted to pick up specifically the notoriously unfair bit at the end of the last Narnia book in which the character Susan is not allowed to join in with the happy ending because, as it says, she's interested in nothing nowadays, but

nylon's, lipsticks and invitations. And ever since people have been trying to find a kind of spiritual meaning for what Lewis had done there and maybe there is one, but there's also,

“I think, very clearly a kind of bachelor incomprehension or even distaste for the lives of”

young women. So I knew that I wanted to write a fantasy set then which very deliberately had as its protagonist finding her way into wonder. Somebody who is really strongly in favor of nylon's, lipsticks and invitations and everything they represent, although although my protagonist

magical time-traveling fascists. I want to go back in time and murder Winston Churchill before

he shores up Britain's will to fight the Nazis. Iris even walks by this house in Chelsea where she lives. It's the headquarters of the British fascists, which was actually a place. Can you talk a

“bit about the sympathies that the upper class of Britain had for the Nazis during that time?”

There was a distinct kind of vein of pro-fascist sentiment in the British upper classes, partly because, as in other bits of Europe, I'm Germany, Italy, the Great Depression had shook people's faith that kind of liberal democracy could do the business and cure the ills of the present day, but also because they liked order and hierarchy and they could see those things disappearing in the modern world. Again, one of the strange things to get your head round is that

for the first nine months of the Second World War, British fascists were operating completely

unimpeded. They were running candidates in special elections on a piece platform. They thought the war was a terrible misunderstanding of Hitler's good intentions and that it was probably caused by evil Jewish pleutocrats, of course, and they were there offering what seemed to them and to defeated and disheartened people beyond the actual fascist organization as the future, the inevitable thing that would happen when Europe went fascist. And I give Iris a sense of visceral horror,

“which I think is completely deserved at watching these people with their big signs saying”

fascism is practical patriotism and fascism for King and Empire and peace now, active at the very moment where a fascist army are kind of rolling westwards and look very much as if they're going to conquer Britain too. It is local evil to go with global evil. You know, this is a time of rising authoritarianism in many countries. Was that on your mind when you are writing down such? Yes, I did become very aware. The moment of this book

aligns itself overlaps with the moment we're having now and that the dangers of that time are kind of a warning about the dangers of this time and that there should be something really sobering about what a close thing it was that the world did in the end decide to resist fascism that there was just the right balance of opinion in Britain to just push it over to going actually stuff the British Empire. This is too important. We'll bankrupt ourselves to fight

fascism. Let's talk about your hero Iris Hawkins. Like other female characters in your books, Iris is coming up against the social constraints for the woman of her time and at this period working women like her are relegated to the secretarial pools of London brokerages even though she wants to be like a player in the world of finance. She also enjoys casual sex but has to be careful not to have that tarnished her reputation. There's an obvious double standard there. In order to

rent an apartment, she has to pretend to be married to a soldier serving a broads because no one will rent to a quote tart. She's a really great character. You dedicated none such to your grandmother Nancy and under the dedication you wrote quote not entirely a good girl and in your afterward you said that like Iris she quote came from Wattford and she was as Iris would say of an adventurous disposition but Iris isn't her. Of course you are pointing out the connections between Iris and

“your grandmother. We didn't need to know any of those. So how was she an inspiration for Iris?”

My intentions here are celebratory and she is safely dead. She died at 99 and a half 15 years ago. There was a particular moment. My grandmother was a resilient person who was on the whole hopeless story telling about her life. So you only ever got very small glimpses of of what she had done in the past and there was a moment at the beginning of this century when she was in her vigorous early 90s when she and I went to the oldest Indian restaurant in England and we sat down. She looked

around and she said I was last here in about 1935. It hasn't changed much and then she said with no

prompting at all I always preferred going out with married men but they would spend so much more

money on you and then she clamped up instantly. This door opened on the other side of it. This

shut again and I could not get her to talk anymore about it. She just smiled and looked mysterious.

So Iris is in some ways my attempt to imagine my way into that world but I didn't have much to go on so Iris is a creation not a copy. Were you able to discover anything more about your grandmother's adventures? Hers happened in the early 30s she was busy being a parent having run off with Mr. Spufford who all her brothers hated but later on she worked for a medical charity which brought distinguished and rather attractive doctors from all over the world and at her funeral

my father who who loved his mother and was very proud of her had to be prevented from reading aloud a list of the distinguished lovers that he deduced she had to do. I know but you know it was a funeral maybe the mood would have been wrong so I didn't have much to go on and I am aware of the difficulties are doing this as a male writer and it seems to me that the way to cross the distance between me and someone like Iris is to really commit to her viewpoint so the book

never ever lets you know what she looks like for example so she is never the object of the book

attention she is always the subject the person who's looking at the world and and liking what she sees there are a number of detailed descriptions of the male body as she looks at but none of her own and I wanted somebody who genuinely had the freedom to be unlikable at times and complicated and genuinely self-centered not a secretly kind-hearted person merely posing as as assertive but somebody who who was determined enough to get what they want that they could be quite

manipulative Francis you grew up in a university town both of your parents were

“historians and I think both taught at the University of Kiel you had a younger sister who was born”

with a genetic disorder sister noces that she died from at the age of 22 and it sounds like your

parents unsurprisingly we're very occupied in your childhood with her care and and really trying to save her but as for sibling I'm guessing you were perhaps benignly neglected and understandably so I wouldn't put it quite like that they tried the damnedest they were they were very aware of exactly the danger and me being benignly neglected but it had the perverse consequence that I think I spent my childhood feeling I needed to reassure them that I was fine which was

emotionally laborious in itself so I was I was very glad to to head off into books as a series of you know doors out from from emotional intensity right you you said that reading was your escape you actually have a memoir called the child that books built and you especially enjoyed fantasy by talking and and CS Lewis so what was your reading behavior like were you the kind of reader that would read over everything else like doing your school works in France eating yeah and and remains

safe as some time although the existence of the iPhone is kind of sabotage oh no deep immersion now I was the kind of reader as a child where people had to shout in my ears when it was meal time to get me to come back and pay attention to the soundtrack of the real world

“very deep immersion with something I think a bit driven about it I'm I'm not sorry that I've lost”

the capacity to go that far away though I wish I could swim in whole reservoirs of novels rather than coming up to check my email every half an hour so in that memoir you write still when I reach for a book I am reaching for an equilibrium I am reading to banish pity and brittle bounds I am reading to evade guilt and avoid consequences that may be think of your sister and I was wondering if if you feel survivors guilt over her death or even when she was living did you feel

some guilt because of your healthiness yes I did is the short answer um the way I dealt with it was to it was to behave as if it was a kind of law of the universe that I was fine so I didn't let myself think it's not fair that I should live and she shouldn't but at the same time I felt overwhelmed by by the scale of of of what would have been the right kind of order of of

“compassion so I think I showed less of it than I should have done and yeah there's guilt in that now”

I didn't know her as well as I could have because I was so aware of her as a kind of potentially pitiful person where as in fact she was a funny and rather peppery and witty person as described

no I can't look it's too awful I miss her very much I wish now at 61 I had a I had a 58 year-old

sister who had passed through all of these decades with me and who I could compare notes with but

“I don't and I haven't seen her for how long it's 35 years now um I think of her often”

we haven't spoken about your novel late perpetual but that imagines what would have been the lives

of five children who were actually killed by a bomb during the blitz and I was wondering if in that book

though she's not a character then whether you were also imagining what your sister's life would have been like if she had lived in an indirect way yes absolutely someone can be a presence without

“being a character and and once the shock of of of somebody dying young is is over I think”

the sorrow of it settles in around all of the things that they're then missing and all of the stages of life that they don't get to go through there were some reviews of like a petrol saying you know

the children who die in the first chapter and then get given a kind of ambiguous literary

resurrection people people were complaining that they didn't have remarkable lives and they

“they grew old and died anyway and I thought yes but that's the prize what you want is to grow”

old and die anyway um going back to what I said in the memoir about about reading to banish pity um that changes and I I don't read to banish pity anymore I don't write to banish pity either I I write to try and find concrete and fully felt ways to give pity a place to live and endure and in some ways I suppose I'm trying to make up for looking away in those those early years I'm trying to to look straight at these days well Francis Buffett I want to thank you

so much for talking with me today thank you for having me Francis Buffett's new book is called "Nun Such" Fresher weekend is produced by Theresa Madden our technical director and engineers Audrey Bentham our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Philis Myers, Roberta Sorock, Emery Baldenado, Lauren Crenzel, Monique Nazareth, Thaya Challenger, Susan Nicundi, Anna Balman,

and Nico Gonzalez-Wisler our digital media producer is Molly CV Nesper for Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley I'm Sam Bruger