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Episode 422: Thirty Years of “The Last Shot," Lessons from Obstacles, and Old-School Note Taking with Darcy Frey
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Darcy Frey is the author of The Last Shot: City Streets, Basketball Dreams, a masterpiece of a book celebrating its 30th anniversary. It's out with a new audio version performed and read by J.D. Jackson.
Newsletter: Rage Against the Algorithm
Show notes: brendanomeara.com
Support: Patreon.com/cnfpod
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Transcript
Introduction and Services
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey CNFers, you know this show takes a lot of time and effort and part of what keeps the lights on here at CNF Pod HQ is if you hire me to perhaps edit your work or bring you along. A generous editor helps you see what you can't see. I know I can't see myriad things in my own work so I outsource those eyeballs to somebody else. This could be a pitch, a proposal, an essay, or hell, even a book. If you want help cracking the code, you can email me at creativenonfictionpodcast at gmail dot.com, and we'll start a dialogue.
00:00:34
Speaker
ah But when we were in the car, it was all it was all crazy. I had a steno pad that I kept on my knee. And then when I'd hit a red light, I would just write as fast as I could, whatever it was that we'd said in the intervening four or five blocks. And you know then I'd put it down, put the car in gear, and move forward.
00:00:59
Speaker
Oh, would you believe it?
Darcy Frey's Book and Audiobook
00:01:01
Speaker
We have Darcy Frey on the podcast this week to talk about his masterpiece, The Last Shot, City Street's Basketball Dreams, print version of the book published by Mariner Books, but it's got a new audio book performed to perfection by J.D. Jackson for Spiegel and Grau. We'll get to that in a moment. But on the heels of being called a, quote, cheesy shock jog, high energy D bag a week ago, we have a new review. This is a five star banger. If you leave a written review, I'll read it right here and give you a coaching session of up to 2000 words. So email me with a screenshot of your review and we'll start a dialogue. So this one from Sorry Surrealist, well prepared and earnest host.
00:01:50
Speaker
There is one thing I can't stand an interview-based podcast, and that's unpreparedness. Brendan is most definitely prepared, and that makes all the difference. I listen to one other writing podcast, and every time I do, I find myself wishing Brendan were the host. It's incredibly frustrating. In some ways, sure, he can be cheesy. There's that word. But I think the difference between a shock jock and this man is that Brendan is sincere and never, ever malicious. I like that he's true to himself and that he's honest, too. His transparency is charming, though he can be an acquired taste, which he admits. Give the podcast a try. The guests are well curated. Brendan lets them talk, a talent some hosts don't have, and he's always ready to bring the interview back on the rails when needed.
00:02:38
Speaker
That is awesome. Thank you so much, Sorry Surrealist. Yes. Again, thank you for that show notes in the parting shot of this episode and more. All right, BrendanOmero
Host's Engagement and Offerings
00:02:49
Speaker
.com. Hey, where you can also sign up for the companion rage against the algorithm newsletter. Each podcast gets a cute little newsletter now. since I'm not really on social media anymore. ah There's a too long didn't listen, mini transcript from the podcast, from that week's podcast, some behind the scenes bullshit about my rotten head and my even more rotten writing. Then there's the first of the month rager with cool links, book recommendations. It literally goes up to 11. There's also patreon dot.com slash cnfpod if you want to support the show with a few dollar bills.
00:03:22
Speaker
and i maybe even get some face-to-face time with me to talk some things out. It helps. I've been told it helps. It's an option if you want it. Some of you CNF and patrons are just happy to support the show, which is awesome and amazing. And not a single month goes by when the money gets debited and put into my bank account that I'm not wicked grateful for all of that. Awesome stuff. It's ah it's really cool. it's I can't express the coolness of it all. Alright, so here's a little more about Darcy.
Darcy Frey's Contributions and Adaptations
00:03:54
Speaker
His essays in journalism have appeared in Harper's Magazine and the New York Times Magazine. He's received numerous awards, including a National Magazine Award, a Livingston Award,
00:04:05
Speaker
and an award for public service from the Society for Professional Journalists. His work has been adapted for stage and screen and anthologized in the Best American Essays, Best American Science Writing, and the Library of America series. He teaches in the English Department at Harvard. Harvard.
Choosing Central Figures
00:04:24
Speaker
so In this conversation, we talk about how he landed on his central figures for the last shot, which included Stefan Marbury, who went on to have a damn good and NBA career from 1996 to 2009, then played in China until 2018.
00:04:40
Speaker
Darcy also talks about how the obstacles he faced while reporting the book turned out to be the very crux of what the book centered around, and how he reports on, or does his reporting only using a notebook, no tape recorders, man, even while driving a car. Hmm. Awesome talks and efforts. Great talk. Here we go. Riff.
00:05:11
Speaker
It's great to be talking about something that's been 30 years you since you wrote it and a little more than 30 years since you conceived of it. That's right, yeah.
The Lasting Impact of 'The Last Shot'
00:05:22
Speaker
And you know i ah it's thrilling that it's that it's been in print all these years and you know and thrilling that it's out in an audio book format. There was a ah an audio book right at the time the hardcover came out, but it was prior to Audible, Spotify, everything. It was on i was on cassette tape. Oh, wow. So so it's nice that it lives in the internet now.
00:05:50
Speaker
Oh, that's great. Yeah, it's um I remember when um it first came on my radar in a the late aughts as like as I had mentioned to you over email that as I was doing kind of ah ah a shadow central figure in a subculture of sorts for a MFA thing when that's how I how we we came to have a mutual acquaintance and ah the great Dick Todd. And he he had brought up your your book, because it's similar, different different themes, but a similar immersive ethos. yeah That's when your book came on my radar. And ah and ah that's a good jumping off point to talk about, Dick Todd. you know how did How did you guys get connected through the for this?
00:06:33
Speaker
So there was a wonderful magazine published out of Western Massachusetts out of just outside of Northampton called New England Monthly that had a ah very successful but brief, I think, six year life. There were a bunch of magazines in that mold back then, Texas Monthly, New England Monthly, Washington Monthly. And Dick Todd was the executive editor. And I was I went there to to work in my late 20s as a writer and an editor. And I got to know him then and did some long-form journalism for him and for the magazine. And then when the magazine folded, and this would have been, I think, 1990 or so, Dick went back to his full-time job as an editor at Houghton Mifflin. He had his own imprint at the time. And he basically just invited me to to come to him with some ideas, which was, you know, it was a ah ah terrific,
00:07:32
Speaker
opportunity. He's an incredible editor um and we were friends at that point as well. And so I used to go up. He was living in the Berkshires. I was living in New York City. I'd go up on the weekends and we would just go hiking around the woods um around his house and just sort of brainstorm book ideas. um I'd done a bunch of ah reporting about inner city issues and so that was something I was interested in. I wanted to write about kids, added a bunch of ideas back and forth. should i Should I spend a year on one floor of a housing project? Should I
00:08:09
Speaker
should I find a playground and and and and spend a year there? um And then at some point, it sort of seems like an obvious idea now, but at the time it was sort of like a eureka moment. Oh, wait a minute. What about what about an inner city basketball team? What about a season? What about a school year? I'd have a finite group of figures to follow. I'd have the arc of a season and I'd have the other um and even more dramatic arc of what happened to the kids as they were recruited or not recruited to Division I schools. um So we came up with the idea kind of generically, and then my job was to really just go around the boroughs of New York City meeting
00:08:56
Speaker
kids and high school coaches and high school principals and find a place to actually set, you know, the generic idea.
Setting and Subjects at Lincoln High
00:09:05
Speaker
I must have spent two or three weeks going around ah to different high schools. But when I got down to Lincoln High School in Coney Island and I met the kids that I would ultimately write about and the high school coach and the neighborhood itself, I was kind of very quickly decided oh that this is the this is the place to do it. When you were having those conversations with Dick, you know when when you eventually landed on this subject, but was what was his reaction when it was like ah when he when you landed on this idea?
00:09:36
Speaker
I think he was, yeah as I recall, he was very excited. um it seemed you know It seemed kind of perfect for what we had been you know batting around. um His caution to me, as I recall, was you know that there were sort of two ways to go about it. One was to find a school with a very charismatic coach figure and make him sort of front and center. And the other way, which is the way that I ended up doing it, was to find the players that I thought were really interesting and would carry the book. um In the case of the of Lincoln High School, the the high school coach was terrific, but he wasn't gonna carry a narrative. And that actually seemed,
00:10:28
Speaker
kind of like a blessing because it put me in the position of having to but My my relationship with the kids was going to have to work and they were going to have to be front and center. And it also allowed me to avoid the sort of journalistic trope of of positioning a book around a white authority figure. um ah You know, I kind of save your figure. And I felt like I had
00:11:02
Speaker
you know, read that before, seen it in film, on film, um and I wanted to avoid it. I wanted something where where I could bring the reader as intimately into these kids' lives as possible. So the fact that the coach, you know, wasn't that sort of larger than life charismatic figure, you know, worked to the advantage of the book, but made it, you know, made it quite quite challenging and bit and of a bit of a risk at at the start. And what was the process by which, and the conversations by which you had to curry favor and essentially audition a set of ah set of kids that were going to be able, you were going to have access to and carry ah the narrative for you?
00:11:46
Speaker
So so i so i the the day that I went to Coney Island, I drove around the neighborhood first. It was such a dramatically isolated neighborhood, ah really cut off not only from the rest of Brooklyn, but you certainly from the rest of New York City. And basketball was just woven into the fabric of the neighborhood. I mean, you couldn't you couldn't drive half a block without seeing you know a court and a bunch of players and so forth. So then the neighborhood felt very interesting to me. Then I met the that the kids that I that I wrote about at a practice that I watched and they were just amazing kids. They were friends with each other. They played off of each other in interesting ways. I was sitting on the bleachers and I was watching them practice their practicing their fast break, which was just a thing of beauty. And I just come from the neighborhood and and I i felt like I heard the book.
00:12:43
Speaker
that I wanted to write in my in my head, in you know sort of in my ear. And I'd never had that experience before. And it was it was a kind of moment where I thought, well, this is where the book needs to take place. So to your question, though, about um auditioning for them, So I was, of course, quite nervous to introduce myself and the project of the book. And I thought that I was going to be a somewhat ah exotic figure, you know a reporter who wanted to spend a year with them. What I didn't realize is that I wasn't at all exotic. they had been They were being written up in the New York Post and the Daily News. They were so used to journalists and repartorial attention and so forth. They totally got it. They were like, oh, yeah.
00:13:29
Speaker
We're great. We're the best players in New York City. We totally understand why you would want to spend a year with us. We're down with that. so um i mean what they you what they They didn't realize just how much time I was going to spend with them, although I tried to be pretty transparent about that. I said, you know I'm going to be coming every day. I'm going to spend a year with you. um and I'd like to watch you in class, at practice, at games, you know at your homes, and that kind of thing. um So I think that the level of um ah journalistic attention that I paid but came as a surprise over the you know over the coming weeks. But the fact that I wanted to spend this year with them was something that they kind of understood right from the start. And we're enthusiastic about
00:14:19
Speaker
How did you navigate ah the time that you spent with them collectively and individually? That's a good question. So at some point, I think early on, you know, basketball teams got 12 players. I thought, well, that I would you know distribute my time. if not among the you know the full 12, at least that the starting five. But at some point fairly early on, my interest you know kind of narrowed to the four kids ah that I wrote about, um Chaka,
00:14:54
Speaker
ah Chuck Ship, Corey Johnson, ah the kid that I called Russell Thomas in the book, and Stefan Marbury. So at some point, early on, I realized, oh, well, these it doesn't really have to kind of democratically represent all the kids on the team or even all even the starting five that i could you know I could write about the kids that interested me the most. And then once I made that decision, I really just tried to keep up with the four of them as as the school year went on. you know If one was going to a summer camp, I'd go with that
00:15:30
Speaker
that kid and then you know I'd fly back to New York and I'd you know go to a summer camp with the next kid and that kind of thing. um but i But I had a feeling that the that the book was going to be kind of an ensemble piece. I really needed not to miss anything crucial in in all four of these kids' lives. And ah as you write and read in the newer introduction, the the like the reporting journey was something you didn't anticipate coming. like you At first, you said like a moment ago, you said like you know the book kind of was starting to like formulate itself in your head when you got to that core, but then you realized over the course of your reporting that it's not taking shape in the way you had anticipated. or Maybe you can take us to that head space.
Evolving Narrative and Systemic Challenges
00:16:17
Speaker
Yeah. So, you know, when I said that I was sitting in the bleachers that first day and I could hear the book. You know, in my ear or in my imagination, I did hear a book, but it was not the book that I ultimately wrote. The book that i but I heard that day was kind of a optimistic book. um It was written in the third person, kind of omniscient narrator who could move around, um drew no attention to himself. I thought that I was writing a book about you know kids um
00:16:52
Speaker
triumphing over their environment and their circumstances by by dint of hard work on the court and in in the classroom. And over the time that I spent with but with the kids, I realized, in fact, i what was unfolding and what I ultimately had to write was 180 degrees turned from that. It was really about how environment and circumstances. And a high school and college basketball system were conspiring to prevent these kids from actually doing what they dreamed of doing. So the the mood of the book darkened. And crucially, I realized at some point that I could not leave myself out. ah Not because I thought that, you know, I was interesting to the reader, but that some of the
00:17:45
Speaker
reporting obstacles that i ran into and the ways in which the kids and some of their families responded to me. was actually very illuminating about the circumstance circumstances that the kids were in. And so that was actually kind of a breakthrough. And and um and Dick was was instrumental in helping me figure out that I could not be an invisible omniscient narrator. I had to be there in the flesh and on the page for you know to sort of navigate the story for the reader.
00:18:21
Speaker
Yeah, that's ah that's a great point to to make that that sometimes you just want to be um omniscient and lay it all out there and let the reader be ill let the reader judge for themselves. But there there comes a point where – and this is an editor I'm working with – has said that as the driver of the car, that being the rider, sometimes you do have to quite literally point to the passengers in the car or or point out and say like this is important over here you need to pay attention to this and this is why and I think that's that's essentially what your purpose was here like you're you're not present you're you're not in oh like over you don't overstay your welcome ever when when the I pronoun comes out so yeah when you come in it's like okay this this has weight when when Darcy kind of really enters the fray
00:19:12
Speaker
and Yeah, you know when I used to do um long form magazine, ah writing for the New York Times magazine where I was a contributing editor for a bunch of years, I i had a role for myself which was that I was i would never enter into a story unless there was an absolute need for me to be there. But in this case, the story wouldn't have would have made sense ah if I hadn't been there. And there were there were so many moments when I was speaking one on one to the to one of the boys. And so just as a matter of logistics, how was I going to render that if I wasn't there? but you know but but so there So I had to be there as of so kind of as a so figure or a foil
00:19:57
Speaker
for the kids who are who are speaking to me, sometimes on their own and sometimes in a group as we were driving around in my car and they would all be talking to me. But another reason why the first person narrator had to be in the book is, and this actually came from from a conversation that I had with Dick. I was telling him about where my reporting was leading me. And he said, he said oh, i I see. This is actually this is a ah narrative of revelation, that was his phrase. This is a story about someone understanding something, and that's someone you know sort of unavoidably as you. So the the the the story moves chronologically. It follows the kids over there.
00:20:44
Speaker
ah three of them senior year, and Stefan when he was a ah freshman, it follows their recruiting, it moves forward in time. But the real motor of the of the narrative is you know the first person narrator, myself, starting out thinking all those optimistic thoughts that I did have on the bleachers that first day, and how you know how it transpired that nine months later, I had a completely different view of the situation the kids were in. Yeah, and you really evoke the real sleaziness of college recruiters and and the head coaches there who are still some very prominent names, ah some since long retired and some recently retired.
00:21:35
Speaker
and But just the the salesmanship, in the it's just it's like selling cars and the way they, ah yeah the bill of goods that they're selling, you know these kids who are, their talent is their lottery ticket and the way that they're pulling at that and then ripping it away sometimes at, at a you know it's it's really, it really was ah i eye-opening and revelatory for me as a reader and I suspect for you too as the reporter.
College Recruitment Exploitation
00:22:05
Speaker
yeah Yeah, no, I remember sitting in the recruiting room you know over multiple days while these pretty big name, big East coaches would come and sit down with the players. And at first I thought, God, aren't they aware that there's a rapport? I mean, I always had a notebook in front of me. I was moving my hand over the notebook constantly. They knew that I was taking down everything and that was being said. And I thought, you know, It's really interesting that they're not more guarded around me. And then i at some point I realized, no, they this is business as usual. And they've been doing it for so many years. um And there's nothing ah striking to them about the way that they're speaking to the kids. so But you know for those of us who have never been in that recruiting room,
00:22:57
Speaker
to hear what what would gets said is really is really incredible. And the level of ah you know emotional manipulation is is you know it's really striking and pretty disturbing. Yeah, like when they're, what you know, eventually when it comes down to the moment where maybe there ah their their pen is the pen is coming out me and there might be a little bit hesitant, be like, well, you know what, we are. There is another power forward we're looking at. And, you know, if you know if you don't sign here, you know, we're going to look at him and we don't know if the scholarship is still going to be there or not. And you get that.
00:23:32
Speaker
and they're laying it at the feet of these 17, 18-year-old kids and it's just like, oh my God, like i don't ah in that pressure cooker situation, I don't know what I would do. it's just As an adult, let alone like a kid with ah you with this with this ability and this ah dream of getting out of Coney Island. yeah when you think about that. And I think that I think disturbed me the most was that they did research on these kids' home lives. So one kid, ah his father had died a number of years before he was a senior in high school and they they played on that. There was another kid who had had an embarrassing moment with, ah ah well, he had some mental health issues and um
00:24:22
Speaker
And they knew about that, and they played on that as well. They talked about you know how if you come out to UCal Irvine, you can start afresh. Your past is gone. You're on the West Coast. Whatever happened in Brooklyn stays in Brooklyn, stuff like that. It's very alluring to the kids, and but again, really really disturbing to watch. And when you're you know spending just hours upon hours you know with um just in and around the neighborhoods with with the with the kids in gyms and classrooms, you know what's your your primary means of documenting all the information, um you know be it you know in classrooms and meetings or even in the car as you're driving them around to try to document everything?
00:25:06
Speaker
Yeah, that's funny. ah the My car, a little Toyota hatchback was like the confession. the confession and sort that yeah So we would just drive around endlessly. ah Partly I would drive them to you know games and practices. And sometimes they would just want to go for a lift or go over to the another neighborhood where one of the players' brothers had a barbershop and so forth. But you know something about You know, it happens with you know kids of all ages. You get in the car and it's moving and you just yeah you just start talking. Everybody starts talking. So it's just a wonderful kind of reporting tool. ah Everybody would be just relaxed and and and talking.
00:25:47
Speaker
So that happened. But of course, there's a a hitch there, which is how do you record it all? yeah You know, early on when I when I started ah doing narrative journalism, I made a decision not to use a tape recorder. You know, you do get the accuracy of a verbatim recording if you use a handheld tape recorder. But You have to transcribe everything so it doubles you know your research time. Every hour in the field is another hour or more that you have to spend listening to it. But more importantly, when I did use a tape recorder, I listened less acutely than I did when I was simply taking notes. Because if you're taking notes and you don't get it down because you're not listening, you're not paying sufficient attention,
00:26:27
Speaker
It's gone forever. You have no backup. And that was useful to me. And, you know, sort of paradoxically, though I was bent over my notebook all the time because I was listening so carefully. I actually interacted with the kids more more naturally and certainly with more you know more attention to what they were saying. um But when we were in the car, it was all it was all crazy. I had a steno pad that I kept on my knee. And then when I'd hit a red light, I would just write as fast as I could, whatever it was that we'd said in the intervening four or five blocks. And you know then I put it down.
00:27:06
Speaker
put the car in gear and move forward. But then as soon as I got out of the car, I would look back over those notes. I would see all the phrases that I'd quickly written down. Then I'd just fill it out you know with with the dialogue. but So that was my MO. you know It's always most important to get what people say down ah first. That's sort of the first level of of reporting, but I i knew that you know when I was going to be writing the book however many months later, I was going to need much more than just what was said. I was going to need gesture and mood and ah what the weather was like and how hot was it, you know what were the facial expressions and things like that. So first first line of of reporting always went to getting down as accurately as I could what was said. And then as soon as I got that down, I would fill in the margins.
00:28:01
Speaker
with every, just absolutely every ah detail that I could kind of vacuum up and get into my notebooks knowing that, you know, a month down the road when I was trying to recreate these moments in, you know, sort of dramatized scenes, I was going to need dialogue, but I was going to need a lot more to to make it seem, you know, alive to the reader. Would it be one of the one of those deals, like at the end of the day, you would go and like kind of clean up your notebooks and try to spackle in the holes of what was legible versus illegible, and then you're just making sure that come time to access this stuff, you're like, oh man, I have no idea what what I wrote down here. Yes, exactly. So so as soon as i was my reporting was done, I would go home and I would never permit myself to do anything, make dinner, yeah nothing, until I had sat down with the notebooks and I reread what I had just written, for exactly for that reason, so so that I wouldn't look at it three months later and and have no idea.
00:29:04
Speaker
So I would go through, I'd spackle in the holes, as you said, and then I would put in all that sort of remembered detail about what was you know what was going on, if we were walking down the street, what did it feel like, what the neighborhood feel like, stuff like that. you know i ah I did a a piece, actually the first reporting piece that I did for Dick at New England Monthly. I attended an event And i wait and i it went very late at night, and I went to sleep in the next morning. I tried to you know download my short-term memory of what had happened, and half of it was gone. And then I realized, ah you can never you can never permit yourself to sleep until you purge your your mind of all those details, get them into a notebook. And then you can you know make dinner, take a shower, go to sleep. But you've got to get it done first.
00:29:56
Speaker
I love that. ah And I think something that you do ah just imp impeccably well is your game district ah descriptions and and stuff of that nature, though you know, the them in action on the court. and ah Like anything in sports, those need to be deployed very judiciously. Otherwise it gets repetitive and they lose their heft. And the way you describe it is is so evocative and immersive. And just made it take us to the writing and even the selection of what you choose to write about. So each of those times that you we see them on the court interacting and playing, dominating.
00:30:40
Speaker
performing, that any time that you deploy that, we you know we we feel it and it feels fresh and vibrant. in Yeah, so actually, so the one time that I did allow myself to use a tape recorder was when I was watching games, because I knew that if I was looking down on a notebook at basketball, such a blazing fast game, I would miss something crucial. So at that point, I would stand usually next to the coach, next to the player bench, with a handheld tape recorder, and I would dictate play-by-plays into the into the tape recorder um so that I could just never take my eyes off the action. And then I had that, which was you know incredibly valuable in terms of you know recreating moments that would go by. It's interesting. One of the things I'm now remembering that I worried about
00:31:30
Speaker
ah going into the project was, you know how do i how do I write about basketball? you know in nineteen s that I did the reporting for the book in 1991. Since then, there have been a ah lot of great books on basketball, but at that time, there were surprisingly few. um Baseball was considered you know sort of the sport that you know literary writers wanted to write about. It has the advantage of being a much slower moving game and so it can be recreated. more easily. And I thought, you know, how is this going to happen with a game as fast as basketball? But the tape recorder helped. And then I and then I realized that hey actually what you can do is you can tell you just as you say, you got be judicious about the moments that you describe. But chock a ship who is there center running down the court and dunking the ball, which might take
00:32:23
Speaker
four seconds in real time could actually be stretched out on the page so that it takes maybe a minute to actually read, but that there's something beautiful about taking something really fast and slowing it down and elongating the moment. So I had a lot of fun doing that. But also, as you say, I was always mindful of not of the the of the problem of repetition. Like, how many different ways can you say, you know, he hit a three-pointer and hit nothing but net? Well, first of all, nothing but net is a cliché that, you know, is used all the time. So how can you say it without using that phrase? But then even if you've come up with that a more
00:33:05
Speaker
you know, fresh way of saying it. How can you come up with four or five fresh ways of saying it so that each time, ah you know, the player hits ah ah a perfect three over the course of the book, you've said it to the reader in a different way. ah So it was challenging, but it was also a lot of fun to try to invent those, those metaphors. Well, and there's there's one moment in the Empire State games as well where Russell is on the line to he could win the game with two free th throws. And that moment you talk about dragging or extending that moment. I mean, that takes, you know, and when I was listening to it, I mean, we're talking several minutes and he know he's at the line and you're you know you're filling in all kinds of of details and in and just stretching that moment out for
00:33:54
Speaker
for a long time and it's amazing um and and it builds tension because you're like you know there are moments where you know he would he always he had come up big but then the other times and if there was too much time to think you know you get in his own head and maybe he wasn't gonna rise to that moment so you're like you're thinking the whole time you're like oh my god but is he gonna hit these free throws it's ah it's an incredible way to create tension too Yeah, you know that's um I think that's the third chapter in the book. It was the hardest chapter to write, but but now it's kind of my favorite chapter. Well, because he's such a he's such an appealing kid. but But I realized at some point, yeah, well, the piece can begin.
00:34:33
Speaker
with or the chapter can begin with him on the line while about to to attempt these free throws. And then I thought, but what does the reader need to know before the ball goes through the hoop, ah such that when they do read that he makes the free throws, it means what it should mean to them. And what I realized that an entire chapter, they needed to read an entire chapter about this kid. So that I really needed to just set up the the situation that the game was on the line. He was at the foul line. He had two free throws and a ton of pressure on him. And then I could depart for 25 or 30 pages and tell the reader,
00:35:17
Speaker
show the reader what this kid was like, you know, so that when we come back to that same moment at the end of the chapter and he makes the free throws, you know, the hopefully the reader rejoices ah because they know him so much better at the end of the chapter. but you know, Russell, as as you call them in the book, but all all of them, especially the three seniors, there they're just so, just the the way they think and process and metabolize what's going on around them and how they view the world and Cory too. like its
00:35:53
Speaker
I was just amazed at how, not amazed might be the wrong word, but I just, I loved how just brilliant and thoughtful they were and the intentionality through which they go through a day and their, you know, the dreams and the goals and the way they're articulating he just what's going on in their lives. I it was like, these these kids are brilliant. hey Not that I thought otherwise, but I was just like, wow, that Darcy landed on so some amazing, amazing kids to report on. Yeah, yeah. And they're their' you know their inner lives, it's a terrible ah ah phrase, but it's kind of true. like you know That's what the reader wants to know. It's like, you know who who are they in in the deep recesses of their personality? As you say, they you know they metabolized or processed the world, their experience, those months very deeply and very differently, each from the other. so
00:36:49
Speaker
it was it was It was fascinating, and but also a challenge. like In a book that has to be fact-based, the data is drawn from facts, observation, quotations, and so forth. like how you know How deeply can you take the reader into the inner lives of kids without any invention at all on the part of the you know the narrator or the author? So that was you know that was something that I set for myself to try to try to get their psychologies onto the page as you know as best as I could.
00:37:27
Speaker
And circling back a little bit to just the the decision to always use notebook and your own your own handwriting and short hand on long long hand or whatever. what Over the course of your reporting, be it for this book or other longer stories, ah ah was there had there ever been a moment where you're like, oh man, I really... I kind of wish I had a tape recorder to capture all this, thing you know, the dialects and certain intonations that are sometimes hard to catch in the moment where you're scribbling. I did a story for the Times Magazine about ah
00:38:03
Speaker
British Petroleum BP, and I ended up having to fly out to like a um an oil rig in the North Sea. And I met with some, ah with a CEO of BP at the time, but also some scientists. And there were so much, there's so many acronyms and scientific jargon. And i i I was doing my thing with the notebook, and I only had a brief time with them. And afterwards, I really wished that I had had and a tape recorder. so that I could you know listen back and you know parse the language and even maybe even play it to people with more expertise than I had to actually you know translate it. But you know but it's i'm i'm so I find that that the the notebook such an interesting tool. So I did a piece for the Times Magazine ah years ago about the brief life and death of a of a premature baby. And the the baby was born at 23 and a half weeks gestation out of you know the usual
00:39:03
Speaker
authority um ah he was He was born with so many compromises and he had to be resuscitated in the delivery room by a series by set of doctors and nurses and respiratory therapists. and It happened in the middle of the night when I was there. you know I didn't have my tape recorder, again, because i I always engage better without it. They said, you can come, you can watch the delivery, just put your back to the wall and don't get in the way of anything. And so that's what I did. And I did the thing where I, you know, it was quite controversial to as to, you know, how aggressively were they going to try to resuscitate this baby and what medical machinery and tools were they willing to use?
00:39:49
Speaker
And so I just kept my back to the wall. I leaned over my my tape my ah notebook and I wrote down everything that I heard said about the decisions ah that were being made in the moment. But then when I came back up into the ah the neonatal intensive care unit where the baby was brought after after his birth, I went to all the principles during the delivery and resuscitation. I said, okay, you know, that happened over the course of like eight minutes. Tell me your version of what happened.
Challenges in Reporting and Ethics
00:40:25
Speaker
And it was interesting. I had eight, you know, eight or 10 versions. So I had my own version.
00:40:30
Speaker
of of everything that I had heard and I could write down. But then I had eight or 10 other versions. And then in recreating that moment, it's a big scene in the piece. I could draw on all of those accounts ah to to to recreate it as as accurately as possible. so And as you write in the ah the new introduction to a Last Shot, you know you as you're kind of winding down, you're reporting anyway, a lot of things were starting, a lot of insurmountable roadblocks were starting to be thrown in front of you, be it coaches started icing you out, um even if Russell's mother didn't want, he just didn't want him distracted anymore, the NCAA.
00:41:13
Speaker
Stefan Marbury's father is coming in like wanting some ah compensation for the time that you're spending with them, then thinking that you're going to reap major rewards for this off of their back. So like, it's kind of take us to those moments of, you know, what's what's happening to you is ah kind of the ground is feels like it might be falling out from under you. Yeah, yeah, no, that's a good summary of all the things that were happening. Russell's mother decided that you know there were two it was too important what her son was trying to do to be distracted by having a reporter there. Stéphane's father wanted payment for I including Stéphane in the book. The NCAA had essentially banned me from
00:41:57
Speaker
recruiting sessions and I was having trouble with the high school coach as well. ah So i was really starting to not starting to I was losing access to the story. The ground was falling away. you know I wish ah wish I could say that I was alert enough to realize What was happening, all I registered at the time was, ah this is this is there too many obstacles. And so I started my reporting in May of the kids' junior year, and I was planning to go a full 12 months until they graduated at the end of their senior year. I got about nine months in, and so this would be like December or so of their of their senior year.
00:42:45
Speaker
And I ran into so many obstacles that i that I, in fact, I stopped attending, stopped going to to Lincoln every day as I had been doing. um Not because I thought my reporting was done, but because I thought the book wasn't going to work. I thought there was there was no way at that point to complete the book that I wanted to complete. I thought I had no ending. I had lost access and so forth. And so I stopped going. And it was ah it was a crushing moment. And it was only over the course of several months
00:43:21
Speaker
and many conversations with very helpful editors, Dick Todd, chiefly, but others as well, that I realized ah that these obstacles that I was facing were interesting. And if I if I changed my angle of vision on them, I could see them not as the death of the of the book that I wanted to write, but as actually that that the most important things that were happening in the book, and that in fact
00:43:57
Speaker
These obstacles, you know as I said earlier, were actually very illuminating as to the situation these kids were in. The suspicion of outsiders coming to Coney Island, the need for money, the hypocrisy, the NCAA. All of those things were getting played out in what was happening to me. And you know and if there was a way to write about that, again, not to not not to write about you know the problems that a reporter was having trying to write his book. But you know what what what did this say about the situation these kids were in? And once I realized that, and then I realized, oh, yeah, this has got to be written in the first person and so forth, then I realized, no, the book's not dead, actually. The book is is very much alive. It's just a totally different book than I thought i was going to I was going to have to write.
00:44:51
Speaker
but When you say at the at that moment, say December 91, and you wish you were more alert to something, is that exactly what you're referring to? It's just like, oh, this what's kind of happening to me in terms of this is it's emblematic of what's happening ah to them. and ah did Did you lose a lot of time ah in that in that just in your own head as you write being bewildered and depressed do you feel like you lost a lot of time you know just thinking in that terms and then the light bulb went on and
00:45:23
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. A full year went by. So I stopped in December of 91. i I had some ah former colleagues at Harker's Magazine, ah where i where I had been an editor. And um and they They were interested in in running a magazine story about about my experience. And I you know i wrote a a third-person account of stuff. And they kept saying to me, it's not quite working in the third person. And he keeps saying, you got kicked out of Coney Isle. And that was my sort of shorthand phrase for what had happened to me.
00:46:01
Speaker
I said, tell you know, tell us more about that. And I talked about that more. And they said, you know, put that in. Right. Right about that. Put that in. And, you know, so i I ended up writing a long piece about the players for Harper's magazine and the process of writing that piece and simultaneously talking to Dick about it eventually made the light bulb go off. But it didn't go off. It took a year, ah close to a year, for me to realize, ah oh, this is this is interesting. And there's just a there's and a different way that that I have to look at it. So yes, I wasted all ah or you know a lot of time went by in a state of bewilderment and depression. um But you know it's it's something that I try to carry forward with me, which is that you know the obstacles that you encounter to the to the thing
00:46:52
Speaker
that you whether it's a book or a magazine article, an essay, you know ah to try to take a breath and and see what those obstacles might be teaching you. ah and And are they shaking up your preconceived notions of your project you know in a useful way? when Stefon Marbury's father you know wants you know want wants money for his kid's participation and you just in not wanting to feel wholly exploited by yeah white reporter coming in and potentially benefiting off of following you know his kid around. you know On the one hand, it's like it goes against journalistic ethics to pay for that kind of thing, but you can almost see his point.
00:47:37
Speaker
And I just, it's a really thorny ethical question and I just wonder just like how how did it get you thinking, just thinking more about that that degree of transaction between source and reporter. Yeah, yeah it's it's it's really ethically very complicated. you know check Checkbook journalism, I guess, is the phrase, you know yeah is frowned upon. yeah and in you know And in certain situations, if you're a a reporter for a daily newspaper, and you know I completely understand why that that's a line that you can't cross. When you become so involved in people's lives, as I was, with the with the project, it's ah it's a different it's a different situation. And in fact, I began to think my way through this problem and came to the conclusion that in fact, I really ought to figure out some sort of you way to compensate.
00:48:37
Speaker
the players at the time. And this is just insane. ah Looking back on it, the NCAA said that that would violate their amateur status and so render them ineligible for the very thing that they were working so hard to get, which was that, you know, the the scholarship to a four year division one school. So now, you know, 30 years later, ah Everything is changing ah you know with the NCAA and um name, image likeness, compensation, and so forth. But at the time, the NCAA was incredibly ah rigid and doctrinaire about that.
00:49:18
Speaker
Yeah, and um in so at the 20-year anniversary, ah amos Amos Barshaw did a really good feature on it for Grantland. And yeah know when he reached out to Stephan Marbury, you know he only had a very yet a pretty terse statement. you know He just said, the book is false. He, meaning you, did it to make money off of young black kids in the hood. That's all I have to say about it. And like when you hear that, like what what goes through your mind when you when he you know you realize he's and interpreted it in that in that way? Yeah. I mean, it's yes' incredibly painful. So not not my intention then or now. I think that ah I understand why it was a really hard book for some people in
00:50:12
Speaker
who were depicted in the book and also in the Coney Island community to read. you know It basically said that this whole process that that so many kids for a number of generations have been trying to do and turn to their advantage wasn't working. And I thought it was pretty clear that I, as a reporter and an author, we're not calling these kids losers. I was saying they were in a situation that was conspiring to make them lose. But I understand why if you were in that situation, you could read the book and think he's calling us all a bunch of losers, our older brothers, a bunch of losers, our parents, you know, that kind of thing. So I understand where where Stefan was coming from and in saying that.
00:51:07
Speaker
the but As I was ah yeah listening to to the book too and having read Isabel Wilkerson's cast, a those two, I think they're just such a, it's a really good harmonious pairing ah to get a sense of the institutional racism and the institutions that are meant, like you said, conspiring to make kids of kids like these lose and and keep keep them in in their cast. And when you read the two together, you see you know you start to see how the the gears are working to keep a cast of people in their place. And it's ah it's revelatory and very dispiriting.
00:51:52
Speaker
you know the phrase systemic racism or institutionalized racism is a pretty common phrase now. Back in 91, it wasn't. right But i think that ah you know I think that without having heard that phrase, you know I was groping in ah in you know in a dark room metaphorically, you know and my and I was pressing up against all the very elements of the system that were closing in on these kids, you know, whether it was the NCAA or the individual college coaches or the educations that they've had, you know, starting in, you know, kindergarten, all the way up to high school where suddenly they had to take standardized tests. ah Their neighborhood, ah their family structures, all of those things, ah you know, in a way had been
00:52:45
Speaker
kind of useful to me to have heard that phrase back then. But I think that I was, you know, I was sensing it. And part of the mission of the book, you know, when when it came back together again after that, after that year was to try to try to evoke and describe the elements of the system as as best as I could. Yeah, that I have a ah family member who like categorically does not you know buy into the idea of that certain people have more privilege privilege than others. And it just it's very hard for me to understand. I i think of the SAT conundrum that you know the the kids were under and yeah had in in your book and generations before and after of you know the of taking the test is not a
00:53:34
Speaker
It's not a sign of intelligence. It's a sign of how well you take that test. And and people with more privilege can afford the $600 or $1,000 it is to take a course to get really good at taking that test. a lot of people that prices a lot of people out as a result, even if you just need to get a 700 to qualify for a Division I school, it's um it's prohibitive for a lot of people. And like that little bit of gatekeeping is just, that is the mark of privilege and i just ah of those who have and have not. and they just ah You saw it on display very, very ah evocatively in your book.
00:54:17
Speaker
Yeah. And you think about the you know standardized test you know prep classes that the kids of of more means can take. But then there's also you know what kind of education have you had such that by the time you're a a sophomore, junior, senior in high school, you're actually able to you know do reasonably well. And then on top of that, if you think about you know this one narrow path that these kids have which is to get to a decent Division I school based in part on grades, but also because of their basketball prowess. But then there's this threshold ah ah on the SAT t that they absolutely have to pass. If you think about the pressure that puts on that kid in that room that day,
00:55:07
Speaker
that he has to take it. It's you know it's a completely different academic experience than a kid whose ability to go to college doesn't rest so crucially on that. Yeah, because it's not just the the pressure on them individually. then you know They're feeling it for their families and also the entire you know the entirety of Coney Island. who just ah they need to you know when there If there was a a kid of this nature who's like, they have the chance to get out, they're one of the good you know they're one of the good ones that might be able to do this and you leverage their talent.
00:55:41
Speaker
And when they fall short, it ah the totality of that pressure, it's not it's not just on them. It's just they're feeling it from all angles, which is it just compounds the tragedy. Yeah, that's right. um And you know, that's why it was so revelatory and, you know, so. Russell Thomas, who struggled so much with the SATs, and he was the kid I was thinking about when I was just saying that about the amount of pressure on a given day when he had to take the test. But, you know, for a year before then, he carried around a bunch of index cards that were his study aides, you know, so that he could brush up on vocabulary, ah you know, when he's sitting on the subway riding from one game to another, that kind of thing.
00:56:22
Speaker
I did abysmally on on my SATs. I took them four times. My best was a 1080, but I was like a 3.7 GPA kid. I was in everything else. ah on on pace that i ah I was never in a position like them. I'm not complaining. but It's like I needed to get to 1,200 because I was going to be the shortstop at an Ivy League school. But I needed to get to 12. And i couldn I just couldn't for the life of me get there. And I would be there. I feel the pressure. I'd get all pissed off. I'm like, this is the thing that is determining yeah where I'm going or where I'm not going to go. And I could i got that 1,080 the first time. That was 1,050, 1,050, 1,050. And I was just like, holy shit. i'm i'm ah um I was like, I'm a fucking idiot.
00:57:05
Speaker
And it's just like I was never told how to take the test. And and meanwhile, like likewise, you know the kids and and the and in your story, there like they get decent grades. like They're intelligent kids, but the SAT is its own thing. And no one knows that sometimes you've got to leave things blank. you know who Unless someone tells you that, you're never going to leave anything blank. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. you know it was also ah It was frightening how fast word of these kids test scores would travel. So you know everybody in Coney Island would know, did he make it? No, he didn't make it this time. wow you know So imagine, you know you come back from school and everybody everybody already knows how you did. And you know in the case of Stefan, he had older brothers who struggled with the test. And so there's that additional sort of family and generational pressure on him.
00:58:02
Speaker
ah as well. And then you know for reasons that I could never figure out, the college coaches sometimes knew before yeah how the kids had scored. I don't know how that that information leaked to them. um But if they knew that the kid is was still struggling, then you know they would would withdraw their their attention and move on to another kid.
Darcy Frey's Career Transition
00:58:24
Speaker
you know What did this book you know do and due to you? you know did it you know It's your only book, it's a brilliant book, and you know there's ah and it's your only book. And I wonder if if this book in some way, like I don't know, not not broke you, but you're like, you know what, I'm one and done, and this is it. you know that I don't know, just take take me to that headspace.
00:58:49
Speaker
um No, nothing nothing really like that. After I finished the book, i it you know it opened up a wonderful opportunity for me to become a contributing writer at the at the Times Sunday magazine. And that was um a position that I held on and off for, I don't know, like 15 years or so. So I did a bunch of long form journalism for them, ah you know which would never would have happened um if i hadn't if I hadn't written the book. And then about 15 years or so ago or so, um I left New York. I came up to Cambridge.
00:59:23
Speaker
um I got a full-time teaching job. um And so, you know, I'm teaching and being, ah you know, the kind of immersive reporting that I did when I was younger um and I wasn't, you know, teaching and so forth is not really, doesn't make a lot of sense. So i'm i'm these days I'm writing essay and memoir. So I've just, yeah, I've just turned, ah I've turned sort of in a new non-section direction. And that works ah just works better with ah with teaching and you know family life and that and that kind of thing.
01:00:00
Speaker
what's the What do you find is the challenge of ah teaching another wave of of journalists ah when you know your toolbox from you know the 80s and 90s is ah some of the certain skills translate, but other things don't. So what what what is the the challenge for you to teach to a a new generation of journalists? Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, mostly these days I'm actually teaching what I'm writing myself, which is personal essay and memoir. Although I do i do a bit of the teaching of journalism and will be doing it in the coming year. I think that the access that I got as a reporter in Coney Island that I got when I was doing that
01:00:47
Speaker
a piece that I was talking about, ah about the ah premature baby at a neonatal intensive care unit. I did another long piece about a group of air traffic controllers that at a radar facility that controlled the airspace over Kennedy, LaGuardia, and Newark. It's very hard to take that that experience and help students in ah in similar projects because there's so much more anxiety. I mean, each of those stories, there's and there's there's anxiety about about journalists and reporters. And so the the but the access
01:01:27
Speaker
is something that's much harder to come by. like well you know part Part of this, the piece about air traffic controllers was done pre-9-11. Post-9-11, that's not going to happen. The the story about the the baby in the intensive care unit, I had incredible access, but there's just so much anxiety about medical malpractice and that kind of thing. It's it's hard to show those pieces to students and help them find their way you know, into situations that they want to write about. But, you know, it's still it's still wonderful work to be doing that kind of, you know, fly on the wall journalism. So I keep at it yeah just this past spring. I had a student who was writing about artificial wombs.
01:02:13
Speaker
which was something that the doctors in the neonatal intensive care unit that I wrote about 20, 25 years ago, joked was going to be the you know the wave of the future, and here it is. And now I have a student writing about it. She managed incredible access among among doctors and patients and so forth. So you know it still happens. But I guess you know to answer your question, I think it's about I think it's about access. Very nice. well Well, Darcy, I love bringing these conversations down for a landing by just asking ah you, ah the guests, for a recommendation for the listeners out there. And it's just like anything you're excited about, that's bringing you some joy in your life. Oh, wow. Yeah. So I'll just kind of extend that to you. why you know What might you recommend for the listeners?
01:02:57
Speaker
No, my God. um you know It's funny you did warn me that you're going to ask this, but I i didn't think about it. But now I am. The great ah the great short story writer, Alice Monroe, a Canadian short story writer, ah died a couple of weeks ago. Okay, I will say I... Well, we recorded this interview where several weeks before there were the revelations that Alice Monroe's youngest daughter was sexually abused by her stepfather, and Monroe subsequently stayed with her husband, her daughter's stepfather.
01:03:37
Speaker
throughout the ordeal after she knew of said abuse and so I don't know I don't know what to make of that I don't know what your relationship is to Alice Monroe or to any maligned artists ah after such revelations come to pass but I just wanted to bring that up because that is now the elephant in the room I guess if you bring up Alice Monroe and this was well before that report came out okay back to Darcy and um And I've been rereading her um her stories.
01:04:12
Speaker
um And, you know, it's fiction, but it's yeah actually Dick was one one of the first editors to tell me, you know, while writing nonfiction, always be reading fiction. you know, the story power, the storytelling power of fiction writers, short story writers or novelists is, you know, such a good thing to be reading while you're writing nonfiction. um So it's that in her stories that are useful to me, but also her willingness to always look for the messiest emotions and the most complex situations and never to reduce those situations. I find that
01:04:53
Speaker
ah you know thrilling to to read and it's super helpful to me as a writer as well. Well speaking of thrilling this was thrilling to speak with you Darcy about the last shot and just the kind of the ins and outs and the nuts and bolts of it so I just thought thank you so much for ah carving out the time to do this this is wonderful. Yeah thank you it was ah it was really fun to talk to you about it.
01:05:20
Speaker
Alright. Pause. Thanks to Tarsi and thanks to UC&Effers for hanging around with me in the pod. If you dig it, subscribe, download, share with a friend. Doesn't cost you anything. Maybe consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts or a rating on Spotify. All of those help validate the enterprise for the way we're seeing effort, looking for some non-fiction conversation to put a little juice in the tank. Because don't we all need the juice? Crave the juice.
01:05:52
Speaker
Getting to the end, seeing efforts, getting to the end. I finished a very late stage round of edits from my big book editor, and I'm combing through the edits ah from my very astute wife who aspirationally wishes she could do developmental editing instead of you know what she does now. She really just has an eye for it and really likes it. She's given me tremendous insight so far. You know I've written a blog post that handing your spouse so your work in progress is cruel and unusual punishment and that it can lead to marital discord. Either that ah your spouse or
01:06:30
Speaker
Or you, in ah your relationship, but ah might not be critical enough, which sucks for the work. The work suffers when it doesn't get to the right editorial eye. Or, perhaps, they're too critical, and then you don't talk for several days unless the pipe spurts in the house. You know, I held off giving her a draft until it was very nearly complete, like very late in the process. So three very skilled sets of eyes have read this book. You know, Glenn, of course, poor guy, he got the worst of it. I feel like I, I feel like I just need to just keep sending money to Glenn, like just like in perpetuity, just here, just reparations.
01:07:13
Speaker
moraling You know, just, I'm sorry. That's my acknowledgement section for the for the book when I write it. is It's not going to say acknowledgments. It's just going to say with apologies. ah Matt, he's my that he got the second worst of it, and he can just his comments are just like, You know how when you read a fortune cookie and it's just like blah, blah, blah in bed? I feel like his comments have have the tinge. like im i'm just It's just blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You fucking moron. Blah, blah, blah, blah. You're fucking moron.
01:07:47
Speaker
that's that's ah That's untrue. I know he doesn't mean that, but i I feel like he wishes I were smarter. I do too. And Melanie, she gets the third worst of it. Thing is, her goal is to focus on transitions and cohesion and to make sure the chapters are doing the work. Had to cut a scene the other day that I loved. Oh man, I really loved it, because it was so weird. Like in the best possible way. Like you would never heard of this. thing that happened it was just so funny and quirky and like I said weird just like super weird so okay there was this race I think it was back in early 1972 an indoor race down in LA and this gives you a sense of how popular track and field was back in the day I'm going off script here by the way
01:08:38
Speaker
And the l LA Times, they hired their track writer, or to make a prediction, not hired, but had their track writer make a prediction and they pulled in an astrologer to make a prediction for the race. for the mile and the two miles. yeah yeah Pri was running the two mile and the mile, it doesn't matter. And um so they had like a point counterpoint thing with the expert in the astrologer. And the LA Times obviously carried it and had this wildly detailed thing about star charts and everything. And then a Sports Illustrated was there too, covering the race. And it's just so wild that editorial footprints were dedicated to such a thing.
01:09:20
Speaker
for like a non-Olympic thing. It was just the LA Times indoor in 1972. It was an Olympic year, of course, but it was just so weird, and the whole thing was highlighted. Matt's like, I don't know what this is adding. And he's right, but it's also sad. And word real estate is at a premium. And I think right now, I think I've got it down to about 100,000, 900, 10,000 words. Down from the first draft, sorry Glenn, of 160,000 words and a working draft that we're hovering around 120.
01:09:54
Speaker
And it's just one of the many gems that needs to go because it doesn't wholly inform the arc of this biography, unless it was framed in a certain way to make it relevant. But I don't think with words being such a premium at this point, I don't think it can make it. It's just a good talking point, I suppose. Make no mistake, biography is about selection. You know, what are the moments in the life of a person that feed a point of view? Mind being, I think, you think I know at this point, but I think, how Steve Prefontaine is the last amateur in the dawn of a paradigmatic modern athlete. Anything else that doesn't serve that forward of propulsion has to get shaken out of the tree. And that's what's happening now in the 6,000 thread through of this goddamn book
01:10:45
Speaker
What you're doing is shaking out the tree for dead leaves. Addition by subtraction. Cool things are falling off the tree, man. Real snappy sentences falling to the floor composting at the roots. And when it sounds like writing, your writing is off. The best compliment I got from Melanie is when she tells me she forgets about the writing. That means the writing's on point. That brings up a whole other can of worms about style and voice. Like, you know, when you're watching a Wes Anderson movie or reading a David Foster Wallace essay or Hanifa Durakib essay, the ego side of any writer is like, I want to be distinct and I want people to buckle up, strap in, and you must be this tall to read this essay. In any case, next week might be kind of the last time I send this book off.
01:11:40
Speaker
And we're getting down to it. What are we, nine and a half months away from publication? Holy shit. I know I've been priming the pump on pre-orders, but it's not available yet. I'm just getting that idea, like Inception. I'm putting it, I'm planting it in your brain over and over again. And then... That way, when it happens, it'll happen. I don't want to just drop this hand grenade in your lap and then be like, ah, crap. i I just went out and bought a case of beer and I can't afford a pre-order in it right now. that's what What kind of sucks about pre-ordering is like you got to buy the thing and then you don't get the satisfaction of it coming in for like months away. That's kind of its appeal and and and its attraction, I guess.
01:12:30
Speaker
You almost forget that you bought the thing and then eventually it comes in the mail like, oh shit, look at that. Look at this thing I bought a while ago. That deferred gratification. We're just not a deferred gratification kind of culture, so to say, I'm going to spend $35 right now and I'm not going to get anything for four months.
01:12:50
Speaker
Some people have asked for the link, but as I say in the newsletter right now, it's it's just not there yet. I just want you driving by that billboard, getting ready for it. So stay wild, see you in efforts, and if you can't do, interview, see ya.