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• Article on Ms. Fleming
• Ms. Fleming's essays on NewsHour
• About As if Love Were Enough

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Tavis: Anne Taylor Fleming is a noted journalist, writer, and novelist who fans of the 'NewsHour' know from her pointed essays right here on PBS. Her latest book is a look at family life in modern day America called, "As If Love Were Enough.' The book is in stores now. Anne Taylor Fleming, nice to have you on the program.

Anne Taylor Fleming: Pleasure.

Tavis: So how is your husband, Mr. Fleming, doing?

Fleming: Mr. Fleming's very happy. I've been married 34 years. We've been together 38 years. The day I married him, he was exactly twice my age. And it is a miracle that we're still together. (Laughs) That's to cut to the chase.

Tavis: Well, he's a great writer. For those who watch this program know he was on here not long ago with his book.

Fleming: Yup, his memoir.

Tavis: And what a wonderful and remarkable journey he's had covering the Civil Rights era. And he had a great piece in the 'L.A. Times.'

Fleming: In the 'L.A. Times.' I grew up on the west side of Los Angeles; Karl grew up in an orphanage in North Carolina. On page, we're the mismatch of the century, and we've been very, very lucky.

Tavis: This book, "As If Love Were Enough,' is about family.

Fleming: Family, it's about - it's a novel. I've just gotten into fiction late in life, after being a journalist for 30 years. I got into journalism really because of Karl, because of all the things he had done and covered and seen. And I got into journalism when I thought it was a noble profession. And there are occasions when I still do, but not as often as I did. And late in life, I've taken up fiction. And it allows me to explore things with a depth that I wasn't able to do.

Tavis: Talk to me about that transition. I'm glad you said that. I don't do a whole, whole lot of fiction on this program. And it's not because I don't respect fiction. It's because I read so much non-fiction. And that's my own personal interest. But I try to expand my horizons from time to time. I wanna come back later to what I like about this book, which is that it is, I don't wanna say an indictment, in some ways, on American culture.

We'll come back to that in a second. But I'm fascinated by how, at this point in your life, you've navigated your way from just non-fiction into fiction. I'm not quite there yet. But tell me more about your personal journey. Maybe I'll get there in a few years.

Fleming: It's such a fascinating thing for me. I always wanted to write fiction. Never had written a word until about age 47, when I started my first fiction. It's using a different part of your brain. It's yielding to the unconscious. It's moving out of the rational brain, which you and I use every day to interview and be a journalist and do all that, into a place where you have to let people talk to you.

It sounds sort of airy-fairy, but characters in a novel, if they're real, like I hope these characters are here, they talk to you. You get up in the morning, and they're having a conversation, and they're walking through the door. It really is more than anything about yielding, I think, and getting out of that really control freak, rational brain that we have.

Tavis: Maybe that's why I ain't there yet. (Laughs)

Fleming: Yeah, yeah. (Laughs)

Tavis: I was waiting for you to get there. Now I know why I'm not there yet. It's that control freak in me. (Laughs)

Fleming: That control, well, we all have it.

Tavis: So tell me about the storyline, the characters in this text.

Fleming: It's a story about two sisters growing up in Hollywood. Some of that part's autobiographical. I have a sister. I grew up in Hollywood. My parents were in show business. They did, in fact, divorce early, like the parents in this novel. When the parents come apart in this novel, the two sisters, Claire and Louise, fall apart. And the book is really a story about a family coming apart, and the long wages of that divorce.

How it tears them all apart. And then the sisters try to find a way back. Twenty years later, they come back into each other's lives, over a specific set of circumstances. I love writing fiction. I love going deep. I love the experience of yielding, and letting people talk to me. And I wanted to tell a story that's really about the damage we do to love.

Tavis: Yeah. How do you balance, I wanna phrase this the right way. How do you balance pushing back that non-fiction part of you to let those voices come through? Does that make sense?

Fleming: It makes total sense, and it's very hard. I literally do a trick with myself. 'Cause I'm still, all the time I'm writing fiction, I'm doing stuff. My essays, I'm doing magazine pieces. I pretend there's a little switch right here in my brain. And in the morning, when I go sit down at my computer, if I have to write an essay or do non-fiction, I go like that.

This sounds unbelievably corny, but it's like behavior modification. Or if I'm going into my fictional mode, I go tweak, and I say, go down. Start floating. And it seems to work for me.

Tavis: I'm fascinated by this notion you offered a moment ago of the damage that we do to love. That's a powerful phrase. Explain.

Fleming: Well, I'm interested in writing as a novelist about not people that don't care and where the stakes aren't high. I'm interested in writing families and people where there has been love, there is love. And they hurt it. They don't protect it. And it fascinates me, 'cause we always think love is enough. It'll see you through. But the whole idea of protecting it and looking out for it is something that fascinates me, from a novelist point of view. Probably also from a journalist's point of view.

Tavis: Is it your sense that we spend too much time in search of it, that is love, too little time in search of it, or something that we ought to just let come to us?

Fleming: Just when you said that, I think we perhaps spend too much time searching for it, and not enough time protecting it when we find it. Love is nothing but, it's ephemeral. It's only the insistence upon it. You have to honor it. And what happens in this book is even though there's a lot of love, even the parents who divorce, they go on seeing each other behind their childrens' backs. That kind of thing. As a novelist, what's wonderful is you surprise yourself.

I had no idea the parents were gonna go on sort of having a sort of clandestine romance behind their childrens' backs. Because they didn't want the children to know that they were still seeing each other after there'd been this big whoop-de-doo divorce. So all the tentacles of love fascinate me.

Tavis: Tell me why you make that particular notion right there a piece of the storyline? What's the point of having these parents see each other in a clandestine sort of way?

Fleming: I think that they realize that they have caused such destruction for their children, they don't wanna come back together if they're not really gonna come back together, and they're not. They have damaged each other. And yet, there is still love. They're still tethered in some way, as are the sisters in the book. And so, to follow the sisters back out, and as they come back together, and there's not a Hollywood ending to this book.

There's no, it isn't all wrapped up. One of the things I love is that I think all of the characters are flawed, but all have sort of redemptive qualities. So that you can empathize with them, or get irritated at them. The funniest thing as a novelist is to write people that you get mad at. Halfway through, I wanted to say to them, come on. But you're following them.

Tavis: Were you tempted, having been born and raised here in L.A., to give it that Hollywood ending? Did you struggle with that?

Fleming: No, because I think part of the reason I've never been tempted to even be a screenwriter, although right about now, a little money would be lovely. (Laughs) The life of the novelist and essayist is a little thin sometimes, financially. I stayed away from screenwriting, and in part because it didn't seem to me to be the most honest kind of writing.

I'm interested in stuff that's real. That's part of the reason I got into journalism. It's part of the reason I write the kind of novels I do. The characters would not have tolerated Hollywood ending. It wouldn't be reasonable. Although I do think the ending - the ending surprised me, and it's a little bit happier than I thought it was gonna be.

Tavis: I said earlier in this conversation that one of the things I like about your work is that the journal in this book, that is, this novel, the journalist comes through. The non-fiction comes through. 'Cause you find your own way, very creatively, to weave in your own commentary about American culture. You talk about our obsession with news; you talk about how we view tragedy, and how we Americanize it. You care to share about?

Fleming: Yeah. The central character is a writer. The central character is not me, but I certainly borrow from that. And when we meet her in the beginning, she has been the mistress of a married guy. She's living in New York. She's living a very isolated, mistress life. She's writing out of her apartment. And she's obsessed, or watching a lot of television.

And she, in fact, nicknames herself the CNN Mistress, 'cause she's always watching news. It fills up her hours. And what I do think is that we spend a lot of time in this country, we become tragedy junkies. We get that remote and we look for the latest tsunami, the latest tragedy. And it's kind of desensitizing, and it hits us. We look for the jolt, but we forget the empathy. It's kind of a buzz, it's a high, the way we use news now, I think. Do you think that's right?

Tavis: I think so. I think, though, that news is so watered down today, though.

Fleming: Well, that's another, yeah.

Tavis: That's a whole 'nother conversation. So I'm not even sure it's news. I only raise that, it's sophomoric to say that on a certain level, but I only raise it in the context of this conversation. Because I'm not even sure it's news that we're critiquing. Does that make sense?

Fleming: It makes total sense. I think what we're critiquing is entertainment news, absolutely. A lot of it is touchy-feely entertainment news that I'm speaking to. And there is still some good news out there, but that is, indeed, a whole other conversation.

Tavis: Since we're on it, just two quick seconds here. What, then, is the danger in what news organizations are doing, which you've done in this book? And it's okay for a novel. What's the danger, as you see it, though, in news becoming infotainment?

Fleming: Well, I think that we lose the sense of the real stuff that's going on in the world. Anderson Cooper did a lot of great stuff for CNN, but it was a lot of tear-jerky stuff. And part of the reason that worries me is 'cause it buys us of emotionally. We get the emotional hit, but then we fail to then take that to the next policy level, and maybe let our anger come out and say hey, this shouldn't happen again.

We're bought off with the cheap emotions. And that worries me. And the whole idea of chasing celebrities as if that was news, part of the reason I switched to fiction at this point in my life, 'cause I don't wanna chase celebrities. And I don't wanna - I'm not interested in the private life of the President of the United States. I don't wanna go there. That doesn't interest me as a journalist.

Tavis: Well, Anderson's tear-jerky stuff worked. It snowed the CNN executives. He bumped Aaron Brown out of the way and got a show out of it, but to each his own.

Fleming: To each his own.

Tavis: The new book by Anne Taylor Fleming, a novel. "As If Love Were Enough.' Anne Taylor Fleming, nice to have you here.

Fleming: I appreciate it.

Tavis: Give my best to Karl.

Fleming: I will.

Tavis: That's our show for tonight. Catch me on the weekends on PRI, Public Radio International. Check your local listings. See you back here next time on PBS. Until then, good night from L.A. Thanks for watching, and as always, keep the faith.