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Episode 482: Matthew Wolfe and the Grammar of Delight
164 Plays1 hour ago
"You have to finish it out. You have to report it, even if it's financially a terrible idea," says Matthew Wolfe.
OK, it’s that Atavistian time of the month so we’re here to talk about Matthew Wolfe’s “The Talented Mr. Bruseaux: He made his name in Chicago investigating racial violence, solving crimes, and exposing corruption. But American’s first Black private detective was hiding secrets of his own.” Go to magazone.atavist.com to read it.
So we’ll be hearing from Matt in due time. It’s not Matt’s first story with the Atavist and we talk a little about his first story with the Atavist as well.
Matt is a journalist and I believe he wrapped up a PhD in sociology. He’s got a book coming out next year. We’ll be sure to tout that when the time comes.
Batting leadoff here is none other than lead editor Jonah Ogles. Jonah and I talk about the ideal writer to work with and get into how he edited Matt’s piece
Matt's first Atavist story was “The Ghosts of Pickering Trail.” His work has appeared in the New York Times, the New York Times Magazine, National Geographic, The Atlantic, Harper’s, Pop-Up Magazine, the New Republic … hold on ... maybe I should just read the publications he hasn’t written for. Oh, wait, there are none. Shit. You can find more about Matt at matthewwolfe.net.
Matt likes to lean on TV and screenplays as a means to developing stories. He uses the Dan Harmon Story Circle to help with structure, and I’ll link up to that in the show notes. We talk about not being mercenary about stories and leaning into the ones that won’t let go, and one of the more bizarre recommendations you’ll ever hear.
Newsletter: Rage Against the Algorithm
Show notes: brendanomeara.com
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Listener Engagement
00:00:01
Speaker
Ugh, you know that feeling when you eat too much pasta? Ugh. Happy August. CNFers the frontrunner strides into the dog days of summer. Been getting some nice texts and emails about read reader feedback.
00:00:16
Speaker
Turn those texts and emails into online reviews. I could use all we can get. I'm not going to read them. I haven't read anything on Amazon, nor will i But if you would like to turn some of those...
00:00:30
Speaker
that that that feedback into a review, I would greatly appreciate it. ah Not much by way of events going on in
Event and Publication Highlights
00:00:37
Speaker
August. Do have this thing called a Night of Nonfiction with Hippocampus Magazine. It's Hippocamp Online on Saturday, August 16th from 6 to 8 p.m.
00:00:47
Speaker
ah There is a debut CNF author reading and discussion featuring, if I butcher some of these names, apologies, Tia Levings, Teresa Okokan, Hayasung Song, Casey Mulligan Walsh, special guest opener, Anna Maria Formichella, and your featured author is your boy, Brendan O'Meara.
00:01:15
Speaker
Hey, hey. Free to attend for this one. There's a weekend pass, I guess, for like $75. um And individual sessions or whatever for like $25.
00:01:26
Speaker
ah But go to hippocampusmagazine.com slash events, and you can enroll in this one for free. For free. Also, I had a flash essay run over at shortreads.org titled Racing Rachel Ray.
00:01:41
Speaker
It's about a lot of things crammed into a thousand words. got some nice feedback on that, too, on the Instagrams. It's number 124, I believe, over on Short Leads. Anyway, go check that out.
00:01:54
Speaker
Short-reads.org. Racing Rachel Ray.
Interview with Matthew Wolfe
00:01:59
Speaker
ah journalism, there's always a little bit of, ah with your nose up against the window looking in,
00:02:12
Speaker
Okay, it's that Atavistian time of the month, so we're here to talk about Matthew Wolfe's, the talented Mr. Brousseau. He made his name in Chicago investigating racial violence, solving crimes, and exposing corruption.
00:02:26
Speaker
But America's first black private detective was hiding secrets of his own. Go to magazine.atavist.com to read that story, or maybe consider subscribing. I don't get any kickbacks.
00:02:37
Speaker
Should I? So we'll be hearing from Matt in due time. It's not Matt's first story with The Atavist, and we talk a little bit about that first story as well. Nat is a journalist, and I believe he wrapped up a PhD in sociology.
00:02:51
Speaker
He's got a book coming out next year, and we'll be sure to tout that when the time comes. Showing this episode and more at brendanomero.com. Hey, hey, there. You can peruse hot blogs and sign up for my two very important newsletters, the flagship Rage Against the Algorithm and Pitch Club.
00:03:08
Speaker
Issue 3 of Pitch Club just dropped with Kim H. Cross. We got a flood of new subscribers. Let's keep doing it. Let's just keep building this thing. I'll never, neither newsletter will cost you a dime.
00:03:21
Speaker
All I ask is for your permission because platform is currency. Your permission is currency. And I will never violate that. Both are first of the month. No spam. So far as I can tell, you can't beat them.
00:03:33
Speaker
And you might also elect to join the patreoncru Patreon patreon.com slash cnfpod, to throw some dollar bills into the cnfpod coffers. You can earn some nice face-to-face time with me, if you dare.
00:03:45
Speaker
Check it out, friend. Helps keep the lights on here. Which brings me to thanking Peter Bryant for becoming a patron. Thank you so much for coming on board. Thanks for the support. Hope to make it worth it.
00:03:57
Speaker
So batting lead off here is none other than lead editor Jonah Ogles. And for those of you who may have missed Sayward Darby the last several months, she'll be back soon. She came back from maternity leave, and I believe she's working on a narrative podcast.
00:04:11
Speaker
you know, some of you might be worried. Well, one of you might be worried. None of you might be worried. So Jonah and I talk about the ideal writer to work with and get into how he edited Matt's piece.
00:04:23
Speaker
And we got a parting shot about aging dogs, specifically Sister Kevin here. So let's cue up the montage. Huh.
00:04:36
Speaker
You fucking idiot, give me that! Which is like how I feel about myself. Okay, whatever, like you do you. If Mars had an area code. Before I know it, I'm shot with an arrow and this thing has grabbed me. This is gonna have to interest somebody somewhere other than me.
00:05:01
Speaker
When you find yourself in conversation with, say, other editors, yeah what is the what do you find yourself talking about the most? I mean, i suspect it's kind of similar. you know i mean, we may editors may talk a little bit more, well, I don't know. We talk about magazine money too. yeah know we There's a lot of state of the industry talk, which I'll skip in this conversation, but just because it's so depressing, not because it's like state state secrets or anything, but um you know we we talk about stories usually. you know like I want to know what editors are working on. i want to know like what story they're excited about, what writers. you know I'm always trying to
00:05:46
Speaker
find out if somebody's working with somebody good or is reading somebody good, you know, but we, we talk about stories, you know, the, basically like the nuts and bolts of putting a story together and, and what, you know, how a story is going, what are they working on now? What is the editing process been like? Is the writer,
00:06:09
Speaker
collaborative or you know are they are they pushing back on edits and how do you deal with the structural problem or you know and any anything I think that writers are probably talking about with their own drafts. I think editors are having pretty similar conversations about how to how to get this done.
00:06:30
Speaker
you know it's It's not like we have the manual. We just have maybe a little more experience, consistent experience doing it every month. Yeah. And you you talk about the the depressing nature of the industry at large, and which is you know easily, you know writers experience it, editors experience it.
00:06:49
Speaker
Knowing that's the table stakes of it all, like just how do you, as best you can, block that out and proceed in the face of that? Yeah, well, I mean, it's it's it helps to be at the atavist, you know, where're where and we're we're doing all right. And i don't feel any, like, ah extinction event on the horizon for us. um You know, but you... ah you know We talk about it. I i think I try to like acknowledge it you know and and I need to spend a little time worrying about it before I can not worry about it in conversations with friends, editor friends, writer friends.
00:07:32
Speaker
It helps to have those and and just kind of get it out of your system. but But once you're sitting there, you know certainly when you're in a story, it's it's pretty easy to to sort of set it aside and just get into the words.
00:07:48
Speaker
I think where I think about it more often is pitches, honestly. And and part of it is I just feel... bad rejecting stories that are that are close maybe you know that are like it's a good idea it's not quite right for us or it's a story that won't work for us but i i want to read it and and writers may ask you where Where might I send this? Do you know where a good home might be?
00:08:17
Speaker
And it's harder and harder to answer that question. you know we used to We used to recommend California Sunday ah fair bit when that was still in operation because they had great editors and were doing just some really phenomenal work with amazing writers.
00:08:35
Speaker
And we can't, you know, we can't do that. We can't do that anymore. Hakai was one that I used to send people to if it was kind of more nature based. And the number of publications out there doing good work where I feel like comfortable sending writers.
00:08:52
Speaker
because I know they'll they'll be you know treated somewhat well. It's just a dwindling list at this point. And that that's where you know it can kind of can wear you down when you're spending a lot of time trying to come up with an answer and there's not a good one.
00:09:07
Speaker
e For sure. And ah yeah we've probably talked about this any number of times maybe over the years, but I feel like it's been a been a while. um So it's kind of maybe good to refresh this. And if you had to you know ah sketch out the the perfect writer, reporter to work with, you know what does that person look like?
Writer and Editor Dynamics
00:09:29
Speaker
Hmm. You know, somebody who... who is willing to like talk through problems that they're having, you know, be being upfront, I think about the issues they maybe had in the reporting or the, the writing of the draft is, is really helpful for me to hear, you know, if they're,
00:09:52
Speaker
if they're struggling with something, be it structure or or drawing out like a particular plot line or a character, it helps me to know that, not only to help brainstorm, but it it helps to read the piece knowing that that's something that maybe they've hit a wall with or you know they don't think they can get much more materials, just so that I'm not...
00:10:17
Speaker
saying, hey, you know here's this big edit memo. I want to flesh out this character and make make her the star of everything. And they're like, i don't i actually don't have anything else.
00:10:28
Speaker
So yeah, some somebody who's who's collaborative and and really wants to like work with an editor, I think is really helpful. So somebody who who just has their sources locked down, you know, like when i when I get a draft and it's annotated, that's always a really good sign, um you know, because it says to me the writer has been has been thinking about the reporting at every step and in is laying everything out so that it's I know that the draft is going to be pretty clean from a fact check standpoint.
00:11:03
Speaker
um And it also helps me, you know, there are times, Sayward is actually amazing at this, she does it way more than I do, but like we'll dive into some of those ah sources in in the footnotes and, you know, read read that story or read the news the news article or and or whatever it is and find something that we're like, oh, this is interesting, you know, this should this should go into the piece.
00:11:29
Speaker
Yeah, so what really, like, has their reporting on lockdown collaborative? is Is communicative about miss deadline missing deadlines, at least? i i don't I'm lucky that we don't I don't have to be too harsh on deadlines, but i like to know what's going on with the story.
00:11:46
Speaker
And even if, you know, even if it's just an update, like, hey, finish my reporting trip, you know, and I'm going to need extra time that like, that's fine. I just like to know that type of stuff.
00:11:57
Speaker
Yeah. um I don't know if that that gives you like a picture of a whole person, a whole person or not, but I like all of those things. Oh, that's yeah, that's really insightful. You know, just for people who, you know, you want to have a good ah back and forth with your editor because it's in service of the story.
00:12:15
Speaker
And that more and more, you know, freelancers or people wanting to do this kind of work might not have. ah a good ah editor writer relationship where they're learning the best skills to, to be the best collaborator, you know, at to be someone who's fun to work with, but someone who can, who knows how to tactfully push back and have a dialogue about something that's going in or taken out of a story You know, you never want to be a difficult person to work with, but without having the experience working with someone, you might not have the opportunities to really hone that skill. So if people can kind of work on it in private and kind of visualize what it means,
00:12:57
Speaker
to be a ah pleasure to work with, because if you can dispel of all that drama, then, you know, the story is just going to be so much better. And and so, yeah, just having your sketch of what that person looks like, big like someone listening could be like, OK, maybe.
00:13:12
Speaker
Oh, that's good. me I got to have my sources a bit more buttoned up because now that that's buttoned up, we can start look working on some higher level things. Yeah, exactly. um You know, and it's it's nice to work with writers who, when they do need to push back, sort of zero in on on the stuff that's most impactful to a story. You know, because a lot of times, like, if I cut something, I try to say this to writers when I'd send them edits, but, like, if I cut something that was important,
00:13:44
Speaker
it probably wasn't clear to me that it was important or or I wouldn't have cut it, you know, because I'm not necessarily cutting for space. I mean, I want pace to be right, but I'm not worried about like 8,500 words versus 8,000.
00:13:59
Speaker
um So, you know, being able to sort of like know which changes are important and and sort of like treating it more as like, hey, here is why this mattered to me as a writer.
00:14:13
Speaker
and what I think it was doing for the story. That's super helpful information, you know, and and that feels more like a conversation to an editor than just that graph was important, so I've put it back in.
00:14:26
Speaker
You know, like that, and which is fine. You know, like I i can then say, well, what why is it important? Help me understand. But it's a lot more fun for me when they're coming back and saying, and clearly something wasn't working or, you wo you know, but this is what I want it to do or what I think it should do in the story.
00:14:45
Speaker
Nice.
Narrative Techniques in Journalism
00:14:46
Speaker
Yeah, and with Matt's story here, you know, when you speaking about annotation, I was i always, yeah this is what some writers and journals nerd out about too, is just like the degree of sourcing and how intensive it was. In the draft that I had, I could see, I'm like, oh my God, like sometimes half the page or footnotes is like, whoa, this is some heavy-duty research he's doing, and he's citing it as he's going along.
00:15:11
Speaker
So you as the editor would be like, okay, this guy is... He's done some legwork. There's hundreds of sources on an 8,000 word story. It's like, holy shit, that's a lot. Yeah. So, ah yeah, well, talk about Matt and, you know, and his approach to to this story on ah Sheridan.
00:15:26
Speaker
Oh, Brousseau. Is that his name? five Yeah, Brousseau. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And Matt is is actually a return writer. He co-wrote an early Atavist piece well but well before my time. so it was...
00:15:40
Speaker
but He wrote it. That was the era where like the Atavist was new and I was like a young editor and was just like obsessed with these Atavist stories. You know, they're so log and they're kind of quirky and and different than what you might read in other magazines. So it was cool.
00:15:56
Speaker
It was cool to get to work with somebody who'd who'd written one of those like original classics that the Atavist had published. And you know he had, we love like and unknown history stories. you know like that's That's a great way. And this one you know had like the crime, there's a crime at the heart of it, a political assassination in Chicago and kind of the height of the Capone era.
00:16:22
Speaker
you know So that you know there's like some grabby stuff in the pitch, but but really it's a story about this guy who has just kind of been forgotten by history despite having having launched this sort of incredible career in an era when you would not necessarily expect a black man to be able to to run such a huge ah private detective agency or private investigation agency.
00:16:51
Speaker
you know it it was it was one of those pitches that just kind of kept hitting me with stuff that was interesting. Like, oh, that aspect is interesting. You're like, oh, that's crazy. And it it made it a ah pretty easy one for us to want to publish.
00:17:06
Speaker
you know through Throughout the story, too, as it comes to light towards the towards the end, there's there's a ah Gatsby element too and to this story. And without giving away too much, but it's um what is the appeal and why does the Gatsby narrative really endure?
00:17:24
Speaker
And certainly in the 20th century, but even giving way to the 21st century, there's something about the Gatsby archetype that resonates and feels timeless in this country.
00:17:37
Speaker
Yeah, it is it seems kind of like woven into the fabric of like our national character. you know we've We've got... There's a long history of it. you know It's not like F. Scott Fitzgerald like created it out of whole cloth and then it came into being. you know he was He was in tune. he He saw what was going on. I'd put it, obviously, just a wonderful book. It might be one of the few books that like everybody in America has has to read if if they finish high school.
00:18:14
Speaker
But yeah, I mean, they're great. It also makes for great reading, you know, because there are myths and fabrications and close calls and being discovered and or being discovered. And there's just, you know, having someone trying to create their own their own myth allows for a lot of dramatic moments that that makes for good reading, good writing.
00:18:41
Speaker
And as as you as you know, when we have these conversations, I love getting ah the unique challenges that were presented to you on your side of the table, you know, when you got be at the pitch or the draft or anything. So, you just with this one, what was unique to this story that yeah that that you were working with and the code you were trying to crack with it?
00:19:01
Speaker
Yeah, this, I mean, it came in pretty, in pretty great shape, ah honestly. have The, you mentioned the footnotes that were in the draft. I mean, those were in there, like the moment he sent it to me. So, so I knew we were on really, really solid ground on the reporting front.
00:19:19
Speaker
you know I think the bulk of my work on this was was about pace, which is kind of always the case, you know just trying to cut stuff that that wasn't didn't feel essential or or felt like it kind of gummed up the narrative at moments when I didn't really want to be pulled away from the story.
00:19:41
Speaker
you know Because it Well, in this case, like I mentioned, it it kicks off with this political assassination, which Brousseau is hired to investigate. And it's sort of this huge watershed moment in Chicago political history.
00:19:56
Speaker
But that goes away, like we're basically done with that in the first half of the story, you know, and and you you would think like, oh, you're going to you stretch that case out and you kind of tell everything, you know, that that would make it, i think, a lot easier for the narrative to to feel like to just keep readers interest all the way to the end.
00:20:20
Speaker
But because we were we were doing away with that and sort of spinning into the the falsehoods that Brousseau had it sort of baked into his resume, um you know You don't have something quite as like tactile to latch onto, and he's sort of jumping from investigation to investigation.
00:20:42
Speaker
So i i think I suspect this is the case, but I think I did most of my trimming probably in the latter half of the piece. where you know we might have strayed into, well, he was doing you know he investigated a race riot in in Detroit and started to shift into you know Detroit history or background or and things like that. and But you need to stay tethered to Bruce So's personal life at that point in order to keep readers feeling like they're you know being pulled along by the narrative rather than like um you know just sort of reading it out of duty or or anything.
00:21:26
Speaker
And this happens a lot in out of his stories, too, where you'll you'll open with something that is very evocative and dramatic, but it also runs the risk of creating a different expectation for the rest of the story that cascades from it.
00:21:40
Speaker
ah you don't want Like you said, like this this particular case you know you maybe could have been the entire backbone of the thing, but you say like you know halfway through you kind of resolve that issue.
00:21:50
Speaker
So when you're structuring a ah story, you know, how are you doing the math in your head that, okay, you know, this thing is so powerful, but it might set up a reader expectation that's not going to pay off because we're going a different direction. Like I imagine that's a math you're working with sometimes.
00:22:06
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, it is. And you're trying to decide whether or not it they'll feel duped or whether it'll be a nice surprise. Yeah. You know, like that, that's always because i I'm a sucker for a story that like the first section or two are about something that that maybe the rest of the story isn't really about. And I like that as a reader.
00:22:30
Speaker
But when you're trying it, you you want to, or at least like the tricks I try to use, I try to seed the idea that that something else is coming early in the piece.
00:22:41
Speaker
And I think in in this case, we did it just with like the opening section, the last line in that, you know, like Sheridan Brousseau spent a career like trying to unearth secrets, but turns out he was keeping a few of his own.
00:22:56
Speaker
And you you hope that that lets readers know there's some other stuff going to that's going to happen in this story. and And then you've got to really make it pay off at the end, you know, because ah if the lie was, you know, he claimed to be a vegetarian, but he wasn't.
00:23:15
Speaker
Like, could you know, that's you're going through way too many words to get to that. Like the readers are just going to close the window and and stop caring. So you you've got to make sure that like you get to it soon enough.
00:23:29
Speaker
I think that it that readers don't feel duped. and And then you've got to make sure that the dramatic stakes kind of pay off, too. Oh, amazing. Well, Jonah, as always, it's such a great pleasure to yeah hear how you think through these things, which I know just makes writers better at what they do because they can start speaking and having the vocabulary of an editor as they start doing their own stories and pitching their own stories. So as always, what a pleasure. And we'll we'll do this again soon.
00:23:57
Speaker
I always have such a great time being here and talking with you. Thanks for having me.
00:24:14
Speaker
Okay. All right.
Matthew Wolfe's Career Insights
00:24:16
Speaker
It's always nice here on Team Jonah. So now we've got Matt, Matthew Wolfe. His first ad of his story was The Ghosts of Pickering Trail.
00:24:26
Speaker
His work has appeared in the New York Times, and New York Magazine, ah New York Times Magazine, excuse me, National Geographic, The Atlantic, Harper's, Pop-Up Magazine, The New Republic.
00:24:37
Speaker
Hold on. Maybe I should just read the publications he has not written for. Okay? Hold on. Oh, there are none. Shit. You can find out more about Matt at MatthewWolf.net.
00:24:52
Speaker
dot Matt likes to lean on TV and screenplays to help him with story structure as a means of developing stories. He uses the Dan Harmon story circle to help with structure, and I'll link up to that in the show notes.
00:25:10
Speaker
We talk about not being mercenary about stories and leaning into ones that won't let go you anymore. And one of the more bizarre recommendations at the end that you'll ever hear.
00:25:22
Speaker
So let's just get after it. Riff.
00:25:36
Speaker
My understanding is that this isn't your first Atavis rodeo. So this is ah this is a ah story that I did with my friend Will Hunt, and we were doing both doing a grad program at and NYU ah and on with the amazingly pretentious name of Literary rep Reportage. It was out of the journalism school, which basically an MFA in nonfiction.
00:25:58
Speaker
And we were walking to, if you know NYU's campus, there's a big library on Washington Square Park called Bope's Library. It's... In Bopes, when you walk in, there's this big 12-story atrium.
00:26:12
Speaker
And we were friends with librarian who working there. And she told us this like totally horrific story about a rash of suicides that had happened in Bopes, which was, which was we I know, I had no knowledge of it, but was obviously pretty traumatizing for everybody who worked there.
00:26:33
Speaker
And so she was talking about NYU had this funny job of of afterwards of trying to figure out both how to basically ah change the architecture of boats to make it less hospitable to people trying to trying to kill themselves and also sort of more broadly how to ah re-engineer the space so that it felt, as she put it, less haunted.
00:27:00
Speaker
Like they wanted it to... so They wanted to try and kind of excise the memory of the suicides, which was a really weird architectural challenge, but was apparently something that was very important to the school.
00:27:12
Speaker
So my friend Will and I began to sort of think about this we were like, God, that's such a weird specialty to have... you know architectural spaces where terrible things have happened and then try and try and recuperate them somehow.
00:27:26
Speaker
So, we began to sort of look around and think about, yeah yeah there's got to be somebody who's like kind of good at this, so like somebody who's like made a practice of this. We met this guy in Southern California, Brandel Bell, who's an appraiser at real estate whose whole practice is bill built around repairing the spiritual aura of haunted spaces.
00:27:44
Speaker
So he dealt with a whole bunch of really famous properties. And he would get, after something really bad would happen, like a mass shooting or, or or a particularly, you know, gory murder, he would get called in and he would be asked, how do we, how do we you know keep the space, but make it different?
00:28:03
Speaker
Or if it's not possible, how do we tear it down? So he worked on like the the um Nicole Brown Simpson house for the oj but the OJ Simpson killing. He'd work on the the Sandy Hook School up in Newtown, Connecticut.
00:28:19
Speaker
He worked on ah Jeffrey Dahmer's apartment complex. So we got totally fascinated by this guy and we ended up writing a story for The Atavist about ah a...
00:28:30
Speaker
haunted house in Pennsylvania where a woman had moved in with her two kids and the house had had kind of weird vibes. She'd moved from across the country so she didn't really know anything about the property. and After having these weird experiences in the house for a few months, somebody or neighbor finally confided in her and she was he was like, yeah, you know, there was ah there was a triple murder in there before you moved in.
00:28:52
Speaker
So she ended up having to call in Randall Bell to try and figure out, like, how do I how do i like re-engineer the space so that doesn't feel, it's not like haunting my kids.
00:29:03
Speaker
So that was sounds the first Adamus story we did about this weird haunted house in Pennsylvania and this whole... larger idea of what they call stigmatized real estate which is um so yeah so i i it was it was a it was really fun writing for the adams because they they let you bring in something that doesn't necessarily have super current news peg but is and and and is a story that can you know As long as it carries, it kind of works, or as long as it it resonates, with it has kind of larger themes to it.
00:29:39
Speaker
I really admire the ad of this promiscuity with regards the kind of stories it's interested in So it was it was fun. That first story, that it was really fun to write. And then the second one was was also something that I couldn't really imagine publishing anywhere else.
00:29:54
Speaker
Yeah, the they they definitely have a certain, yeah, like ah a like like a style. It's it's very story-driven, narrative-driven, and you know that attracts a particular ah particular writer with a ah certain sensibility.
00:30:08
Speaker
So how did you you know lock into this kind of nonfiction narratives? you know Maybe what were some stories that you that you read or books you read that really drew you into this world?
00:30:19
Speaker
Yeah. Man, I don't know. i like i I grew up wanting to make movies. So something is one of those, it was i always I've always been a real ah real fan of just plot.
00:30:31
Speaker
I mean, just i i I read a lot of screenplays. I just i think think with stories, ah it's so dependent on structure. And so dependent on...
00:30:43
Speaker
putting everything in the right order and organizing information in a way that it carries. um It's an aspect of writing I'm really drawn to. It's something a little bit more geometric than certain other parts of it.
00:30:56
Speaker
There are ton of writers I love. I think I grew up sort of reading my family, subscribed to The New Yorker, and I think I internalized an idea. that the New Yorker story where there's this narrative and then there's this that works as this kind of spine on which you can hang lot of organs of exposition. That's sort of how you're supposed to do nonfiction.
00:31:17
Speaker
remember probably at a formative moment, I think I read Richard price Preston, excuse me, Mountains of Pie article, if you know that one. Are you familiar with that? No. So it's one, it was kind of, it got kind of loosely adapted into the Darren Aronofsky film Pi about this obsessive mathematic mathematician who's trying to so learn the secrets of Pi. But it's it's this article but a guy that a that Preston wrote for The New Yorker about yeah these brothers who live in Upper West Side of Manhattan are sort of affiliated with
00:31:51
Speaker
Columbia University, and they're mathematicians, and they've built – they turned their entire apartment into one giant computer, and all it does is try and drive pi to the billions decimal point, and that's all it does. and that and these these and it was a per It was a perfect story. I mean, it's beautifully written, but it also has, you know, it has it center somebody who's completely obsessed with something.
00:32:21
Speaker
And I found that that's generally, if you're going to have a narrative story that works, it really helps to have somebody who is irrationally um fixated on a goal and and can do things.
00:32:36
Speaker
that allows them to do traditional protagonist operations in a way that, that gives you a lot to work with as a writer. So I think that kind of, I mean, I, I mean, I would love stuff. I mean, I was ah read all Pauline Kael and Janet Malcolm and they, they didn't, they don't really operate in that way.
00:32:53
Speaker
But um i think I think something about the the New Yorker DNA got good injected into me fairly early on. I think I've never really quite been able to to get away from that understanding of how nonfiction is supposed to work.
00:33:08
Speaker
Yeah, the the obsession component is something I'm drawn to as well with... uh, various central figures. Cause I just, I deeply admire someone's like all in, uh, obsession, be it sports or maybe private investigator or like a stigmatized real estate or, or whatever, like just that vision and focus. I admire cause I think I lack quite a bit of it.
00:33:32
Speaker
So I just, I i admire in others. So don't know, like what, what, what's part, I don't know. Maybe that does that resonate with you too? Yeah, totally. was talking in that grad program. i was talking about literary reportage.
00:33:46
Speaker
I took like a kind of ah like a, like a subcultural a class, like a class on how do you report on subcultures? And i remember everybody was sort of, when the teacher asked the first, first, first meeting, sort of why, why are you, why are you taking this class?
00:34:01
Speaker
And everybody confessed to saying like, yeah, well, we don't, I don't really have a subculture. I don't really, i am not really part of anything. So I, I think there's always eternalism. There's always a little bit of,
00:34:15
Speaker
with your nose up against the window looking in. And I feel like it's, anyway I think, you know, beyond a particular obsession with story structure, no, I don't, I don't have a, um but I mean, but I'm sure you have this with your work. I mean, where you, you figure out like, you know, in terms of picking a story, you don't, the story sort of picks you, like it just gets your hooks in you. And then you, you were, you know, you have to finish it out or you have to report it, even if it's,
00:34:40
Speaker
you know, financially a terrible idea or a sort something that's like, it's not a, it doesn't, there's no, there's no real reason for you to do it. So I suppose that there is a certain amount of obsession embedded into anybody who's doing this profession right now. Yeah. Well, to your point of the story choosing you, and when Nick Davidson was on ah a couple months ago for for the Atavist, I Yeah, he similarly, he's at a point in his career and having, I think because you know i guess the three of us are roughly the same age who have kind of been in this for a while.
00:35:12
Speaker
And he's just more or less, you know, surrenders to it instead of just constantly being on the hunt for stories. he's He's gone to a point where he does kind of just let it happen and just like surrender to what finds him.
00:35:25
Speaker
He's kind of woo-woo in a way, but in a in a way when you kind of soften to that, things things do find you. I think it's much grimmer to be like rationalist about it or to be like strategic or to say like the idea of doing this and saying it being completely mercenary and having to be having to spend like months or years on something that you imagine other people are going to like but that you yourself are not particularly attracted to that sounds horrific so. but she yeah I think you have to, you to little bit, little, little bit of a woo-woo in there.
00:35:59
Speaker
I think so. Yeah. I think you're right there. Cause it does get awfully bleak when you do take that mercenary mindset. Cause, cause then it's just, it's nonstop hustle. And that hustle is just, my God, that treadmill sucks. And the speed just seems to keep going. it Like, oh my God, like I can't keep up with this treadmill any longer. Yeah, no, it's pretty, it's pretty bad.
00:36:22
Speaker
zo ah so How did you lock into this, this your new atavis story Sheridan Brousseau? It's a total accident. I was doing, um so I finished up a PhD in sociology at NYU a couple of years ago.
00:36:38
Speaker
And I was, there was a chapter of my dissertation that, long story short, required me to read a lot of late 19th and early 20th century newspapers, which if you ever have the chance are really fun. There's a lot of weird stuff in there. So it's just, I was just sort of going through the archives and I ended up coming across a mention of,
00:37:00
Speaker
this guy, Sheridan Brousseau, who I had never heard of at all, but I was reading the article. It was written in such a way that the the audience in the, like, I think it would have been the was supposed to know this guy.
00:37:15
Speaker
so he's clearly like figure of some repute at that particular moment. You know, I gleaned he was a private investigator. And so I started digging into it a little bit more and i realized that,
00:37:27
Speaker
he was He was not just a private investigator, but a private investigator who worked in number of kind of prominent cases in Chicago, and he was black. and He was, in fact, as far as I could tell, the first black private detective in the United States. I'm sure there were guys before him who probably did some kind of unofficial investigation, but and but in in terms of being like a licensed bonded PI, he was the first, in terms of the first guy to like sort of own his own investigative practice.
00:38:00
Speaker
ah So i was I was kind of interested in that. I was like, huh, that's ah that's a but so ah so an interesting field to plow. But yeah, so I started reading. I started going through all these old newspapers and reading more about him, and nothing had been written about him since about the 1940s.
00:38:18
Speaker
So it was it took a little reading through old, all journalism getting sort of like, you know, a ah ah sort of gleaning information about him, like every an article would have one little, you know, would talk about a particular case he worked on and then might sort of hint a little fact of his, some fact about his life, because there's nothing I think other than you yeah completely lie-filled profile from Ebony Magazine for the 1940s. There'd been nothing there've been no sort of there've been nothing compar you know of length written about him.
00:38:54
Speaker
So it required a little bit of work on my part to try and try and learn more about who he was and and sort of put together a story around him.
00:39:05
Speaker
Yeah, when there wasn't much by way of his own voice in in the research, how were you able to you know flesh out his character, you know given you know given that there was not much on him?
00:39:18
Speaker
Yeah, this is the first time I'd ever done like an article where I was purely historical or where it was something where i was only drawing from archives. and there's stuff like that I liked, but it's very different. It was like, you know, when you're reporting a ah contemporary piece, you can call the person you're writing about them, ask them questions usually, or you can can call people who knew them or, you know, and and you can always kind of do – more research on, on whatever you're writing about. But with historical stuff, it's weird. It's like, you've got a really finite amount of information that you're working with and you there are real limits to what you can know about somebody who's, who's been, been dead for decades and who doesn't have a, it doesn't have a vast archive of their own, of their own writing or, or
00:40:11
Speaker
ah their own voice somewhere. So I guess I'm writing like a, like a contemporary um long form piece is kind of like, I guess it's kind of like, you know, you go to the, you go to the supermarket and you get to, you know, pick from a, from a, from a store full of ingredients. Then you come back and you make a nice meal And doing a piece where you're relying on archives is a little bit like having to – it's a little like dumpster diving. It's kind of like whatever you find in there is what you're going to be making that night. And and that was the case with Brousseau where there was real stuff that I would have liked to – there were things about him that I would have liked to know more about, and I just – it just wasn't there. I just sort of – was dependent on –
00:40:50
Speaker
and what I can find in in newspapers and NAACP files and court records. And and so it's it's um and' frustrating, but it's also an interesting, satisfying creative challenge to have to have to make a meal with just a just a few moats of food. yeah Yeah. When did you feel confident that you had you know ah a you know a narrative worthy here of pitching to a place like The Atavist?
00:41:19
Speaker
Yeah, so it's a great it's a great question that I was thinking about this. and it was like, there's a certain style of story that's the first X of y or the fur the and and Y, which is an interesting lead into a story. Like, you know, the first, you know,
00:41:40
Speaker
A Scottish trombonist, the first you know bisexual lacrosse player. They potentially open like an an avenue to something interesting, but that status by itself is not enough for a does not work as ah as a narrative that will carry you through 6,000, 8,000, 10,000 words.
00:42:00
Speaker
So I started reading more about Brousseau and and you know gradually I was just sort of going through you know some decades of his casework. ah Very gradually, kind of ah picture kind of filled in for him where it was clear that he'd build his practice doing kind of normal PI stuff like embezzlements and, and, you know, finding missing persons and, ah you know, ah catching, catching con men.
00:42:27
Speaker
But he also had this kind of sideline investigating racial violence of which there was a white a lot in, in 1920 Chicago. So he investigated like, you know, bombings of black churches and lynchings and which was all, you know, which was all interesting, which was all,
00:42:45
Speaker
makes for a but potentially interesting protagonist or somebody, you know, who you could, who's, who's worth investigating more. But I think it was actually when I began to figure out that there was stuff about Bruce's character that wasn't great when it became clear that he wasn't actually a saint that I was, I think I was very, I was much more drawn to it since, since, you know, I think writing a, a geography about,
00:43:13
Speaker
someone or is, can be a praiseworthy endeavor, but I don't think saints are very interesting characters ah but all ah ah by themselves without some, um something cutting against that.
00:43:28
Speaker
So finding out that Brousseau would actually like was, was a little bit dishonest and, and, and took some moral shortcuts and ah did some, did some unsavory things and,
00:43:42
Speaker
And you was at the point where I began to think, okay, this is this is potentially worth writing about, or he's somebody who I'd like to like to figure out a story around. and I always love getting a sense of unique challenges that to the story that...
00:43:58
Speaker
you know we're were presented to you in the over the course of your research and how you were reconstructing yeah the the narrative and just ah the those little roadblocks along the way that you ran into him like in and how you cracked the code. So you know what what were some unique challenges to this story for you, Matt?
00:44:16
Speaker
Man, I think it was what you were saying before, Brendan, about like, it's with historical work, it's just like, it's sort of what's, there's, you don't get that same voice or you don't get somebody who's you're able to talk to and talk to, to the degree that you're, you feel satisfied that you're able to offer some rendering of them that, that offers at least a, ah provides at least a sort of simulacra of, of reality or that, that some, some kind of rendering of somebody that feels convincing.
Challenges in Historical Storytelling
00:44:46
Speaker
They're very little for, so Brousseau was, you know, ah for all of his, he was a fairly well-known figure, At the time of the 1920s, 1930s, very little of his writing exists.
00:44:58
Speaker
I spoke with with ah some of his descendants with the hope that there might be you know a diary or some other kind of kind of private written record from him, and there wasn't.
00:45:10
Speaker
And it was even to the point where he – I mean, there wasn't even very many quotes from him. and in the He received a lot of press coverage, but he didn't seem to talk directly to reporters a lot, or at least they didn't they didn't quote him a lot.
00:45:22
Speaker
The absence of a sort of clear voice was enormously frustrating. It was something that I really i really missed in the story. um it was a real challenge to try and figure out like, okay, how do you provide ah do you provide some kind of account of this guy with these these huge gaps, both in terms of what he what he was like as a person, and then a sort of deeper sense of of motivation or or having a real opacity about why he did what he did or why he made some of the choices he made.
00:45:57
Speaker
Yeah, and there's a tremendous amount of archival research and even ancestry research. And for a lot of people doing you know narrative nonfiction, like getting into those kind of archives and databases is really crucial to like find people.
00:46:10
Speaker
Men are typically easier to find because their names don't change. But with and just in your experience here, you know how can people maybe get better at trolling these ancestral archives to you know find these crucial people to talk to?
00:46:24
Speaker
Man, yeah, you're right. I mean, there are huge gaps in the stuff. There was ah there was a part of the Adiple story that got cut where I was talking about Brousseau's father had been born into slavery in Louisiana.
00:46:36
Speaker
And i I got really – he ended up serving in a a black regiment in the Civil War. Really interesting story in its own right. But I was trying to learn more about him and the fact that he'd been born into – Onto a ah plantation in Louisiana meant that there was no census record of him at all.
00:46:55
Speaker
It was something where he was he was born into, there was no birth certificate. There was no, when looking at and enslaved people from the first half of the 19th century, the sort of closest you can get sometimes to finding records of them is through ah wills and and estate records where they're passed off as as property from one person to another. I'll sort of mention in passing that an enslaved person of particular name was is is bequeathed to somebody else, but there was not. But but that as you say, mean, there are these huge gaps in terms of what we know about
00:47:31
Speaker
about certain people's lives. And it's it's a very difficult thing to overcome. At the same time, the fact that the last few decades, um huge amounts of data have been digitized allows people to tell stories that just haven't been able to be told before. mean, there was stuff I was able to find out about Brousseau and say like the NAACP archives, or even just from this the the number of newspaper historical newspapers that have been digitized since the ninety s that...
00:48:00
Speaker
made it possible to tell the story in a way that just wouldn't have been the case even 20 years ago. There are enormous gaps, but there's also a very exciting chance to fill them or to understand things that just haven't been possible.
00:48:18
Speaker
Yeah, and do you know how to find, you know, like, you know say there's, and this could just be in general, like, ah you know, you you see maybe, you know, a woman's name in a in a yearbook, and like, odds are her surname has changed, and then it's harder to track them down. Like, how do you find someone like like that? Because I imagine there are a lot of people who, you know, need to track people down like that when they're and doing their internet stalking for these kind of stories. Yeah. Yeah.
00:48:46
Speaker
man i'm you know ah I think I've gotten a little better at it, but I think you just go into... i mean, there's a lot of... like America's pretty bad about protecting data.
00:48:57
Speaker
like If you try and find somebody and like even in Canada or in France, it's very, very difficult. um But in America, because we're... because we believe in personal freedom, it's much easier to figure out somebody's you know new name or their new address. And and i mean there are a lot of there are a lot of archives or services used by historians, but also by like private investigators to try and figure these things out.
00:49:25
Speaker
And there's a real, I mean, for older ones, ancestry.com is a you know good start. There's some really wonderful ah ProQuest, newspapers.com, which is a ah ah private and database, but actually quite quite good. There are a lot of state archives. I went into Illinois, makes available number of African-American newspapers ah in one of their one of their digitized state archives. That fantastic.
00:49:55
Speaker
i think it I think it takes a lot of patient, ah obsessive information. guesswork at the computer and trial and error of trying to figure out, you know, trying to put together this paper trail from, from all these, with a lot of, with a lot of dead ends and, and wrong turns, but which is, you know, which is pretty fun to do sometimes.
00:50:17
Speaker
Yeah, there's kind of a, just in hearing you talk about this and the story that you wrote here, there's there's a bit of a meta quality because this kind of journalism is almost akin to private investigation.
00:50:30
Speaker
and I don't know, just how how do you think of that? Like, does that does that rhyme kind of with what you know you're doing here and writing about? So for a brief period of unemployment, I actually worked for a private investigator where they do a little bit of work like this. And yeah, it's very similar. Like you you're trying to you're trying to find people who don't necessarily want to be found and you try to get them to talk about stuff that they don't necessarily want to talk about. So I think um i think private investigators make good subjects for
00:51:02
Speaker
or journalists, both because, know, they're, again, they tend to be obsessed. They have a clear goal. And there's also, as you say, there's something, something ah pretty simpatico there between the two, the two professions.
00:51:15
Speaker
Yeah. Tell me a little more about your experience there. like That seems, yeah, I'd love to hear a little more. I'm under an NDA, but I was doing a long story short, I was working for I'd gotten out of my grad program and was was thoroughly unemployed. So I began working for for somebody who for a private investigator who had ah worked for a number of law firms.
00:51:38
Speaker
And it required me. um It was not the the like. They're kind of in private private investigation where you're you're slouching low in a car with a telephoto lens and catching people cheating on there seating on their their second wives. It was it was the, it was the um there's a legal filing ah that needs needs some building out. So you've got you've got to call some people and try and get them to talk about something that they...
00:52:06
Speaker
Absolutely should not be talking about. um but but was it was interesting. I mean, it was something, it was, it was this it both required exactly the kind of skill set you're talking about of trying to find somebody, of trying to like figure out like, as you know, any reporter.
00:52:22
Speaker
knows a lot of your job is sometimes just trying to find of a working phone number, a working email address. Yeah. and which is its own little puzzle sometimes. And then once you get it, how do you get that person to to feel okay telling you things?
00:52:36
Speaker
And I think, yeah. And I, it's just, you know, in some days it's fun. Some days it's just the absolute worst part of the job. Yeah. I feel like more journalists should consider not going to be like PR flags. They should go into private investigation. I feel like the skill set translates more.
00:52:55
Speaker
Oh, yeah. No, I completely agree with you. i feel like i feel like I feel like that's that's going to be at least you're you're going to have better stories at the end of the day. if you If you go into private investigation work, you'll at least be able to entertain people at cocktail parties, which is hard to do when you're when you're writing press releases. Yeah, no kidding.
00:53:14
Speaker
So when I, when I was reading the Brousseau piece too, it, it, and I believe you even make a grace note mention of it in the piece.
American Identity and Self-Reinvention
00:53:24
Speaker
Like there, there's a very like Gatsby like quality to this guy. and,
00:53:30
Speaker
You see this ah ah a lot of this this reinvention for people across across decades and especially in the 20th century. There's a reason why Gatsby resonates and feels so timeless.
00:53:44
Speaker
And just what was the Gatsby-esque quality that you know that that this pulses through this story? So, I mean, I think as was saying before, I mean, when I was initially, when I was first reading about Sheridan Brousseau and about him building up this private, you know, this being first black private investigator, building up this private investigative practice, I was less interested when it seemed like he was a, a you know, doing, you know, ah laudable things and, and, you know, a skillful investigator, which again, very worthy of praise, but doesn't, um,
00:54:21
Speaker
is not nasssis does not necessarily make for a compelling protagonist. But it was when I began reading about him throwing these very lavish parties and and trying to, and sort of, as I got deeper into the records, realized that he had, after so Brousseau was born in in in the Deep South and and or in Arkansas and moved up to Chicago in the early 20th century. And when he did so,
00:54:48
Speaker
d reinvented himself. He actually ended up lying a lot about his background. He invented some some college degree that he didn't have. He claimed that he'd been part of the US Secret Services Intelligence Bureau and in Europe during World War one He claimed that he'd been a private investigator for for another well-established detective agency. None of this was true.
00:55:17
Speaker
But he used these lies to found his own ah detective agency, and he turned out to be an excellent investigator. He turned out to be and you know enormously successful.
00:55:29
Speaker
And built into America is a certain fluidity of identity. And I like – and ah there are dishonest ways of pursuing that, and there are dishonest ways of pursuing that. But I think that – I think all Americans resonate a little bit with the the con man who creates a personal mythology to get ahead. you know, Joseph Beuys was German, but I think we all we all appreciate that the man of spectacular talents who creates a ah fictitious background for himself or herself and ah it becomes a success by doing
00:56:05
Speaker
by dint of yeah that that brings themselves into existence in that way just by sheer will and i i think that's a we certainly have an infinite number of exemplars of that today of people who have have become the thing that they say they are without without the background that should allow for it so i think brousseau fits into a noble american tradition of of heroic dishonesty and i i really i'm it's hard to not like it it's hard to not like a catsby um it really is oh for sure yeah you even think with with madmen how know the john draper character assumes another identity because you can't like shake off like the stain of your heredity
00:56:52
Speaker
unless totally Unless you can just totally ah subsume someone else's identity and then you try those clothes on, you're like, yes, like i'm going to be this now until you're found out. And hopefully you never are, but some people are.
00:57:05
Speaker
Right. And there were hints of Brousseau, like Draper, had these – there were certain – there was sort of undercurrents of insecurity that would bubble up every so often where Brousseau sort seemed to overcompensate sometimes lying in ways that just he didn't need to do or for getting himself into trouble. Don Draper probably shouldn't be a hero, and yet is. Yeah.
00:57:30
Speaker
but Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And know what struck me in reading the piece also, and i I got a draft that was had all your your footnotes and your annotations. And it's just an impressive amount of research, you know, that you put into an eight thousand word narrative. Yeah, for sure. And and you get a sense of like, my God, the heavy lifting that goes into this to create these kind of things.
00:57:54
Speaker
And so when you're, you know, when you're yeah doing this kind of research and, ah you know, organizing that stuff in and footnoting things, ah yeah how best do you approach it?
00:58:07
Speaker
Great question. I begin with Scrivener. ah There's no, I don't know how I'd write. I'd do any writing without Scrivener at this point, which is ah for those who are uninitiate as a word processing program that has a sort of file structure built into it and and makes, allows you to organize a lot of and disparate information.
00:58:27
Speaker
With Bruce Stone, I do this with a lot of stories. It's like, I end up with sort of a big sloppy document after a while that I call just like a fact draft. And it's something where it can be like, Maybe it'll be you know it'll be like just a ah concatenation of sentences with a footnote on them. It'll just be like one fact.
00:58:47
Speaker
or it'll be just one, sometimes it'll be one or two, but but from one source. And like in Brousseau, this was particularly true in Brousseau, because I you know had to read through you know probably a few thousand old newspaper articles, and some lot of them weren't relevant, but ones that were, I'd get maybe like one thing about Brousseau. Like i'd I'd read the whole piece and say, okay, here was a, in 1936, he investigated this strange murder case of a, of a,
00:59:15
Speaker
you know Auditor of the of the National Baptist Convention. Or here's ah a record from a um congressman's archive that says that Brousseau wrote him a note, Brousseau said that asked for money because he was in debt.
00:59:30
Speaker
several hundred dollars because a catering company had gotten a, put a, put a lien on him or something like that. So all of these kind disparate facts. And then I think i sort of take you these hundreds of lines and begin to try and put them in some kind of order that, that makes a certain amount of sense. It's a little bit like, like assembling a mosaic where you've got all these little, but little individual discrete pieces of something and you just begin to sort of put it into put into an order that's satisfying.
00:59:59
Speaker
again, sort of looping back in satisfyingly circular fashion to, I'm very reliant on traditional screenwriting structure of ah around the hero's journey. I use, friends make fun of me because ive i everything I write goes in the If you're familiar with Dan Harmon's story circle, where there's this, this is sort of a distillation of the hero's journey, where, you know, ah character begins at a ah point of of equilibrium, you know goes on, has this sort of and intervention that that causes them to reassess things, then they go on this journey,
01:00:36
Speaker
where they're they're you know trying to adopt painfully this new identity, and then eventually they sort of reach, after after having some kind of consequent sift in their theyre internal dynamics, they they return to starts a state of equilibrium.
01:00:53
Speaker
And I think taking you know hundreds of facts and trying to put it into a structure where a protagonist moves through space, I i love that part. I love that. i love trying to figure out how to bend space.
01:01:09
Speaker
messy, chaotic reality into a a some kind of some kind of artificial order. yeah And with Brousseau, it ended up having this very sort of satisfying rise and fall narrative of something where he he was somebody who, you know, through – through to ah overcame great challenges to, to build himself up, to do phenomenal work. And then had this, this classic Hamarthia had this, had this flaw that brought him down in the end and that caused his, caused his downfall.
01:01:42
Speaker
um And it's, I got again, of going back to your original question of when do you know the story is, is some, when do you know something that you're interested in or obsessed with and sort of works as a, as a piece of long form. And I think it's, I think,
01:01:55
Speaker
The shortest answer would be, for me at least, when I realize it can kind of fit into a structure that's satisfying or when i can when it has some kind of internal dynamics that allow allow you a reader to sort of move through space in a way that feels that feels good.
01:02:10
Speaker
Yeah, that's really astute. I think ye people might... not take or they don't think about structure enough at the early outset you might have something that's kind of factually cool but if it doesn't fit into a satisfying structure that's sort of just embedded in our dna that like pulls us through these narratives then it just might not feel ah satisfying it might just not work and so yeah you're i mean yeah using that as a stencil is really smart i think she's
01:02:41
Speaker
I'm just not that... um umm There are plenty of non-form pieces that don't you know fall that are been phenomenal, that don't follow the structure at all. But for me, i need this... I need this little crutch to try and try and just organize information. But yeah, man, I've had to, there are a lot of stories I've had where I've been, it's had good ingredients. It's had stuff that that's it's interesting or stuff that i'm I'm really drawn to, but I can't make it structurally. I just can't make it work or I just can't sort of get you through.
01:03:13
Speaker
i just couldn't figure out a way to get the reader through the information in a way that was going to, where they, where I felt like they'd hang on for it. yeah Yeah, that's really well put.
Story Structure and Critical Analysis
01:03:21
Speaker
And with this Dan Harmon story circle, is that the same Dan Harmon who writes oh did community comedy writers? Yeah, same so yeah he's he's famous for having...
01:03:31
Speaker
i He's famous for for having these in his writer's room, you know having these these story circles that he that that all the episodes have to follow and and breaking the story by by within this.
01:03:50
Speaker
and and yeah having a that And before every episode is written, there's this this fully annotated circle that that describes the particular plot of a community episode or Rick and Morty episode. And it's, I mean, I think, i think that stuff gets, ah gets to be a problem when you're trying to going back to sort of what we what we were speaking about in the beginning of the conversation, when you're, when you're being mercenary about it, or when you're picking something that you feel like satisfies a particular form and the, and the kind of strategic element of story selection comes first before the obsession. i think that's when you get into trouble. I think when you start,
01:04:25
Speaker
I think it's true of screenplay writing too. When you say like, I'm going to, I'm going to make sure that this, this film, you know, looks like star Wars or this film follows a particular direction. mold for how a story is supposed to go.
01:04:38
Speaker
think, I think it's hard to make good product that way. i think it's, I think it's when you're using that as a guide or a ah mold into which to pour your own personal, completely irrational obsessions. It's a nice, I think it, it allows you it's, it's a little, it's sanity saving, at least for me again. I mean, like, you know, there's, this is not a prescription for long form at all. mean, they're, they're,
01:05:03
Speaker
so many amazing writers who, who do not write stories like this. So it's, it's really for me just with how I, how I approach the material. Yeah. As a, what, what are some other as maybe movies that you return to again, cause you love the structure and you're like, Oh, this is great. If I can find my facts and research to kind of pour into that mold, like this is you know just very satisfying for your taste.
01:05:30
Speaker
i You know, it's funny. um There's a lot of – I mean, I think TV is sort of more reliant on on this than um and film in some ways. You can you can do a little pirouetting in film and you can get away and from structure with cinema in a way that I think TV is very unforgiving about. So I go to – My mom, bless her heart, ah Christmas or two ago gave me the complete secession scripts, like all four seasons. It was like 3,000. It's like 3,000, 3,000 or 4,000 pages of just um Jesse Armstrong dialogue.
01:06:09
Speaker
And I think i I read the entire thing in like two weeks. And it was... um a wonderful lesson in how you make something, um just relentlessly interesting a, on a, on a, a both on a line level and then a sort of a a um scene level and then an episode level. And it requires, you know, there's a lot of, you know, talking about succession or really good TV shows, we sometimes talk about in particular particular lines of dialogue or particular characters.
01:06:48
Speaker
But that show, like a lot of really good shows, works because it's, it's structured just so carefully and it's structured in a way that's, that's sort of just pulls the audience forward over and over and over again and just sort of makes you move through it in a way where you were, where you're, you're just compelled to keep watching. And I think there's a lot of good,
01:07:12
Speaker
Television that does that does that really, really well. I've been, i was been, I think, Andor recently i was a huge fan of, i my partner and I watched The Terror, ah the the ah show about the um ah doomed ah Arctic exploration.
01:07:31
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it' i think there's I think there's a lot to be learned from well-structured television for for any kind of writing about just how you, and how you sustain interest and how you offer information in a way that's, that's satisfying to a, to a viewer, to a reader.
01:07:49
Speaker
Yeah, that it's really astute. think of getting into the the math of a scene and the math of structure. you know It can feel kind of clinical at first, but then when you can use it effectively like and interrogate it, like, what is this doing for this scene? like What is it doing for the part or the chapter?
01:08:09
Speaker
And then you know the arcs, and you're like, okay, our what direction are we going in here? And and when you start asking those critical questions, as much as you might love certain things certain things are just going to fall off the skeleton just naturally uh totally but yeah you got to be asking those questions of yourself and of the text its yeah just taking like a screen player just taking like a piece that you like and just just stripping that thing for parts and just trying to figure out and just sort taking it apart and figuring out like all right why if this thing's making me
01:08:40
Speaker
if I'm delighted by this, what's the, what are the, what's the grammar of that delight? Like what's the actual, what's the, why, what's the machine that produced that? And I think that's, um it's, it's thankfully a part of the ah writing. I really, I really enjoy or sort of thinking through that,
01:09:00
Speaker
that aspect of it and then trying to trying to recreate it. ah Yeah, no, I think you're completely right about that. I think it's really, really having to sort of read things both with one eye towards pleasure and then one eye towards the the mechanisms by which that that pleasure is generated. Yeah, and just as a knucklehead sports writer, I always use the the analogy of coaches and quarterbacks looking over game tape, and they'll see the all-22, and they'll play, and they're looking, and they rewind, play, rewind, play, over and over and over again.
01:09:32
Speaker
Totally. And like, that's what we do as writers to like something is like, what is going on here? Oh, but look at all these little things that like is happening in this part, but it, but it matters to the ultimate locomotion of a play, even if it doesn't feel related.
01:09:48
Speaker
And it's like, yeah, okay, how can I then recreate that myself and my own work? And that's the kind of breakdown you need to do. I remember reading, I was a still a huge Philip Gravich fan. I remember reading his Rwanda book and, you know, the subject matter is amazing, but just at the level of, of, of just every, every paragraph would begin with something that, that got you into it in a way that was opened up something for you and then every every paragraph ended with something that where there was a little kicker that got you out of it. And think you're absolutely right. I mean, I think i think breaking down at the the sentence level or the graph level or the chapter level
01:10:29
Speaker
murdering and dissecting the the the thing you love is it's really it's really quite important even if it comes at the risk of of disenchanting it yeah i like also ah getting a sense of ah advice that maybe you've received or it just hard one through your career maybe you know young journalists are asking you like yeah what's some advice you have like what what you like to give or advice bestowed upon you by a treasured mentor.
01:10:58
Speaker
Like, oh, what is, what is some good, you know, advice in this, you know, this morass we've gotten ourselves into that, that you lean on? I mean, i don't know. I mean, I think it's like doing long form nonfiction right now is a little bit like getting, if you get really good at it's a little bit like getting really good at like vaudeville in 1976. It's like, that's great. You may not be able to to earn a living from it, but you know there's still, so there's some there are a lot of vaudevillians around. You can maybe maybe give you some tips on it. Yeah.
01:11:28
Speaker
I don't know. I mean, I think it's something I think it's again, going back to the beginning of our conversation. I think it's really important to follow your obsession or so to allow, as as you put it, the kind of woo in there.
01:11:40
Speaker
Like, I don't think you can, you know, if you're going to be be completely mercenary about what kind of stories you want to do, or you're going to do it out of some calculation. There are other ways of being bloodless and calculating that will make you so much more money.
01:11:55
Speaker
I feel like if you're going to do this, I think it's just important to be very honest with yourself about what you're what you're interested in and follow that People will talk to you. mean, it's funny. It's like, I think sometimes i think it's with our our more mediated age, it's I think younger journalists may not have as much experience interviewing people or or talking with them.
01:12:18
Speaker
And I think the advice that I give in that and actually in sociology too is just if you're sincerely interested in something, it'll open a lot of doors. There aren't that many situations which – situations in which Somebody approaches you and is really sincerely interested in what you have to say. And I think if you embody that or if you who approach somebody with with being um honest and openly excited about what they have to tell you, i think that's the...
01:12:53
Speaker
that's the best way of going about things. so That will, that will yield, that can really yield something pretty good sometimes. Yeah. And in your piece, even though is so ah heavily researched in like the archives and ancestral parts, so you do come into the story at the end where you are able to find some of the descendants of Brousseau and, and talk to them. So what was illuminating about, you know finding them and having, having conversation, ah you know, with living de descendants?
01:13:20
Speaker
Yeah, it was so I wanted to, I think out of ah out of a, um I was curious both from a, ah both as a as ah potential repository of facts about Brousseau, I wanted to approach descendants, but also um was just curious about, i think there's something about when you're writing about a historical figure,
01:13:46
Speaker
um particularly in this case. i mean, i'm I'm white and Brousseau is black. I wanted to there's stuff about that I'm not going to, and I'm not going to get, or I'm not going to be able to understand, or I'm not going to be able to, um that's going to be distant from my own experience.
01:14:03
Speaker
So I wanted to check in with with the me people who were, don within his line, just as both to say, hey, I'm writing this thing and to say, I'm happy to answer any questions about what I'm doing, but also just to sort of understand it. I was really curious. I was like, what have you heard about him?
01:14:29
Speaker
What's the, what, what do you, what do you make of this? How do you, how should I think about this potentially? And I think that's, that's, again, this is the first time I've written something where I've only, um the entire article been based on, on archival work.
01:14:45
Speaker
So I think it was maybe a, a main hope of hoping too bridge some, some, uh, inextricable distance from, from the subject matter that I probably wouldn't otherwise be able to, to, I just can't access.
Personal Reflections and Recommendations
01:15:01
Speaker
Very nice. Well, uh, as we bring these conversations out for a landing mat, I always love also asking for a recommendation of some kind. It's just like anything you're excited about that you want to share with the listeners. So just extend that to you. What would you recommend for the listeners out there?
01:15:17
Speaker
Okay, I'm going to give a left field totally left field response. So this has nothing to do with anything I'm doing, but I came across it not that long ago and I've been a little bit obsessed with that. speed and So in the mid 90s, the BBC did a four part documentary series about the Yugoslavian Civil War.
01:15:39
Speaker
And i'm already I'm already hearing people tune this out and be like, no, I don't want to, I don't have any interest in Yugoslavian Civil War. i don't, need to watch a documentary from 1995 about it this is the thing that the it is bar none one of the best non-fiction anything i've ever seen it's four parts and the thing that they do is that they get somehow the producers of this who are who are you know in the documentary tracing the the yugoslavian conflict and and the country's breakup and this this
01:16:11
Speaker
incredibly grisly civil war that happened. They get interviews with every major participant in it, with the presidents of each of the the the territories, with with generals.
01:16:24
Speaker
So it's a little bit like the equivalent would be like if you did a four-part documentary about the American Civil War and you got like Grant and Lee and Lincoln to sit for talking head interviews and like annotate what had happened, like basically in real time. like It's insane.
01:16:40
Speaker
And it got me completely, and it's had no particular connection to the subject matter, completely enthralled. Like I, I, it's available, I think on YouTube, I think it might be on the BBC player.
01:16:52
Speaker
I cannot recommend it enough. I'm not sure. i think in the age of social media, it'd be probably impossible to do now, but it is, um it is a, a amazing object lesson and in, in,
01:17:05
Speaker
rendering something compelling out of subject matter to which the viewer has absolutely has potentially no allegiance or or or feel to your interest or or particular interest in to begin with so shout outs to the four-part BBC Yugoslavian Civil War document yeah oh That's amazing, Matt. Well, oh this is so cool. The story for the atavis was incredible. just a really gripping read. So I just I really appreciate the work and carving out some time to come on and talk some shop. This was awesome.
01:17:35
Speaker
man Thanks so much for doing this podcast. I really I'm so happy it exists. And and really, thanks for having me on. It's been so fun.
01:17:50
Speaker
Okay. Yes. Awesome. Thank you to Jonah and thank you to Matt for coming by, talking some shop. Go to magazine.atavist.com to read the story and potentially subscribe.
01:18:03
Speaker
And be sure you're you know following along with ah with me, brendanomero.com. Also, Instagram at creative nonfictionpodcast. Blue Sky is at brendanomero.blusky.social.com.
01:18:16
Speaker
And then there's the two flagship newsletters. Welcome to pitchclub.substack.com and the Rage Against the Algorithm newsletter. Great stuff. All right, the key is to read what I'm about to read without tearing up. I think I can do it.
01:18:33
Speaker
Yeah, it's been a bit of a harrowing week. So Kevin is our German Shepherd, and she's older, 10, 11, 12, hard to know. ah She was running around the backyard, and she stepped wrong, let out a yelp, and then she could barely move her left hind leg.
01:18:49
Speaker
We took her to the vet. Turns out she got a partial tear of her cruciate ligament. ah Think ACL in humans. and We thought it might have been full tear, but x-rays and such determined it was a partial tear.
01:19:07
Speaker
but in But the imaging we got revealed that her spine is like horribly arthritic, which is somewhat common in Germans. And suddenly we're very much aware that we're getting close to the end, or this was very much a moment of the beginning of the end.
01:19:23
Speaker
yeah Maybe not weeks, but me you know months are maybe no guarantee. ah Years is definitely getting to some speculative territory. We have a pretty good rehab plan in place for her to get her leg back up and running.
01:19:39
Speaker
Not literally up and running, but get that healed up. She has to be on carprofen for inflammation for muscles and joints and gabapentin for some nerve-related pain since she's developing ah narrowing of her discs, especially in her upper back, which has likely led to excessive right shoulder limping.
01:20:02
Speaker
ah So she's sleeping on the floor beside me yeah right now, and and we have to keep her from jumping on things. She likes to jump up on the couch in this other chair, so we can't let her do that ah for fear that she would fully rupture her knee. And then it's like, well, did then do you spend, I don't know, 10 grand doing a knee repair and when she's got other issues? Yeah, these are the things you got to think about.
01:20:25
Speaker
But there's really no thinking. We'll do everything that's right for her. And the other morning, the day after she was under anesthesia for the imaging, she was pacing and whining, which made me think maybe she was in like a tremendous amount of pain. And when an older dog is in great pain, you have to start thinking about whether or not it's time to let them go and cross that rainbow bridge.
01:20:46
Speaker
You have to make that choice. And it's the most awful choice you have to make. It's terrible. I'm sure a lot of you have done it. I've done it a few times. It's the worst. It sucks.
01:20:59
Speaker
It turns out she was just sick from her procedure from the day before, so she hasn't been whiny or that uncomfortable since, so that that was a relief.
01:21:11
Speaker
yeah The meds are making her a little sleepy, which for now is good because she needs a lot of rest so she's not putting too much strain on her legs. She hasn't had a full meal in ah day or two, and that's upsetting because they need to eat, and usually if they stop eating, that's not a good sign.
01:21:30
Speaker
And when these critters get old, man, it just it starts to become day-to-day, very instantly day-to-day. They degrade so quickly. Like that happened with Jack and Smarty.
01:21:42
Speaker
It's like, you know, they were old and slow but fine. And then in a couple days, was just done. They're gone.
01:21:52
Speaker
And we were letting them go. I don't know why we sign up for this pain. I was laying on the floor with Kevin the other day, you know telling her just to please get better. and know I you know was crying because you know if she goes and leaves us with the boys, I'll just be so fucking pissed.
01:22:12
Speaker
and the A couple days ago, the boys got into a fight when a door accidentally swung open. They haven't had an incident in nearly two years, but they picked up right where they left off.
01:22:25
Speaker
you know Fortunately, there were no cuts or blood, just spittle. We were able to intervene in time. Yeah, things have been really tense and scary and just sad. and And that's the drama.
01:22:37
Speaker
It's been very hard to focus. I'm falling behind in a lot of my reading and my writing. Podcast has been hard to keep up with. I keep doing it because you got got show up.
01:22:49
Speaker
But it's been, it hasn't been without its challenges, let's say. Gotta rally. Gotta rally. So stay wild, CNFers. And if you can't do interviews. See ya.