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Episode 381: Michael Finkel
1.4k Plays1 year ago
Michael Finkel is the author of The Art Thief: A True Story of Passion, Obsession, and a Monumental Crime Spree.
Substack: Rage Against the Algorithm
Show notes: brendanomeara.com
Support: Patreon.com/cnfpod
Social: @CNFPod
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Transcript
Introduction and Sponsor
00:00:01
Speaker
Hey, this episode of the Creative Nonfiction Podcast is brought to you by Cold Sweats, a chill accompanied by perspiration caused by fear, nervousness, or the like. Cold Sweat, the alarm clock you never asked for. And so the chances of being eaten by a wild animal are not zero. They're low, but they're not zero.
Meet Michael Finkel
00:00:27
Speaker
Oh hey, CNN4Z, it's CNN4 that creative non-fiction podcast of show! Where I speak to badass people about telling true stories, I'm Brendan O'Mara. Whoopie!
00:00:37
Speaker
All right, this is great. This is awesome. Michael Finkel is here, and if that name means nothing to you, then shame on you. Michael is the best-selling author of True Story, Murder Memoir, Maya Culpa, The Stranger in the Woods, the extraordinary story of the last true hermit, and most recently, The Art Thief, a true story of passion, obsession, and a monumental crime spree. It's so good.
00:01:04
Speaker
Michael brought his fastball to this conversation and we talk about building scenes, our writers batting average, that'll mean something. The importance of the 12-minute walk between his home and his office as well as the time he got fired and how he bounced back from that. Want to know how much it costs Michael to have a book fact-checked? Well, stay tuned.
Challenges of Podcasting
00:01:27
Speaker
Make sure you head over to BrendanOmero.com for show notes and to sign up for the Rage Against the Algorithm newsletter, first of the month, no spam, can't beat it. If you dig the show, you might consider sharing it with your network so we can grow the pie and the pie appears to be shrinking. People are eating the pie, but there is no pie replenishment. Get the CNFing thing into the brains of other CNFers who need the juice. The show's listenership appears to be tanking, so I don't know, it's holding serve.
00:01:56
Speaker
But it'd be nice to reach some more people. I guess my charming personality might have overstayed his welcome in the podcast space, but hell, I'm not going anywhere.
00:02:07
Speaker
We'll always take reviews on Apple Podcasts, so the wayward CNF'er might say, shit, oh, give that a shot. Oh, and I did it. Well, sort of, but yeah, I half did it. I mean, I whole did on the one thing and then didn't do on the
Social Media and Mental Health
00:02:21
Speaker
other. So the average is a half did. I deleted my Apprend and O'Mara Twitter account, 2009 to 2023, 14 years, RIP, or RIP, rest in tweet.
00:02:34
Speaker
I might delete the podcast one as well. I have to admit, I do feel lighter. There is something of a FOMO going on, but there's also, it also just feels lighter. Twitter's turned to X and just everything that apparently is gonna turn into like this, a place where you can like buy stocks and shop and have it almost be like a mall
00:03:01
Speaker
But with all this other bullshit going on, like, you know what? At least I'm deleting this one. I'm holding on to the podcast one just for a little bit. Like I said, I'm probably going to kick that one to the curb, too. That pretty much only leaves me with Instagram for social media and sub-stack notes. I don't see myself adding another social media account.
00:03:23
Speaker
If anything, I might triple down on my ongoing rage against the algorithm. Uh, so, so yes, so that that's happening. I'm not on threads. I did the thing. I joined for three days and realized like, what are you doing? Just stop, stop this, make a better podcast, be a better writer. Don't be a better social media. Shout out to athletic brewing, the best damn non-alcoholic beer out there.
00:03:48
Speaker
Not a paid plug. I'm a brand ambassador and I want to celebrate this amazing product. If you head to athleticbrewing.com, use the promo code BRANDONO20 at checkout. You get a nice little discount on your first order. Again, I don't get any money and they are not an official sponsor of the podcast, though if they wanted to, I wouldn't object. I just get points for swag and beer.
Michael Finkel's Journalism Journey
00:04:10
Speaker
Give it a shot.
00:04:12
Speaker
Well, Michael has been a journalist for like 30 years, geez, writing for Sports Illustrated, New York Times Magazine, National Geographic. He's covered wars, a hermit. He's dropped into a volcano, like not all the way, but you know, into a volcano. He's the consummate generalist and a sheer joy to speak with. Here's Michael Finkelho.
00:04:46
Speaker
between your house
Writing Environment Preferences
00:04:47
Speaker
and your writing place and just that transitionary period of what it's like to get into the zone and just how you set up your place so you can adequately access your thoughts, your notes, your research, so you can get the stuff down. I mean, I'm a journalist. I'm not a novelist, meaning that I spend a lot of time traveling, interviewing people, and I feel that I can write in many places. I'm not that.
00:05:13
Speaker
particular, you know, I'm not a fan of writing in the center seat, coach class in a plane, but I have if I have to, I will. But I have always had an office out of the house. I have three children, two dogs and a wife. And so there's a lot of noise surrounding me all the time. And I love to have a tiny office in the smaller the space, the better.
00:05:34
Speaker
I'm relatively new to Park City, Utah. I moved here about two years ago. And before that, I lived in France. And before that, I lived in Bozeman, Montana. But in all those places, I had a tiny office. And when I say tiny, literally my office in Bozeman, Montana was a former janitor's closet in an elementary school that transferred to office space. And I just took out the metal door and put on a door with a window on it. And my space in Park City is also a podcast room.
00:06:03
Speaker
also a tiny little space. But the 12 minute walk in between my house in Park City and my office is through dense wood, pretty steep little off
The Walk to Work
00:06:14
Speaker
trail. And there are bears there, there are bobcats. And so the chances of being eaten by a wild animal are not zero, they're low, but they're not zero. And I love that sort of idea of moving from one space to another through like this interstitial zone where I'm like,
00:06:33
Speaker
not the highest ranking thing on the food chain. I mean one of the benefits of being a writer, lots of negatives, but one of the benefits is that you can kind of make your own hours and my family understands that when I sort of get on that creative groove I'll just drink a lot of coffee and often work all night into the dawn. Some people say they're not able to do that but I'm really
00:06:55
Speaker
I'm kind of always a night owl. You know, when when it's dark, I'm like not jealous that anybody else is skiing or mountain biking or if anybody in the whole world is having a good time, then I'm jealous of them.
00:07:07
Speaker
I sometimes literally in the middle of the night think, well, it's like 2 p.m. in Sydney, Australia. They're probably mountain biking there. And then I'll be jealous. But you're right. The transition between a full family filled, dog filled house and an office literally with nothing on the walls.
00:07:28
Speaker
You ever go to a baseball game and you see like that batter's eye, they call it where, uh, center field, they have, they don't allow people to sit there. I kind of think of my office as my big batter's eye. I don't want in my peripheral vision when I'm sitting at my desk from a left to right and all the way in front of me, I like blank walls. And then I'll put all of my research behind me. It's kind of a crazy thing. And I'm like, have stacks and stacks of research that I can't see unless I actually turn around and grab it. That gives me like the.
00:07:58
Speaker
It fools me into the fact that there's like tabula rasa, there's a blank slate in front of me and all my research is behind me. And that's when I can really do my writing. I don't know anybody else that does that, but I don't really like to talk to other writers because they, they make me a little nervous. Oh, why is that?
00:08:16
Speaker
I mean, I was I kind of want to ask you what other writers are like. I feel this is funny. I feel like if I was ever going to speak about a creative profession, it would be I feel like I'm an expert on photographers, even though I'm a terrible photographer. I always work with photographers. So I get to watch like I've watched every I've worked with Annie Leibowitz for a week. I've worked with some of the greatest
00:08:38
Speaker
uh, National Geographic photographers. I work with James Notway, who's one of the most famous war photographers, and I got to see how they all work, but I never work with another writer because I'm a writer, and in that way we're sort of all separated, and then when I'm with another writer, I'm sort of like
00:08:55
Speaker
Well, can I share my ideas with you? I feel a little bit guarded
Writers' Insecurities
00:08:59
Speaker
and maybe competitive or something like that. Well, that's definitely something I've spoken with on the show about comparison and even competition and jealousy and looking over your shoulder and being like, there are people who've been on the show who feel like if they talk too much, things they're writing about are going to get scooped or something. They're going to lose their idea.
00:09:25
Speaker
And I think there is some of that, a bit of an insecurity that if you're talking among a tradesman that maybe it's like, you know, you do wanna hold your ideas a little close to the chest, but also there are some people who are just like, you know, speak freely and then, you know, and just go with it in that sense too.
00:09:47
Speaker
I mean, I'm 100% human, so of course I have competitiveness and jealousies and all those other things. I also know a few writers and they're like, I mean...
00:09:56
Speaker
We're all sort of kind of curious about the world and, you know, have taken extraordinary adventures. And so I love to swap stories, but you're right. There is like a little weird friction. I don't think any of my best friends are nonfiction writers. I'm very comfortable in front of fiction writers and poets because there's no overlap. And I sort of wish the best for the profession in general. But yeah, I'm a I'm human. I guess I don't think anybody would
00:10:27
Speaker
who's being honest, wouldn't say that they're like trying to measure up to other people that are in the same profession as them. I don't think there's anybody that pure. I mean, maybe Mother Teresa, but I don't think there's any Mother Teresa writers out there. Right. Yeah. I'm kind of like that with some other interview podcasts and like nonfiction podcasts. Like I don't want to listen to them because for one, sometimes, you know, guests appear on the show where they didn't have time to come on mine, but they should. They appear on others.
00:10:56
Speaker
And I'm just like, oh you motherfucker. I thought you had no time. Turns out you had plenty of time for Terry Gross. Just a classic Brendan interjection here. It's never really Terry Gross. It's usually writers blow me off and they appear on long form. That happens frequently.
00:11:20
Speaker
And, you know, long form essentially beat me to the punch. They started in 2012. Shortly after in 2013, I slacked a bit. There were a couple years there where I didn't put out a podcast every week. They kept going. And they got, quote unquote, market share, if you want to use a term like that. And as a result, they're the go-to non-fiction podcast out there.
00:11:49
Speaker
So that's where we're at. Comin' for you, long form. I will listen to Terry Gross, because she's not strictly nonfiction, but it's one of those things too where I'm measuring myself against the interviewer, and I'm sometimes trying to predict what they're gonna ask next. Would they ask what I wanna ask? And sometimes when they do ask, like I have the question, oh, this is how I would follow up, and they follow up that same way. I'm like, motherfucker, you're good too.
00:12:17
Speaker
Well, congratulations. At least you're admitting to being human. I mean, this is all normal. And I think actually the measure of a person, at least this is what I tell all three of my teenage children, is really not how you react when you do well, but when you do poorly or you clearly didn't do as well as someone else. And then it's a real measure of your
00:12:41
Speaker
your maturity. And I try to be a good runner up slash loser. But I struggle with that, of course. And well, shoot. Well, here's another classic Brendan interjection.
00:12:52
Speaker
And I should say, I like long form. I even might love long form. I have nothing wrong. I have no bones to pick, no jealousies, believe it or not. I love Evan Ratliff. I think he's the best of the three. He's been on this show. I appreciate him, Max, Evan, Aaron, and their whole team, one presumes, are also good people.
00:13:20
Speaker
I don't know. I have no bone to pick with them. Like I said, I don't hate them. I'm no longer jealous. I'm usually more frustrated with a guest who tells me they don't have time to speak with me, but then they appear on that. So I'm like, okay, you did have the time. You just didn't want to appear on my show because it doesn't elevate your status in the same way that long form does.
00:13:47
Speaker
It's all about status. Status rolls. Like Seth Godin says, who's up? Who's down? Long form elevates somebody's status. Fresh air elevates. Create a non-fiction podcast? Maybe not so much, because who the hell am I? Okay, that's a bit much, and I'm sorry to lay that on you.
00:14:06
Speaker
Yeah, well the crucible through which this podcast was forged like back in 2013 when I started it was I was very much mired and very toxic feelings of jealousy and looking over my shoulder feeling like I missed my bus but a lot of people got on the bus and they were starting to ascend those ranks into greater visibility of publication and stuff of that nature and I was just in this mud puddle of writing these slideshows for Bleacher Report like
00:14:35
Speaker
winners and losers from the Daytona 500 like stuff like that Mike Wright Thompson isn't writing these things and and I would just get so I would just have all these ugly nasty feeling instead of focusing on the work and celebrating people's work I admired I was just feeling crummy and nasty
00:14:53
Speaker
So then I was like, you know what, maybe if I start to try to pull people into this show and interview them and celebrate their work, maybe I could work through those feelings of resentment and jealousy. And over the years, it's definitely blunted that knife. It never completely gets shorn off, but, you know, it definitely has put me in a better headspace to celebrate and try to rise the tides instead of being mired in my own little corner of nasty green-eyed monster jealousy.
00:15:21
Speaker
It just struck me as you were telling me that beautifully phrased, by the way, crucibles and all such a wonderful phrasing that I was like, dang, that's beautiful. It struck me that you also could use, Brendan, maybe a 12 minute walk between A and B. And I'm telling you this, this where I'm walking, sometimes literally clutching this like six inch knife thinking this is going to be hilarious to a bear as it swats it out of my hand. But that's literally, you know, I'm not bringing a gun to work.
00:15:48
Speaker
Uh, but, uh, that 12 minute walk does involve like this. I actually, I feel my head sort of like clearing. I maybe the first minute is like, you know, Oh, did I handle that confrontation with my teenage son correctly? And then I start shred, you know, shedding all that. Then I start shedding.
00:16:07
Speaker
what you just mentioned, the jealousies and the other writers. This is my own piece. And then by the time
Early Aspirations and Generalism
00:16:12
Speaker
I've made it through the woods, literally like senses alert because I want to hear the snap of a twig if there's an animal around. By the time I make it from my house down the driveway, through the woods, into the dirt road that leads to Park City proper, down to the main street of Park City, up two floors to my little office, like all of those weird things have usually flushed out of my system.
00:16:36
Speaker
and I'm looking at my batter's eye and I sit down and I open my laptop. I only work on tiny laptops. Open my little whatever 13 inch diagonal laptop and sit down and by that point I'm ready to begin.
00:16:48
Speaker
Love it. I love it. It's like a filtrate. It's like a Brita filter This filtering out all the all the impurities Yeah, yeah now I understand that you know You're one of those rare birds that you knew you wanted to be a writer from from a very very young age So like how did how did you know that you wanted to be a writer from age 10? Oh
00:17:11
Speaker
I mean, I guess if you're that young, you don't know that you want to know. It's like, uh, I, I'm really fortunate because I have many dear friends that it, you know, the ages of 40, 50 still don't know what they want to be if they grow up. Um, I.
00:17:27
Speaker
Yeah, when I'm sitting here talking to you, I cannot believe that I'm actually making my living as a writer because that is really what I wanted to do. I guess if you had asked me what I wanted to do at age 10, it would be like everything for a week.
00:17:42
Speaker
which is basically the definition of a journalist, where you get to stick your nose, your finger everywhere. I've lived with hunter-gatherer tribes in remote Eastern Africa and the Arctic. And then I've done heavy science pieces about black holes with some of the leading physicists in the world and just about everything in between true crime to warfare.
00:18:09
Speaker
And I feel like I have gotten to live a little bit of everyone else's lives for a small amount of time. And that's sort of what I wanted to do. Even when I was really young, I was sort of a scatterbrained, but I loved writing it all down. There was something about
00:18:25
Speaker
especially in the evening before going to bed, even when I was young, just writing in a journal and sort of getting my thoughts out. And then after that feeling of writing things down, it doesn't matter if it was well presented or not. Just the feeling of having sort of a.
00:18:40
Speaker
clear head that would allow me to like go to sleep and see what's, see what the next day presents. And yeah, I remember I did, I kept it. I kept a journal at a very young age in which, you know, my mom had kept it and she showed it to me and said, uh, yeah, I said, uh, when I grew up, I want to be a writer. And then it said, the next line said, second choice was mad scientist.
00:19:00
Speaker
And hearing you talk about that, you talk about such a wide swath of things that you've been able to immerse yourselves in. And sometimes it can be very hard to carve out your path as a generalist and not just be a writer of the cosmos or a sports writer or a baseball writer. So how have you been able to cultivate a very generalist approach to whatever story just really piques your taste?
00:19:27
Speaker
I was waiting you know you didn't you say earlier that you're supposed to you know anticipate the next question I was anticipating that and wondering what I would say and actually hadn't given a great thought until like right now I believe okay I believe that and I think I've convinced editors that this is the case that
00:19:47
Speaker
Not being an expert at something, for example, let's say theoretical physics, but being extremely interested, I can be a conduit between the readers who may know nothing about it and the experts whose language and vocabulary is so obscure that the people who are just mainly interested
00:20:04
Speaker
can't even follow it. I sort of feel like a translator between experts and just curious readers. And I've convinced myself and editors that this is the case. So whatever sort of interests me, I love reading and researching big parts of the game and establishing enough of an understanding that I can actually talk to an expert without only sounding mildly uninformed.
00:20:32
Speaker
And I feel like I'm able to translate heavy jargon into workable English. And, you know, that's served me well for 30 something years. You know, I can't even control what interests me. It's like criminals have always interested me, but so has cutting edge science and so has, you know, what are people willing to fight for and die for? You know, I'm interested in what's going on in the Ukraine right now, I guess the mark of a journalist, especially, you know, or any nonfiction writer is
00:21:03
Speaker
uh, what's really happening. And anybody who tells me that they can't find a story idea, it surprises me because I, my biggest trouble is like choosing which among the thousands that sort of come across my, uh, consciousness, uh, I, I have to focus on.
00:21:19
Speaker
Now be it, writers, certainly nonfiction writers, deal with, and I'm not saying that this excludes fiction too, but it's like the nature of pitching and freelancing.
Handling Rejection and Building Relationships
00:21:31
Speaker
There's a lot of rejection, a lot of failure in that sense. And you have to be resilient in the face of it. So for you over the years, how have you cultivated the scar tissue or the muscle to deal with rejection and failure and still bounce back to still have the incredible body of work that you have?
00:21:48
Speaker
I think if I ever didn't feel a little bad about being rejected, then I would actually question myself. I mean, that's a really good question. I don't know if I've developed a lot of scar tissue. I think I've been able to cultivate a couple of good relationships always through my career. And there's been some ups and some downs. We can talk about everything, but I've managed to find
00:22:13
Speaker
I mean, I can't even I can't even tell you how important a good editor is. And I bet you I know that some of your other guests have said the same thing. It's really when you have this sort of like. The word that the verb that comes to mind, maybe you can dance well with an editor, meaning that he or she can sort of understand what you're going for and envision maybe what the finished product may look like. And so I've been blessed enough to have great editors, even even when I started at Skiing magazine, I was like, hey, you know, they have a
00:22:43
Speaker
ski areas in Iran, can I go ski there? And the other is like, yeah. And to this day, I'm working for GQ and sometimes for National Geographic. And there's just quality editors there. And I'll be like, I wrote about theoretical physics. And so now I want to write about volcanoes. And for some reason, while there's lots of rejection along the way, of course, and every single one of them
00:23:10
Speaker
bums me out in a way. I've always, I think the relationship that I've been able to have with an editor has sort of mitigated the bummerness of being rejected because it's usually from someone I know is like, Hey, we liked that idea. We did volcanoes last week. Or, you know, we feel that there might be a better volcano dude out there. And so there it's always been like, all right, I'll come up with another idea.
00:23:36
Speaker
You know, sometimes when you're pitching people, in the absence of maybe having a good relationship with an editor or a previous encounter, oftentimes it's like, well, why are you the best person to write this? And so the danger, I guess, of being the generalist is like, well, I'm just curious about this. And that's like a big driver of a good journalist, certainly a good narrative long-form journalist.
00:24:01
Speaker
But sometimes the curiosity isn't enough. It's like well you gotta it'd be nice to know that you've written like three pieces on black holes and stuff like that if they're gonna turn you loose on a feature on the web's telescope or something. So it's like yeah like you're going from skiing to like volcanoes. It's like well you had that relationship that allowed you to like be able to be going from the tops of the mountains to them being plunged into a volcano.
00:24:25
Speaker
I mean, also, like, there's, you know, I'm just gonna call it like, journalist batting average, you know, in baseball, if you got if you get, you know, three out of 10, you're practically in the top, you're leading the league. If I'm batting 100, like one out of 10 of my ideas are accepted. That's pretty dang good. Like, I used to have lunch with a, you know, I worked for Sports Illustrated for a long time back in the day, like in the
00:24:50
Speaker
early 2000s and I would come with like 25 ideas to my editor. It was always like weird sports, strange sports things they didn't have a full time person on. And if I had one of those 20, 25 ideas accepted, that was pretty good. Two was fantastic. So that's batting less than 100. So I guess there's also that in my mind. Like I know that most of these are going to get swatted away. And so I'm not bummed out by any particular one. And like I said earlier, I think the world is filled with stories like there's hundreds of them constantly, you know,
00:25:20
Speaker
that go across my mind. I read the news and I'm like, well, that wasn't deep enough. That wasn't explained to my satisfaction. I bet you I might be able to dive a little deeper in that.
00:25:34
Speaker
Yeah. And it's great to hear you talk about the batting average because in baseball we know that it's 70 percent failure rate. It makes you a Hall of Fame hitter. You know just being at baton 300. But when we don't know the batting average of putting out queries out there we feel like every rejection is.
00:25:52
Speaker
It is just tinged with failure and judgment, but when you hear, you know, batting 100 is actually like that sort of, that's an all-star batting average. And if you know that, then you can have the courage and the confidence to be like, oh, I rejected nine out of 10 times. Well, that's normal. Actually, that's really good. So you just keep going in the face of that, because you know the numbers.
00:26:19
Speaker
Right. Anybody listening to this, please know that you're going to get rejected. I mean, yeah, batting a hundred is fine in my, in my, uh, I've had a long career in lots of magazines and newspapers. That's perfectly fine. So some people do have trouble generating ideas. And it is like, there's so many elements to being a nonfiction writer and that's one of them, like idea generation. And I know people that are like, I can't generate ideas. I wait for my editor to give them to me. And I've fortunately not been that type of person.
00:26:48
Speaker
Yeah, and when I was reading your website and you have this really wonderful bio just kind of laying out the beats of your career, and it was really illuminating reading that.
Ethical Dilemmas in Journalism
00:27:00
Speaker
And there was a moment in reporting where you had created this composite character that ultimately led to you losing your job at the New York Times.
00:27:09
Speaker
And I just wanted to like go to that moment because that's like a that's a fork in the road. That's kind of how do you pick yourself back up from something of that nature. So maybe you can just expound upon that and how you know the decision to do that and then how you bounce back from it. Yeah. So this is almost a quarter century ago now. This is a year 2000. I think I've mentioned that I'm
00:27:31
Speaker
100 percent human flawed to the, you know, filled with flaws. And yeah, I was working for the New York Times magazine. That was like the greatest job I could ever have. And
00:27:44
Speaker
I handed in a story that was where the main character was, what's known as a composite character. Didn't make up any quotes, but combined lots of quotes together. I was on assignment in West Africa writing about accusations of slavery on cocoa plantations. Cocoa, the chief ingredient in chocolate. So chocolate slavery, two words that are pretty explosive place next to each other.
00:28:07
Speaker
And these were very shy boys and the young workers on the plantations. And it was very difficult to get any insightful interviews. And I pieced a bunch of quotes together and made them as if they were spoken by one person. And that is against the rules of journalism. And I knew that. And I don't think I've ever quite forgiven myself for making such a dumb choice.
00:28:34
Speaker
was caught for that and fired from the New York Times magazine and thought maybe I wouldn't ever be a journalist again. And I don't use the phrase divine intervention very lightly at all, but literally, literally the day I was fired from the New York Times, I received this phone call from another journalist who I thought was going to write about my fuck up. And he informed me that a
00:29:03
Speaker
person was just arrested in Mexico wanted for four murders and he had been going around. Yeah, I can talk about changing the subject. And he had been going around telling himself, telling everyone this is a 10 most person on the 10 most wanted list of fugitives.
00:29:18
Speaker
He'd been telling everyone that his name was Michael Finkel. That's my name. And that he was a journalist for the New York Times, which was my job until literally 24 hours before that. And suddenly within a day of being fired by the New York Times, I was like, oh my goodness, I'm in the middle of this ridiculous story and I have no other.
00:29:38
Speaker
Way to work myself through it except to write even if I if none of this will ever get published again I feel like I pulled out my pen on my journalistic Spidey senses were buzzing on maximum and I'm like I have to figure out why this guy took on my name and I was immediately
00:29:53
Speaker
working on my first book. So that is about as fortunate an occurrence, a weird, strange occurrence as can ever happen in one's career, not only getting fired, but also suddenly being thrust into the middle of an explosive murder case.
00:30:09
Speaker
And then when you're going forward, you're able to bounce back from that. Were there any encounters with editors who viewed you as someone? You had the Scarlet Letter or something. Did you have to contend with that at all?
00:30:27
Speaker
Yeah, of course. And probably no, not probably deservedly. So the only thing I can say in my defense is like, wow, it's kind of miraculous to have a second chance. I don't think anyone's ever going to have a third chance. And so I have felt the burden of making sure that
00:30:46
Speaker
my non-fiction is as non-fictiony as humanly possible. I hire for my books, I hire two independent fact checkers. I like the fact checkers not only to check me, but almost to check each other. And if I'm 99% sure of something, I cut it out. I don't put it there. I don't put it in my book. And so it's sort of changed the way I work, which is I want to be even beyond any sort of
00:31:16
Speaker
any sort of expected degree of accuracy. I wanted it to be beyond that because I feel that having made a mistake once and been caught that I have to be the cleanest possible journalist. And so I've probably prided myself on not only handing in clean work, but also working on extraordinary, extraordinarily unbelievable stories at the same time. And I feel like the reader just knowing that this has been thoroughly fact checked that allows you to sort of
00:31:47
Speaker
You know, if you're enjoying the book and the fact that it's true changes sort of your equation when I'm reading it. I don't know. I don't know about anybody else or you, Brendan, like when you there's like a little bit of a different.
00:31:59
Speaker
thought process going on my head between when I'm reading a novel and when I'm reading something nonfiction, um, when I'm reading something true, there's like, this really happened or wow. Uh, I, you know, it sort of adds a little, a little more friction. I've always, I enjoy reading both, but I can, I really only like writing, uh, nonfiction. Anyway, my stuff is true.
00:32:20
Speaker
Oh, for sure. And to that point, too, like there is, you know, one biography I read recently and there's a moment I was speaking with one of the people who just had a little, the book is Bowerman and the Men of Oregon. And one of the runners in it, Dave Wilborn, who's just a source for something else that I'm working on.
00:32:44
Speaker
He's like, oh, have you read that book? I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's like, yeah, there was a scene with me in there. And it's just like, you know, part of it is true. He exaggerated it way more than it was. He's like, I guess there was just some creative license. And when I heard Dave tell me that, and all of a sudden it was like every interaction in that book now, I'm like, did it happen this way or did he turn it up to 11 just to make it a little more, to put a little more zhuzh?
00:33:11
Speaker
on a scene. And I would rather it be a little duller but a hundred percent true than being a bit amped up for the sake of drama. And now it just kind of colored the entire book. I don't know what's true and what's not. And that's what happens when you don't adhere to the rule and the contract of writing a nonfiction book.
00:33:32
Speaker
Right. And I just want, yeah, I want to emphasize that I kind of feel the same way as you. And that is why if I have a choice between any sort of, it's always going to be accuracy has to trump absolutely everything, especially for me, but that doesn't mean that it can't be an enjoyable or rollicking or funny or unpredictable book. I find that, um,
00:33:58
Speaker
being extraordinarily accurate or as accurately as humanly possible. If you want to scour every page, you might find a mistake. I'm human and so are both my fact checkers. But yes, I agree with exactly what you just said. If you feel like there's one
00:34:15
Speaker
exaggeration, then it colors absolutely everything. And I would rather make my book, I don't like to use the word duller, but I would rather take something out that I love if I'm not really, really as certain as possible about it, I just remove it. And so I just I do want to stress for like the fourth or fifth time already in the last 10 minutes that that my nonfiction works are 100% nonfiction to the, you know, to the best of human abilities.
00:34:45
Speaker
And for those who might be curious about, and I think a lot of authors too, it's almost incumbent upon us to hire fact checkers now. I think back in the day, maybe in the glory days, the publisher would supply it, but I think nowadays it's more on the author's shoulders. How much does a really good fact checker cost? I don't think that the price of anything in this business is really regulated. I think that, I mean, so,
00:35:14
Speaker
It depends. I'll just, I mean, since we should probably talk nuts and bolts, this is the, you know, this is the creative nonfiction podcast. I bet you there's people listening that are wondering, uh, so it depends. You know, this book, the art thief takes place in Europe. So there's a lot of French, there's a lot of German. So that's, that's a little more work, but $5,000 to $8,000 per fact checker for checking a book, 100%.
00:35:44
Speaker
out of my own pocket. And I know, I know it's like, I understand what the, how much, how many, how much in advance some people are getting paid. And, uh, that is a, that could be 50% of your, your advance. Um,
00:36:00
Speaker
For me, it's essential. But the crazy part about that is for people that aren't, you know, had such a tough business to make a living in, I could see that I could see people cutting that out and I completely understand it. And I don't think the publisher will will will stop you from not having it fact checked. It just won't be fact checked. And that is kind of worrisome to me.
00:36:23
Speaker
Yeah, and I imagine that this book was a challenge in a lot of ways, not only to fact check, but I think for you as a reporter, I think you had to, you spoke with your central figure here of name. I wanna make sure that you pronounce his name before I do because I will massacre it and I suspect that you are well rehearsed on how to pronounce his name, but you did a lot of your reporting in a second language for you and a first for him in French, is that right?
00:36:51
Speaker
Yeah, so I like to anglicize Stefan Brightwiser's name. Stefan Brightwiser, like Budweiser Brightwiser. I think that'd be fine. You know, he puts a little bit of an Alsacean accent on it, but he also, Stefan himself, likes American
00:37:07
Speaker
he likes American accents. So yes, we spoke to each other in French, which is Stephan Brightweiser's native tongue. And I recorded everything and even used a professional French translator for just phraseology that was a little unfamiliar to me. But it's funny that you bring that up, Brendan. I speak French fluently with a terrible accent, but I lived in France for almost seven years. So really got a good handle on the language. And you can have like
00:37:35
Speaker
You can get away with stuff in another language that almost permitted me to be... God, I actually not talked about this before, so I want to make sure what I'm saying is right, to be a better journalist. For example, French people in general are quite tight. They're not as open as maybe Americans or people in Spain. They don't want to talk about, like,
00:37:57
Speaker
For example, it'd be very rude to ask someone in France, how much did you pay for that house? We're in the United States. You're like, oh, I bought a new house. Well, you look at the house and you're like, how much was it? And I know these rules, but because I have a very thick French accent, it's clear that it's not my first language. I can go right in there and ask like very personal questions that I know are sort of taboo ish, but you can get away with it because I could just see the person's eyes like, oh, man.
00:38:22
Speaker
That's not a French person. Well, yes, I paid 500,000 euros. And you get the answers. And so I was able to kind of get away with some of this stuff with Stefan Brightweiser. For example, as in all romance languages, there's a formal tense and an informal tense. And an informal tense is what you use between friends. And formal is sort of like
00:38:42
Speaker
business associates or, you know, when I'm talking to the principal of any of my kids' schools or any teachers, it's like, you know, Mr. This, Mr. That. And I wanted to be like Steve, Joe. And so with Stefan, I switched to the informal tense earlier than a French person would. And I could feel him trying to drag me away from it, but he sort of like let the American just be so informal. And it really sort of allowed us to speak much more
00:39:09
Speaker
emotionally and personally because he was forced into the two rather than the vous. And I don't want to get into the weeds of another language, but it really allowed me to be closer to my subject. And the fact that I wasn't a native French speaker, I could get away with some sort of rude-ish
00:39:26
Speaker
Personal questions that maybe a French journalist couldn't struck me also is how? The the patience of which you had you exercised to get this story You know Stefan He you know you wrote several letters He definitely had no interest in talking to an American journalist and but eventually for like a better term you wore him down and or earned his trust and
00:39:49
Speaker
And how did you go about earning his trust and then being able to uproot the
Gaining Trust of an Art Thief
00:39:55
Speaker
family? We're moving to France and I'm gonna report on this incredible prolific and also tragic story of an art thief.
00:40:03
Speaker
I mean, I think in one word or less, my working style is inefficient. Oh my goodness. So yeah, a couple of things. Yeah, I wrote a letter. I read a tiny article in a French online French newspaper about this art thief. You know, there was three amazing facts that just like came at me one after another, you know,
00:40:27
Speaker
Number one was the fact that he stole from 200 museums and churches. By the way, the second most prolific art thief stole from like 19 museums, which is so there's not even really a second place most prolific thief of all time. He stole non-violently, sometimes with guards and tourists in the room during the day. I mean, that's that's that's also extraordinary. And then the third thing, just like
00:40:48
Speaker
blew all my journalistic senses into, you know, into the red zone, which was that he stole for love of art, hung up an estimated $2 billion worth of art in this little basement, oh, no, sorry, attic bedroom that he had and he shared with his girlfriend. So I'm imagining, you know, this like room in the Louvre, but yet in a tiny house in the suburbs of France. And so I wrote Stefan Brightweiser a letter.
00:41:12
Speaker
He hadn't spoken to a journalist in a while and it took him eight months to respond to my poorly written French letter. And during that eight months, we had actually moved to France. And now that had nothing to do with the art thief, but my wife and my three children really, we wanted to, my wife and I wanted to introduce our kids to another language and culture. And we'd always loved France.
00:41:35
Speaker
Like I said, I spoke a little bit of French at the time and got a lot better a lot very quickly. Um, but it had nothing to do with the art thief. In fact, his return letter was sent to my house in Bozeman, Montana. And my friend who was collecting the mail, she sent that letter back across the ocean to France. And so we wrote letters to each other for four years before Brightweiser finally agreed to meet me for lunch. And even then he said, I don't want you to bring a pen.
00:42:03
Speaker
I don't want you to bring a tape recorder, just come yourself. And I didn't bring anything. Um, we just met for lunch and I suppose my goofy accent and something else. It was just sort of like a trial after that lunch. He said, okay, I agree to be interviewed by you. And then we spent 40 to 50 hours together, including walking through museums. And by the way, walking through a museum with like the world's greatest art thief is quite the experience.
00:42:28
Speaker
I was riveted by just the opening chapter, how you were able to recreate that. So something of an anatomy of a scene. How is it that you're interviewing Stefan for these kind of things to get the most minute detail that helps put us there? Because you weren't there during this particular Adam and Eve statue art thief, but you're an art theft.
00:42:52
Speaker
but you're able to evoke it so well. So when you're building a scene like that, how are we getting into it? Right. So I have an opening chapter where it's a beat by beat explanation of how Brightweiser steals a work of art. Now, how am I able to write that with confidence after I just got through speaking for what seemed like a quite a long time on how accurate everything is? So let me just tell your listeners. So first of all,
00:43:21
Speaker
Brightweiser himself wrote, had a ghost written autobiography. So he had already published something only available in French and German. And then there are tons of police reports that sort of
00:43:39
Speaker
detail the crime. Then there's Brightweiser's own, I interviewed Brightweiser extensively about this crime. But no, none of those things were good enough. I actually went to the Rubens House Museum, which is where Brightweiser stole the ivory Adam and Eve that opens the book. And by the way, Brightweiser is banned from most museums in Europe. So he put on this light disguise, these fake eyeglasses and this baseball cap that he kept low over his head. And I'm thinking to myself, by the way, as I'm
00:44:07
Speaker
going into a museum with the world's greatest art thief, like, what's the plan here, Mike? I'm thinking to myself, if he actually steals something, like, do I turn my own subject into the police? And luckily, I did not have to cross that moral boundary and like seeing what's happened. But Brightwise are literally recreated step by step how he committed that crime. He's like, first, I went to this room.
00:44:30
Speaker
Then I looked here. Then I went into this case. Then I went here. My girlfriend was right here. I turned this screw this many times. Then she coughed. He went beat by beat by beat throughout the entire crime. Here's how I did my escape route. Here's where I stopped right here. Here's where I put the work of art in the small of my back. Here's how I got out the museum. Even then, I read all the contemporaneous
00:44:54
Speaker
police reports that were filed right after the crime. And if there were any disagreements between the two, then I've run back to Brightweiser in a different interview and asked them to explain these differences. And if it sounds like a tremendous amount of work for a five-page chapter, you're correct, but worth it to feel exactly
00:45:15
Speaker
accurately how an art thief commits a crime. And so that's the way I was able to build that chapter. And each chapter probably has a story that complicated behind it. But I feel like it's great for your listeners and potential readers to know that if something feels extremely detailed, it comes from a great source. And of course, two fact checkers had to go through all that stuff as well.
00:45:41
Speaker
Yeah, and what can be all the more challenging is not it's not just asking like one question about a certain detail oftentimes it's kind of second nature to them or it's just like they kind of breeze over things but you're like to have to sometimes be almost apologetic because I'm sorry to keep asking this again, but
00:46:00
Speaker
You know, what else can you tell? Like, what were you wearing? What would what did it smell like? I don't know. How did the sun come through the windows? You know, just various things. I'm like, I often preface be like, in the absence of me actually being there, I'm sorry, you have to be my eyes, ears, you have to be my senses. So please spare no detail, even though it feels like pulling teeth for them. It's like it's how we ultimately extract the most vivid details. And it takes a take some endurance and muscle building to kind of keep going back to them with those kind of questions.
00:46:30
Speaker
Well, I'm glad you brought that up. So first of all, I do not apologize for being extraordinarily curious, but I do you'll probably not be shocked to have a reputation for wearing someone out we did 40 to 50 hours worth of interviews or time together and I think at that time the
00:46:45
Speaker
Stephan Brightweiser, the art thief, was quite exhausted. But I not only asked things like, OK, so just like you mentioned, so the sun was slanting through the window like this. And then I will later, just to double check, like 20 minutes or 30 minutes later in the interviews, I'll be I'll say something like, so the room was dark.
00:47:02
Speaker
And he'll be like, no, no, no, no, no. The sun was coming through. And I just want to know because sometimes people, especially if I'm speaking in another language and sometimes subjects just want to agree with it, he'll be like, yes, the room was dark. And then I'll be like, wait, stop. You told me that the sun was. So I'll ask a question that I know is almost wrong, like a fonafe style.
00:47:21
Speaker
And just to see if the answers are accurate. So you were with your girlfriend? You'd be like, no, no, no, no, no. I told you I was not with her. Or you put the girlfriend on this bench? No, I told you I put her in front of the doorway. And I'll ask these sort of dumb sounding questions just to make sure the negation of the question gets the same answer if you're following me.
00:47:42
Speaker
When it comes to writing it and pacing in the hands of a less skilled writer, the tendency might be to rush through some of these things because it's very intense. And there's suspense there. Is he going to get caught? How is he doing this when there's tourists around and there are security guards? And yet he's able to use a Swiss army knife and take these tiny screws out.
00:48:04
Speaker
and yet you have the skill to sit with it and not rush it. So over the course of your writing, how are you cultivating that internal clock for you to be like, okay, this is a moment where I need to actually slow down versus speed up.
00:48:21
Speaker
I think just about everything, when it comes to the actual writing, the reporting process, I love to report, I love to research. I spent all of the pandemic reading book after book after book about art theft, art crime, art appreciation. The works of art that Stephan Brightwiser liked to steal were late Renaissance, early Baroque, 16th, 17th century. I'm a more modern art.
00:48:47
Speaker
aficionado so I educated myself on that but the actual writing if you're asking about that I got a couple step process I think it's again the theme of the day is inefficiencies so I don't know if anybody else should do this but while at the same time that I have all this information and all these micro moments and all these like little details and beats and all this amount of research I also want to write in the most
00:49:13
Speaker
loose and good-spirited feeling as possible, not feeling like I have a head crammed with details that I'm trying to put out on the page. And it's like, how do you achieve this looseness when all you are is tight with information and research? So I do what I call my block of granite draft. And when I think about it, I think of maybe
00:49:40
Speaker
Michelangelo, who has a big block of granite and wants to, you know, carve the David out of it. But like, you got to start with the block of granite. So I will put, for example, that chapter that we talked about, the first chapter about stealing Adam and Eve ivory sculpture. I think my output, every single detailed note, police report, addendum, every little thing I know about that theft into one block of granite. And I bet you the first
00:50:07
Speaker
block of granite for that chapter was probably 150 single spaced pages of crammed information but it's all down there and then I break out my metaphysical chisel and hammer and I just pick what's important and what makes sense and I think the final chapter ended up being
00:50:27
Speaker
seven double spaced pages. So I'm cutting out, I'm just banging out, 98% of the stuff ends up on the floor. And what's left is sort of the essence. And then even from that draft, which has sort of been chiseled and has all those chisel marks, I'll have like the bust out the polishing pads, you know, and then the fact checkers check it through and then patch up any of the mistakes. And so it's a kind of a ridiculously inefficient process, but it ends up with something that
00:50:57
Speaker
I don't know. Let me just be honest. Please is me. The epigraph at the start of the book, the Oscar Wilde quote, the aesthetics are higher than ethics. And why did that stand out to you as something as a signifier for what we're about to read?
00:51:13
Speaker
So the open, I don't think anyone's ever asked me about the opening quote to a book. I got a whole like, man, we can get into the weeds and talk forever about everything. So like, you know, the epigraph, the opening quote to a book, isn't that kind of an important thing? Isn't that like the first thing that a reader comes across?
00:51:29
Speaker
I take those things seriously. Really, when I open another book, that's usually the first thing I come across. If the opening epigraph is long and complicated and frankly, I'm not even sure what I'm reading, gives me a bad taste for the book to come.
00:51:49
Speaker
It's like, whoa, is this book also going to be a little bit long, complicated, and sort of hard to parse? And so I really like, I mean, I've written a grand total of three books in one collection, so four things between covers. But every single one of them has a very short, pithy, like, I wish that I had written it, um, apograph. This one is all of five words long. Aesthetics are higher than ethics. Uh, you know, beauty is greater than morals. Uh, that's pretty much
00:52:18
Speaker
You don't even have to read the rest of my book. That's pretty much my entire 200 pages, which, you know, my block of granite for the entire book was thousands with a plural of pages. That's everything I wanted to say compressed into five easy to read words. And also who doesn't love Oscar Wilde? If you don't read Oscar Wilde, please read Oscar Wilde a little bit. He's, I can't imagine anyone.
00:52:40
Speaker
that I like not enjoying Oscar Wilde. What a great writer. And so freaking witty and pithy and short. And I've just over explained the entire reason for picking an opening quote, but that's it. It has to be short, perfect, and beautiful.
Obsession in Writing
00:52:59
Speaker
I probably went through, I probably had like,
00:53:01
Speaker
Inefficiency being the name of the day, the theme of the day, I probably had like a hundred choices. And that one really just jumped out to me as like, you know, this is a perfect entree to the book. Anybody who reads that quote isn't going to be like, I'm lost. I don't understand these five words. So there are there. There I am over explaining my five word. And I love tales of obsession. I love people, you know, like singular drive, people who have
00:53:30
Speaker
almost pathological. Desires in dry in dry that can be a quarterback that could be Tom Brady or it could be in the case of an art thief in Stefan. Brightweiser is so it's like is that something that you're particularly driven to just these obsessives and the ends to which they'll go to exercise their craft.
00:53:52
Speaker
Absolutely. I don't think I could have phrased it better myself. Yeah, I for a moment there, Brandon, I thought you were talking about me as being obsessed with like who picks 100 quotes and then boils it down to one and overthinks this stuff. And so maybe maybe I look for people have
00:54:13
Speaker
I'm not a criminal, but a somewhat of an obsessive person. I want everything to be as right as possible. I mean, I want writing by its very nature is imperfect profession. It's like there's no, oh, you wrote a perfect paragraph. If I ever wrote a perfect paragraph, I think I would retire.
00:54:30
Speaker
There is no such thing. Perfect page, perfect chapter, perfect book. Oh my gosh, I'm trying to write the perfect sense. I don't even think claws have even managed to do so. An obsessive person in a imperfect profession either will be maddening or beautifully challenging on the latter. And I guess I look for subjects that have strange obsessions. Maybe I'm familiar with that. I'm an obsessive person.
00:54:57
Speaker
skier uh i ski i will ski almost every single day that i can manage the time in between caring for three children two dogs one wife and having a busy writing career but i'll like you give me you give me 93 days i'll ski i was about to say 85 of them but let me correct myself i'll ski all 90 of those days um and so i look for people that have
00:55:21
Speaker
that have I'm not monofocus since all my topics are all over the place. But once I settle on something, I do want to be like, oh, yes, I need to read everything written about art ever. Yeah. Two hundred books later, I have nine thousand books to go. But I think the subject, the art thief, even the the hermit that I wrote about previously, maybe not the murderer, put that to the side, have had many of the people that I've written about for magazines.
00:55:50
Speaker
um, and newspapers have had extraordinary, extraordinarily obsessive personalities. And sometimes the obsession leads right to illegal behavior. And I am fascinated by that. And perhaps the obsessive sort of see something in me that allows them to speak to me more openly than they might with another journalist, especially
00:56:16
Speaker
especially people that have done wrong, rather than shying away from the errors of my past, I think that some journalists can approach you with this holier-than-thou attitude, like they are the
00:56:30
Speaker
paragons of moral behavior and I cannot and do not ever approach someone. I'm like, dude, Stefan, I'm a flawed person too. You've made mistakes. I've made mistakes. You've been in prison. I've been in the journalistic doghouse. Uh, not exactly the same thing, but I'm not coming at you as any sort of holier than now person. And maybe that also allows some people to relax a little more and speak to me person to person.
00:56:55
Speaker
Yeah and you got at the towards the end of the book you know when you're trying to actually think kind of like how are you able to pull off all these elaborate art these like and just in front in front in public in front of people and then he took your laptop and you didn't even notice and you're like oh my god this is like a sleight of hand artist magician and you're like wow I guess he's well practiced but that's how he does it.
00:57:21
Speaker
Yeah, I'll never forget that when we were in a tiny French hotel room where Brightwiser, the art thief, liked to do his interviews away from the public eye. He's sort of a recognizable person in the Alsace region of northeastern France. And, you know, in these tiny hotel rooms, I would put my laptop just on the side. There would only be one, by the way, one chair in these tiny hotel rooms. And I'm a polite, I was raised politely. Thank you, Mom.
00:57:43
Speaker
And I would always allow the Stefan sat in the one chair in the room and I would usually sit on the luggage rack and we had this tiny little desk between us and I'd push the my laptop to the side. But, you know, Stefan was extremely well read and could make references to artists that I had not heard of. And I want to open my laptop and, you know, see who this artist was. And I usually maintain eye contact during an interview and let my digital recorder pick up the conversation. But I do take notes about, you know, things like
00:58:12
Speaker
facial expressions and gestures that won't be picked up on my recorder. And I'm asking Stefan, like, how is it possible, even though we've gone beat by beat over several of your crimes, I still can't quite understand how you could steal when there's a guard in the room or other tourists in the room, even if they're listening to like audio guide headphones. And he stopped the conversation in the middle of this line of questioning and said, you know, did you see what I just did?
00:58:37
Speaker
And I hadn't seen it. And he stands up, turns around, and my laptop computer is in the small of his back. He had stolen it right under my nose. I must have lowered my eyes for a couple of seconds, scribbling down a note. And that moment was so extraordinary to me because I like to pride myself on noticing stuff. I'm a journalist. I just simply forgot.
00:59:02
Speaker
Brightwiser's really good at reading human psychology. If there was suddenly a Christmas tree in my hotel room, I would have noticed immediately. But the absence of something takes an extra layer of observation. The presence of something, sure, I'm great at noticing that. But the absence of something, he knows, and I didn't actually know that he knew, that the absence of something is much more difficult to ascertain. And there was my laptop, small of his back. He had just taken it and then sat right back down.
00:59:28
Speaker
as if nothing had happened. And that brought home in the most visceral possible way how Stefan Brightweiser could steal a work of art in broad daylight in a crowded museum.
00:59:39
Speaker
Well, it's such an amazing book and such a fun read, and we could talk about it for several more hours, but I do desperately need to give you back the rest of your day. So as I like to bring these conversations down for a landing, Michael, I love asking the guests for a recommendation for some kind for the listeners, and just be anything you're excited about that you feel that you're confident recommending to people. So I extend that to you, Mike.
01:00:06
Speaker
OK, so let's make a recommendation in the realm of nonfiction. And I have two authors that I'd like to recommend to your listeners. I hope everyone has read some John McPhee, who's still writing. He's a professor at Princeton. I believe he's in his 80s. John McPhee, American journalist, writes, has written numerous books, worked for The New Yorker forever, still does. He was one of my, or is,
01:00:34
Speaker
one of my journalistic heroes, combining intense, accurate research and just gorgeous novelistic writing. If anybody has not read John McPhee, what's the one that struck me the most? I would say coming into the country, which is about his time in Alaska. You know, I'm speaking to you from Utah. I used to live in Montana, so the wild parts of the United States appeal to me deeply. John McPhee. And then the second one is a Frenchman.
01:01:04
Speaker
whose works have all been translated, but I read them in French and in English. This is Immanuel Correr. And if you do not know Correr, C-A-R-R-E-R-E, if you do not know Immanuel Correr, everyone go out and buy.
01:01:18
Speaker
the adversary in English translation. I believe it is 100. Here, I have a copy of it here. It's 185 pages long, short, amazing, beautiful, just crushingly fascinating nonfiction. And he's written some fiction, but Emmanuel Carrere and John McPhee are my two recommendations.
01:01:37
Speaker
Amazing and for McPhee I likewise he's something of a hero of mine in a the he's so funny too and this survival of the bark canoe is what may put me down this road of narrative nonfiction narrative journalism and that that's the book that turned my world from black and white into color so anytime anyone brings up McPhee I just I light up.
Book Recommendations
01:02:00
Speaker
Amen, brother. That's exactly right. I changed my whole writing. I wonder how many people could say that. I bet you lots. John McPhee may be perhaps not as appreciated as he should be. I'm wondering if my kids have even heard of him. I'm afraid to ask them. But I bet you there's an entire generation of journalists that have been deeply affected by McPhee's genius.
01:02:24
Speaker
Well, fantastic. Well, Michael, this was so great to just talk some shop in writing and nonfiction in your wonderful new book. So I just want to just thank you so much for carving out the time to come on the show and talk shop. Thanks so much. My absolute pleasure. Thank you.
01:02:42
Speaker
Oh man. Thanks to Michael for coming to play ball. He brought it. He brought he brought the heat for Seamer right there. Little rise at the end. Go find him at Michael Finkel dot com or on Facebook Finkel Michael.
01:02:57
Speaker
or on Twitter at Mike Finkel. Don't forget to sign up for the Rage Against the Algorithm newsletter over on Substack. The newsletter and the podcast subscribers is really all I care about. It's elective. It's permission-based.
01:03:14
Speaker
It's the best. Social media companies can change the rules. We've been experiencing that firsthand this past several weeks and months and maybe even years. If you want to really level up your support, you can always visit patreon.com slash CNF pod. I got to change my tears. I've been saying anyway, patreon.com.
01:03:36
Speaker
For now, the show's Twitter is at cnfpot. I might delete it. I just deleted the 14-year-old at Brendan O'Mara account, RIP.
01:03:45
Speaker
I feel okay. I feel good about it. It was kind of scary. It really was. You know, you got this thing. It's like your actual name and you were there from like the early goings. And then suddenly you're like, wow, this just doesn't serve me anymore. You kind of pick your head up and it's like you've been at this party too long and it's a mess. And there's that guy over there. He's like passed out in the corner. He might be throwing up on himself. You're like, oh boy.
01:04:12
Speaker
I gotta go. Let's get that guy some help first, but then I'm outta here. I'm gone. Listen, Instagram is just as bad in a lot of ways, but Twitter seems more bad. And I've long wanted to delete it, and I'm done with it.
01:04:27
Speaker
So I'm going to trust that life will very much go on without Twitter as a tool, and that things will still find their way to me, and I'll find different ways to stumble on cool things, to read, to share, to celebrate on this show. Given the new rules around Twitter, it's useless to me now.
01:04:45
Speaker
And I'm not paying to do Twitter Blue. I'm not paying into a social network. It's just not going to happen. Sorry about my self-loathing screed last week, but that's where my head was a week ago. And I feel mildly better this week. The book research and writing mantra I've been using is a slow and steady, deliberate focused, you know, slow is going to be fast.
01:05:11
Speaker
I've been auditing my time to make sure I'm getting a solid eight hours per day of actual work done. It's alarming how short of that I can fall if I don't keep track of it and stay on top of it. The way I see it, the past five months or so, that was the pre-season, let's say.
01:05:30
Speaker
I did a lot of work. You know, I probably could have done far more, but whatever. It's gone. Time's gone. Can't get it back. But I did quite a bit. And now we're into the regular season. That's the next, say, six months or so. I have like eight and a half months to go.
01:05:45
Speaker
And I'm trying to avoid vices like booze. It's pretty much my only vice. So like no, no booze to keep me fresh on weekend mornings. There's nothing like when you're habitually used to waking up with hangover or hangover adjacent things where you might not have a headache, but you just feel kind of ick. So it keeps my body feeling deep bloated, keeps my organs from wasting their energy, metabolizing IPAs.
01:06:12
Speaker
You know, my wife and I, we were talking about our excessive drinking to numb ourselves from the mundanity of our lives. And we came to the conclusion that we never regret not drinking, as bored as we might be when we don't. So I'm going full Tom Brady. Try not to drink during the season as I make the push to win a Super Bowl.
01:06:39
Speaker
TB12 baby, the three months after the regular season. That's my post season, that's my playoff push when things get real intense and the stakes are the highest. Whatever it takes, right? Whatever it takes to get you in the right head space. You know Mike Finkel, he talked about his batter's eye, how it's like in front of him, it's just clear blank slate and behind him is all his research. It's like, that's him, it might not work for you, you might want to have things to look at. That's what gets him into the game.
01:07:09
Speaker
Yeah, sure. I look at the acknowledgments of a book like Jeff Perlman's Bo Jackson biography. He's like, interviewed 700 people. I'm like, holy shit. I'm like, maybe I'll get to 100. I'm at around 60. I'm in the 50s, but I've done more than 60 interviews because I've interviewed a few people more than once. Maybe I'll get to 125 people for a total of maybe 200 interviews tops to flesh out.
01:07:34
Speaker
archival stuff, further infused by my energy, my style, my point of view. It's a numbers game to a point. Sometimes you stumble, I've come across some things just in a conversation I had and something comes up. You're like, oh wow, that's amazing. That would never happen if I didn't make that call. Eventually you have to turn that faucet off, but you have to remember who you're trying to serve in the end. Interviewing 700 people impresses fellow writers and journalists, but does a reader give a shit?
01:08:02
Speaker
No. So you have to remember what matters. You don't need 700 interviews if 100 are just lights out. And sometimes there just aren't enough people. Sometimes you don't have enough time. Sometimes you don't have research assistants or people to transcribe for you. So you just gotta do your best.
01:08:24
Speaker
I mean, I look at 700 interviews and I'm like, where do you find the time? And then to go through the transcripts, I don't understand. There has to be extra hands involved. I have to think so. Otherwise,
01:08:38
Speaker
Well, I don't know. It's the things you just ask yourself. Have I done my best to date? Well, probably not, but I still have some time to course correct and still do a fine job. And that's really all I can hope for. And I think that's all we can hope for. We can't. I always tell people, I tell myself to run your own race. Bronwyn Dickey says, plow your own acre. And this is the acre I have to plow. And I just got to do it as best as I can. And so that's, that's all I can do. Still got time. Slow and steady.
01:09:08
Speaker
deliberate focus. Stay wild seeing efforts, and if you can do, interview. See ya.