Bruce Feiler - Where God Was Born, Abraham, Walking The Bible

"I Saw You on C-SPAN"
Sunday, February 18, 2007

Over the years, of all the remarks I've heard about how people discovered my work (The TODAY Show, Good Morning America, CNN, NPR, TIME, the remainder bin at the bookstore), by far the most common has been, "I heard you on C-SPAN." BookTV is a Godsend for authors, and for readers. Everyone who watches it believes they are the only one. But they are many, and they are loyal, and I, for one, am extremely grateful. As I once remarked to one of the cameramen, who at this point has filmed me so often that he could give my speeches, every time I'm on C-SPAN one of my books goes into another printing.

Today, C-SPAN2 re-aired an interview I did with Brian Lamb about ABRAHAM back October 2002 (it aired in December of that year). It's somewhat legendary in my family because near the end Brian asked me if I was married. I answered, truthfully, "No." At the time, I had been dating the future Mrs. Feiler Faster for about a year. This was the second time we had dated for a year, the previous time ending in a break-up that had last a year itself. (I know that's hard to follow, but it's early Sunday morning with crying twins...) Anyway, Brian asked me the question, and C-SPAN didn't exactly seem like the time or place to rehash my dating history. But when my future mother-in-law watched the interview and saw the answer, she was on the phone with my future wife within seconds lambasting me, how I wasn't serious about her, how she never wanted to see me again, ad infinitum like one of those C-SPAN callers who gets cut off by the host.

What neither of them knew is that a few days after the show eventually aired, I had plans to whisk the future Mrs. Feiler Faster off on a plane to an undisclosed location to propose to her. The storm became so heated that, for a time, I considered calling Brian Lamb and asking him if he would record a short statement for my mother-in-law in his wonderful deadpan way. I still regret that I never did that, but the logistics would have been too complicated to pull off in a matter of days. And when I heard that they were going to re-air the show this week, after the president mentioned on C-SPAN this week that he had just read the book, I wanted to reach out to Brian again. I immediately teased my now mother-in-law about all of this --she's actually visiting this weekend -- and she actually didn't remember for a minute or two! I take that as a sign of progress.

Notes: To watch the program, click here. If you're new to the site, read the story of the origin of this blog here. To download the materials about hosting an interfaith "Abraham Salon" mentioned on the show, click here. To send me (or my mother-in-law) an email, click here.

Labels: Bruce in the Media

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