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[no dialogue].
(Mr. Winston Groom). Now I am seriously wired.
[audience laughter].
(Mr. Groom). I thank Kaylee for that
kind introduction.
I can tell you, what she told you was that I've written a hell
of a lot of books.
There's not a one of them that's as good as anything her daddy
wrote, and its kind of what I came up here to Illinois to say.
I wasn't really sure what to say about...I'm given a lot of
latitude here in talking about Jim.
I kind of made some notes about it, I do
remember the first time we met.
I was reading Willy Morris' book, a little memoir about Jim
after he passed away, and in it, just to refresh my memory, I was
thinking well what, you know, what was this going to draw.
I came across a paragraph where he had quoted a very fine editor
who was a friend to us all, Ross Claiborne who said that Jim
didn't make friends, I don't know whether he said instantly
or very quickly or something like that.
And I'd like to think I'm a little bit of an exception
because the first time that I met Jim, I distinctly remember
that we shook hands.
And this would have been about 1975, I guess just after they
moved back and I shook hands and he said "Well, how do you do?"
He looked at me and said, "Well you're a big
*** aren't you?"
[audience laughter].
And I...it took me a minute or two to understand that, the word
"***'" to Jim was a term of endearment.
[audience laughter].
And that his language--which was I think was personally designed
to horrify any high school English teacher--was really just
his way of saying "screw you" to the world.
And imitating what I guess was the harmless billingsgate of the
soldiers that he had known back in the nineteen,
late 30s and early 40s.
After that evening, we had gone to some, were going to some big
party with--this was out in East Hampton, Long Island.
I had gone to visit a friend of mine, a guy called Adam Shaw,
his Daddy was Erwin Shaw, and I'll get into a little bit of
that in a minute.
But I remember when we were going, it was the Fourth of July
and George Plimpton was having a big fireworks party,
which he had every year.
And I think Erwin or somebody had rented a convertible car,
and Jim and I found ourselves sitting on the back of it, I
mean, not in the back seat but on top of the back seat where
the convertible top goes down.
And he was dressed up in his usual costume, which was a pair
of jeans and a nice shirt and sweater and cap and he carried
this old leather satchel around.
I never knew what the hell was in it, but I was told it was
knives and things.
[audience laugher].
Well he collected knives, I mean it wasn't like that he was going
to hurt people with or even clean his fingernails with.
But he probably had cigars in there.
I remember that, he liked to smoke cigars.
But I think he took the liberty of calling me an *** because
he knew before we met who I was.
I think Erwin or Adam Shaw or one of them boys or somebody had
told him that I had been in Vietnam.
And so, he had kind of knew a little bit about who I was and
he was interested in that because he had not too long
before that gotten back from there and written a very fine
book called, "Viet Journal," which was a non-fiction book on
his take on the war in Vietnam.
I believe he had gone over there in the very early 70s, but it
was much later than when I was there.
I was there in the, in the late 60s, 1966 and 1967.
The war was...it was the worse war then, but the morale of the
troops was a lot better because we were old-line infantry
troops, we weren't draftees.
After 67' and 68' they started drafting people, and that's
where a lot of the trouble came from, with people flagging
officers and smoking dope and doing that kind of business.
But he was really interested in that and wanted to have a
conversation about it and we did over really a couple of days.
Back then, I discovered that the Jones household, they had bought
this marvelous place, somewhere named 'Chateau Spud' because it
was on the back of a potato field out there, that beautiful
Hampton's before the movie people came and ruined it.
It was an old Victorian farmhouse that Gloria had
furnished with all these French antiques from their days in
Paris, and it would kind of pass for a Salon, meaning that if you
used that term to define a place where
literary and artistic people go.
But, looking back on it, it seemed to me now that it was
kind of less a salon and more of the longest floating crap game
and alcohol-drinking contest in the history of the world.
[audience laughter].
And poor old Jim endured this because he was
ultimately not well and well.
But his illness, which was congestive heart failure, which
sadly enough could probably be cured these days, we are talking
obviously 35 years ago.
But he endured it with good and patient pleasure.
He used to love to--in the evenings after he finished his
work--he'd get up in this little pulpit, which the Jones family
had brought back from France.
It was an old church pulpit that I guess used to hang on the wall
and one of the priests got up and said his
deal, and they used it for a bar.
And it was great because it had little shelves and they would
hold all the liquor and everything, and I guess they
kept the prayer books, and Bibles and stuff back there when
it was used for what it was built for, but it was an old
medieval looking thing.
And it was right there in the middle of the living room, and
was raised up on a stand so that anybody who stood
behind it was as tall as anybody else.
And Jim would get back there, and remember he had a glass of
white wine, that was all he was drinking then.
And he'd always, almost always have the New York Times
crossword puzzle he was trying to finish over the stupid den
and racket of all of us crazy drunks and misbegotten people.
And he would, sort of look down and do the crossword puzzle with
all this racket was going on, take a sip of wine and he'd get
into conversation, then go back to the crossword puzzle.
So there wasn't a whole lot of sensible conversation that came
out of those heathens but it sure was a lot of fun.
I ain't sticking to my notes here; you all
will have to forgive me.
Anyway, the way that I got to meet Jim was that I had been
a--he had been a literary hero of mine
long before I ever met him.
And really because of a movie, the first movie they did of "The
Thin Red Line" which got me interested in all of his books.
Now I know that the critics slammed that movie, and
I think unfairly so.
I watched it again not too long ago because I ordered it, and it
is probably the most realistic combat movie, and probably one
of the best combat movies ever to come out, ever to be done.
And I'm including "All Quiet on the Western Front," and "Twelve
O'clock High" and "In Which We Serve."
"The Thin Red Line" stands up to that."
Now I know Jim didn't like it, but I don't blame him maybe,
they took liberties with some of his language in there, they may
have screwed something up.
But when I watched it, I was a senior in college in ROTC, this
would be 1965, and it came out that year.