elizabethgilbert.doc

ELIZABETH GILBERT in Conversation with Paul Holdengr?ber May 5, 2011 Celeste Bartos Forum LIVE from the New York Public Library /live PAUL HOLDENGR?BER: Good evening, and forgive us for being late. We are actually late because we showed Liz Gilbert some of our very special collections, for instance Charles Dickens’s pen, for inspiration’s sake, some of Walt Whitman’s manuscripts, and she just totally and absolutely fell in love. And you know how it is. You fall in love and it’s really, really, really tough to move the person away. We tried, we tried, we tried, but it just would not work. She was relentless, and she just wanted to stay there amongst the things of beauty, so forgive us for beginning a bit late, but I promise you that for her last interview for a while, or for a conversation, I hope more than an interview, we I hope will give you some pleasure as well in return and maybe we might even talk about some of the things of beauty you can see at the New York Public Library, quite quickly, as I often say, within about ten minutes, you can be upstairs, whoever you are, wherever you come from, whatever your origin is, and whatever your destination is, within about ten minutes you too can be holding the Leaves of Grass, which you know is quite rare, from where I grew up in France and Belgium and Germany and Austria and Switzerland and all of those places, you needed letters, letters, letters, of recommendation. Here you just need enough mobility to be able ro get there. So let me just say that my name is Paul Holdengr?ber in case you were wondering. (applause) Thank you, Liz. And I am the Director of LIVE from the New York Public Library, I’ve said this a million times, but Liz has not heard it before, so I’ll say it tonight, my goal here at the Library when I was hired was to oxygenate the Library. In fact I’ve said that I want to make the lions roar, I want to make a heavy institution dance, I want to make it levitate whenever possible. And I want t