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Episode 348: Carl Hoffman
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Carl Hoffman (@lunaticcarl on Twitter, @carlhoffmanstories on IG) is the author of five books, inclucing Liar's Circus: A Strange and Terrifying Journey into the Upside-Down World of Trump's MAGA Rallies (Custom House).
Social: @CNFPod
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Show notes/newsletter: brendanomeara.com
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Transcript
Intro and Promotions
00:00:00
Speaker
AC&Fers, shout out to Athletic Brewing, that dry January time of year. It's fast approaching and you might want to give it a go in 2023. It's some of the best non-alcoholic beer I've ever had. I'm a little bit of a brand ambassador and I don't get any money.
00:00:17
Speaker
but just go visit athleticbrewing.com, use the program code, program? Jesus. Promo code BrendanO20 at checkout for a discount. Man, this is gonna be a great episode. I get points towards merch and beer, but I don't get any money, I just wanna be.
00:00:34
Speaker
fully upfront with that. Lest you think I'm making a mint, since I have a teensy bit more time on my hands, if you leave a review over at Apple Podcasts, I'll give you a complimentary edit of a piece of your writing of up to 2,000 words. Once your review posts usually takes about 24 hours,
00:00:51
Speaker
Send me a screenshot of your review to Creative Nonfiction Podcast at gmail.com and I'll reach out to you and we'll get started. Who knows, if you like the experience, you might even want me to help you with something a little bit more ambitious. Well, when you're doing narrative nonfiction, when you're doing reporting, the book turns on the reporting.
00:01:16
Speaker
I mean, the book is built from the reporting and the more, you know, the better reporting you do, the more, the deeper you go, you know, that's the building block of the story.
Introducing Carl Hoffman and 'Liars Circus'
00:01:35
Speaker
Oh hey, CNFers. CNF Pod. Creative Nonfiction Podcast, a show where I speak to badass people about the art and craft of telling true stories. I'm Brendan O'Mara, how's it going?
00:01:48
Speaker
Today we speak with Carl Hoffman. Oh man. It's one of those hard knocking reporter types that I love. His latest book is Liars Circus. A strange and terrifying journey into the upside down world of Trump's MAGA rallies. It's published by Custom House.
00:02:07
Speaker
The book came out in 2020 and I felt like I had missed my window to read it because I had the galley and then I got a completed book and I was like, oh yeah, fuck yeah. And then the time passed and...
00:02:20
Speaker
It felt like the time passed to talk to Carl about these Trump rallies, you know, Trump lost the election, there was that whole coup attempt, yada yada yada, he announced he's running for the GOP nomination 24, so I was like, I yanked the shit off my bookcase, I read it in a day, it's not terribly long, and I called Carl and we talked about it. Even if it wasn't timely,
00:02:46
Speaker
The book is this ethnography of Trump supporters, and Karl attends several Trump rallies. Oh, by the way, he's at Lunatic Karl on Twitter, and he's a travel writer who's traveled to 80 countries to
00:03:02
Speaker
Write about them and do what travel writers do and this book very much reads like a deep dive into the Amazon only it's middle America or the Deep South or even New Hampshire I mean he just he he follows this and he comes across a lot of the same people who who tore Trump rallies Like they're dead heads if it's a look That's what I mean. It's a look
00:03:27
Speaker
at populism and fascism, but all in all, Karl treats his subjects with dignity and empathy, though he diametrically opposes them on just about everything. Alright, a little housekeeping. Got another written review here of this from Dave and Poet.
00:03:44
Speaker
spelled my name right, which I appreciate. Okay, here we go. I always enjoy the show. Two exclamation points. I really enjoy Brendan's style of interview and conversation with his guests. The show has a wide variety of writers that all share the common thread of telling the story despite the different topics and backgrounds they write about. It's definitely beneficial.
00:04:04
Speaker
for anyone who enjoys writing. Thank you very, very much. And if you do, if you leave a written review of that kind, complimentary edit, and I said on the top of the show, and I will read it right here. Why not? You may also find the show on social ads, CNF pod on Twitter and at creative nonfiction podcasts on Instagram. Visit BrendanOmero.com for show notes and to rage against the algorithm with my up to 11 newsletter. First of the month, no spam. As far as I can tell, can't beat it.
Carl's Background and Journalism
00:04:36
Speaker
So Carl Hoffman is a former contributing editor at National Geographic Traveler and Wired. He is the author of five books, including Savage Harvest, The Lunatic Express, and The Last Wild Man of Borneo. Fun fact, this conversation rocks.
00:05:08
Speaker
Yeah, it's short, too. It's only 50,000 words. You know, it's about half the length of most of my other books. And it's meant to be read fast. I think it's up, you know, people go, Oh, my God, I can't, I can't read, I don't want to read about Trump. But, you know, I think it's different from most, from every other Trump book, it takes you really into the world of these people in this crazy world of all these people, but I hope also,
00:05:37
Speaker
you know, explains how, to some extent, really, how, why, you know, people are so obsessed with Trump and, you know, where that passion comes from at the same time as it's sort of a fun, weird, rollicking read. Like, it's funny, in a way, in this sort of sick, sad way. Yeah.
00:06:01
Speaker
Yeah, it really is and it's just like you get a, you know, it's also, you know, just really like scary too how a wannabe or even quasi or maybe even full-on demagogue like can really tap into some very carnal insecurities of certain estranged people and it can really galvanize people who feel like they haven't been seen and he just really struck the right nerve at the right time with the right people.
00:06:34
Speaker
Yeah, and you know, that's, that's how populism works, right? You know, there's this guy who comes along and says what everybody's been feeling. I mean, I kind of liken it to babies, you know, a baby like is hungry, and it's tired, and you know, it's cold, and it doesn't have words, it can't articulate those things. It just feels unhappy, it's suffering.
00:06:54
Speaker
And you illustrate that beautifully. For sure, I mean.
00:07:02
Speaker
And, you know, mom comes, so it cries and mom picks it up and figures it out. And it's like all of these people were suffering. You know, they felt these things, but they didn't know, they couldn't really articulate it. And then Trump came along and just articulates it so perfectly. And so they, you know, they glom on to him, they're attracted to him. They become, you know, in love with the person who's articulating their suffering.
00:07:31
Speaker
Yeah, and I think going back a bit to what I think makes the book really hum as well is I think just your love and how you basically came up for a love of journalism, respect of journalism. You knew your father was a reporter, an editor, and of course the Trump and Trump administration is so
00:08:00
Speaker
anti-journalism and anti-reporter. And so I wanted to maybe just get a sense of, you know, when you were a kid growing up and just the feeling and the pulse of how important, you know, journalism and specifically newspaper journalism was and how you got the bug. Yeah, I mean, you know, my dad was, you know, both my parents, my mom was born on a
00:08:24
Speaker
farm without running water in North Dakota. You know, and came to D.C. when she was five because my grandfather, my grandmother was from a big family, had a sister who got married to a one-term congressman. And so during the Dust Bowl and Roosevelt years,
00:08:42
Speaker
He was in D.C. and he got my grandfather a job in the USDA in the Agriculture Department. So they came off this struggling farm to D.C. and my dad was from this Orthodox Jewish family in Rhode Island that owned a bar. No one had been to college or anything. My parents both
00:09:06
Speaker
had this weird freakish love of books and learning and journalism. And they actually met in the 1950s at this thing called Congressional Quarterly, which covered Congress. And then my dad worked for the Star. So at my house, when I was growing up,
00:09:26
Speaker
You know, the people who were, I mean, it wasn't athletes or movie stars or pop singers who were the heroes around the house. It was always writers and journalists.
00:09:41
Speaker
And, you know, the people they, you know, I can remember so vividly my dad saying, you know, oh, he's a really good writer, or, you know, this reporter at my dad worked for the Washington Star, which was, you know, back in the day, you know, most cities have a much healthier newspaper environment ecosystem than today. And the DC had, you know, the post came out in the morning, the star, the evening star came out in the afternoon.
00:10:07
Speaker
The Washington, what was it called, Daily News was a tabloid like the New York Daily News, New York Post that came out. So there are all these newspapers. And my dad worked for The Star, and he was an editor mostly, not a reporter. But his praise of somebody that he was editing was how great a writer they were. And then people came over for dinner.
00:10:35
Speaker
Mary McGroary, the political correspondent, you know, Dave Broder. I mean, those were the people around the dinner table in my early childhood.
00:10:45
Speaker
and you know that they were uh uh uh you know both my parents were terribly argumentative i mean you know and that had negative pieces too but you know sitting around the table what is it that what are the three things you're not supposed to talk about you know politics religion and something else money or something you know those are the things that everybody talked about and not just talked about but you know yelled and screamed and raged and
00:11:12
Speaker
You know in a haze of cigarette smoke you know and so that was the environment we grew up in and you know my parents moved when i was five into a you know into the house that i pretty much grew up in and you know they had some work done in the house and most of that work was having bookshelves built you know built-in bookcases.
00:11:35
Speaker
So that was the place. And then later my father went to work in the Hill. But now people talk about politics and journalism, or certainly at least on the right, in such cynical terms.
00:11:50
Speaker
You know, for me in the world in which I grew up in DC, you know, it was the opposite. I mean, you know, my dad would love politics. He loved journalism. And to him, those were the most honorable professions in the world. You know, later he went to work in the Hill and, you know, sort of at the nexus of politics and the press and journalism and politics. And, you know, those were the best people doing the most important thing, important work.
00:12:21
Speaker
And so, you know, when it comes to Trump and Trumpism and this idea that
00:12:27
Speaker
you know, the fake news that, you know, something like the Washington Post or the New York Times or Wall Street Journal, that these are sinister organizations, you know, is so contrary to everything that I believe and that I had believed, you know, was shocking. And it was shocking to me even more, as so many things were about Trump and Trumpism,
00:12:55
Speaker
You know, when I went into, uh, you know, we haven't talked about the book, but basically, you know, I spent the fall of 2019 traveling around the US going from rally to rally and, and really going deeply into the world of the most obsessive Trumpians and spending a lot of time with them. I mean, you know, hundreds of hours and you know, the things that I discovered, uh, I couldn't believe, but you know, now we know all those things.
00:13:26
Speaker
You know, like the first chapter in the book, I'm sort of shocked at how prophetic it was. It was all about the power of the mob and, you know, the threat of the mob. And, you know, that's what ultimately happened. And at what point do you want to pursue journalism, be a reporter and specifically someone who is a bit of a globetrotter? Yeah, that's a really good question.
00:13:55
Speaker
You know, in this world in which I grew up, you know, writing and books were on the present. I mean, they were always there and we were always talking about them. Did I want to be a writer when I was 10 or 15? Not really, but yet it was also, you know, you always, people ask, you know, why do, you know, the kids of actors become actors?
00:14:18
Speaker
Or, you know, the sons of the children of journalists become journalists. I mean, it's because that's what you grew up with. And you know, and it's just like in your blood and you understand the business. So I didn't really in those in my early years, you know, to be honest, I was a terrible student. You know, I went to D.C. public schools. I was, you know, a deep minority in
00:14:43
Speaker
in an overwhelmingly urban black public school system that was undergoing a lot of turbulence. The years of busing in the 1970s and school was a dangerous, frightening place a lot.
00:15:02
Speaker
By the time I was 16 or so, I was smoking a lot of weed and I wanted to go skiing. In a way, I even had sort of an anti-intellectual protest strain. My sister was a super high achiever and all this talking at the dinner table among my parents. By that time, my parents were divorced. It's strange.
00:15:29
Speaker
I read a lot and I was reading both. My mom would give me fiction and novels and literary novels. And from my dad, I was reading all these New Yorker literary journalists, narrative nonfiction writers. And I was always doing that, but I wasn't really interested in school. It wasn't until after high school, I actually didn't go to college. I didn't want to go to college. And I went out West.
00:15:59
Speaker
was a ski bum for a year. And after a year of doing that, I was like, this is terrible. I really miss, you know, talking about real things and real ideas. And I went to school and then finally I got into into into into school for the first time. And it was the first time I went to a big state school, University of Massachusetts. And it was the first time that I that I got interested really in learning.
00:16:28
Speaker
You know, my whole high school career, I sat in the back of the class, like on purpose. And when I started going to college, I started sitting in the front of the class. And that was a huge change for me. And, you know, writing papers and but still I was more interested in politics in those days.
00:16:48
Speaker
And really through my senior year in college, my junior year in college, and I had these political jobs, a job at the AFL-CIO for my sophomore year and year. And then between my junior and senior year, I worked for Paul Sarbanes, liberal senator from Maryland on his reelection campaign. And then
00:17:08
Speaker
That summer i met a woman and i fell in love with her and she had traveled all over the world already, not all over the world but all over europe and in mexico and her father was a writer and a freelance writer.
00:17:25
Speaker
You know by then I was already reading like I'd always read a ton of adventure books and you know T Lawrence and you know these a girl and you know I was obsessed with all those and somehow in that moment that summer it all came together and I abandoned politics completely and a graduate from college and went traveling and I never looked back and I wanted to be a writer from that moment
Magazine to Book Writing Transition
00:17:50
Speaker
And so as you kind of progress through your travel writing and the journalism you're doing, and then through, I would say like the mid-2000s and then the late 2000s, things start to really, really contract and shrink a bit.
00:18:06
Speaker
So how have you tried to stay afloat, stay relevant, and not get too bogged down by the shrinking footprint that you came up with? Well, it wasn't so small when you were coming up. As things were shrinking, you're still trying to get work out there. How did you stay positive in the face of that?
00:18:29
Speaker
Yeah, you know, I've been lucky. I've been really lucky. You know, I don't know that there was any real, you know, plan. But, you know, it took me because I had no, you know, I go to DC public schools, I went to UMass, I had no, you know, elite education.
00:18:50
Speaker
And, you know, I did have this, you know, you know, from my parents and my girlfriend who became my wife, you know, parent father who was in the business. And so, you know, I had this sort of sense of knowing a little bit what to do to some extent, but I, but I didn't really, you know, and I never at UMass, I never took a journalism class and I didn't work for the, never tried to work for the newspaper.
00:19:18
Speaker
And so I didn't really know what I was doing. And I had this sort of fanciful dream that I wanted to be like a New Yorker kind of writer and a travel writer. And I wanted to be V.S. Naipaul.
00:19:34
Speaker
and you know McPhee sort of and so I didn't really know what to do so I started you know my girlfriend and I had traveled around after we got out of college and I you know I just sat down and wrote a story.
00:19:49
Speaker
And I sent it into some Sunday newspaper. In those days, this was before the internet, I sent it into a newspaper travel, Sunday newspaper travel sections, and the Boston Globe actually bought the very first story. $150 paid me for a story on sailing down, floating down the Nile on a traditional faluca. And then I sold a few more of those, and that's what I did. And then slowly, like it was so slow for me.
00:20:18
Speaker
Um, you know, trying to figure out how to do it and making a trip, you know, trying to break into magazines. And, you know, I did that and, but it was slow. So sort of by the time it, you know, I finally broke into real magazines, you know, and for a while I was a, you know, for a bunch of years, I was a catering editor wired and popular mechanics and a national geographic traveler. And like those years just happened to correspond to
00:20:49
Speaker
you know kind of the golden years of magazine of the magazine industry when you know wired would be like a paperback book it was so thick and have you know five or six pieces in the feature well and you know those pieces could be five or six thousand words and outside you know you'd be six thousand words and all of these long pieces and
00:21:13
Speaker
you know the money was actually pretty good. People talk about how hard it is to make a living and it's really hard for sure but at the same time you know I made that I mean that's all I did you know and basically supported a family you know my wife worked as well I mean for herself
00:21:33
Speaker
and you know so and I wanted to write a book and I got my first book contract for very very little money in 2000 well the book came out in 2001 so you know probably 1999 or something I got that book contract and you know it's based on some magazine stories that I did I had to do some additional recording but you know and then after that came out
00:21:58
Speaker
That book kind of helped my magazine career, even though the book itself, you know, the Times, you know, it was completely ignored. And it's now long out of print. And, but you know, so in the aughts, really, the magazine industry was really strong. And I, those were my golden years, but I always wanted to write books and write another book. And I pitched a book, which turned, you know, the Lunatic Express in 2007.
00:22:28
Speaker
and you know that came out in 2010 and that just kind of corresponded with the change you know i mean the book did pretty well and then you know i did another book in 2014 and another book in 2018 and trump book in 2020 so the my book writing career kind of just took off as magazines were dying but there was no that wasn't by design it was just
00:22:57
Speaker
coincidence. Right. Do you think, you know, growing up and having, you know, one of the first things that your parents were installing in the house were all these bookcases. Do you think like, that there was an element of you to be like, being surrounded by books, you're like, man, I like that, that's something I want to do something I want to be up on those bookcases. Yeah, for sure. I mean, you know, it was it was, and you know, though my parents were book people,
00:23:25
Speaker
And journalists, my mom actually became a children's librarian, so her whole career was recommending books to people.
00:23:36
Speaker
You know, none of them had written a book. Nobody had ever written a book in my family. So the idea of writing a book was this, you know, incredible, like an impossible dream to me. It was like, you know, not being messy and winning the World Cup, you know, or, you know, become, you know, winning an academy while we're talking about winning awards, but just being, you know, being something, you know, it was the, it was the apex of what I imagined
00:24:06
Speaker
You know, you could, you know, if I could do, if I could be anything or do anything, you know, it was to publish a book. I'm not even talking about winning an award with that book, you know, but just writing a book seems so incredible. And I can remember, you know, occasionally like meeting someone who wrote a book or meeting my, you know, the man who became my father-in-law, he had published his books and I was like, it's in such awe of that. So, you know, that,
00:24:36
Speaker
There was both the idea that that was something, it was both that kind of hallowed goal on the one hand, but also, and I didn't really know that or think that I could do it, but yet there was also the idea that maybe I could do it, that was there maybe
00:24:55
Speaker
more for me than it would have been for somebody, for many people who grew up in a completely different circumstances. And I admire those people. I'm so fascinated how somebody who lived and grew up in a house without books becomes a writer.
00:25:13
Speaker
And a moment ago, you mentioned John McPhee, too. He's something of a hero of mine. Just eat up all his work. And when you were turned on to McPhee, what was it about him and his work that really resonated with you?
00:25:31
Speaker
Well, I mean, you know, McPhee is kind of the master of, you know, you look at a book like Oranges or something, you know, where he's really writing about something that's not inherently, it wouldn't seem inherently interesting, but through incredible reporting and reportorial detail, you know, and then builds a story that is compelling and interesting and
00:25:56
Speaker
It also at a craft level, I mean, every sentence is so beautiful and, you know, it reads so beautifully and every, every comma and every punctuation mark is just seems perfect. And that was always the, you know, that was the hallowed thing.
00:26:18
Speaker
Again, maybe, you know, a corner kick, if you were a sport, a soccer guy, a football person, like an amazing, you know, but that being able to do that, the highest level of the craft was just, you know, there's a whole shelf of McPhee books on my bookshelves, but McPhee was an early person. Like my dad gave me McPhee. I think the first one I read was levels of the game, but later, you know, McPhee
00:26:46
Speaker
You know, later was other people, really. It was people who were doing narrative non-fiction journalism, but in more distant places. I mean, you know, everyone from Naipaul, Tony Horowitz,
00:27:01
Speaker
You know, um, Bill, Bill Finn again, though, you know, a New Yorker, Bill, Alex Shumetoff, who's kind of vanished these days. I don't know what happened to him, but you know, he did New Yorker pieces on, you know, and then books on the Congo and Amazon. And it was those.
00:27:20
Speaker
people. Once I traveled, I had always loved these adventure books. My favorite movie of all time, which I saw when I was a small child, was Lawrence of Arabia. And then I read Seven Pillars of Wisdom and Wilfred Theisiger's Arabian Sands. I don't know if you've read that, but that's like
00:27:40
Speaker
Those books filled my head with such romantic imagery and I had those there long before I met my girlfriend but then when I met her and she had traveled and then she said let's go traveling and then I was actually traveling and reading people like B.S. Pritchard
00:28:02
Speaker
And, you know, Kapaczynski, even then, you know, that sort of when it was like, oh, I could, you know, I don't have to row a boat across the Atlantic in order to sort of, you know, just traveling and writing were, you know, there was great writing and great narrative journalism, you know, coming out of that place. And that's what I wanted to do. You know, and I love being out in the world and I love
00:28:32
Speaker
being able to burrow deeply into back to McPhee, I don't know why this is, but I love the idea of really, really deep reporting, reporting that and writing nonfiction reporting that takes you so deeply into a place and a person that you're there, that it's like a novel.
00:29:01
Speaker
That's what I wanted to do. And I felt like I had an ability to do it even before I knew I had an ability to do it. Like I always, maybe because of the high school that I went to, junior high and high school in the world, you know, it was kind of, you had to be really street smart. And, um, and the way I was brought up.
00:29:25
Speaker
and my ideas of the world, you know, my sense of, I mean, you know, I have sort of an insatiable curiosity, I mean, I'll eat anything, I'll pretty much do anything. And, you know, I felt very comfortable out in the world, as it turned out, when I went traveling, and that, you know, I want, I just had this sense that I could go into these, into, whether it's
00:29:53
Speaker
you know, being on a freighter, you know, merchant freighter and living in that world and drawing people out who worked in that world.
00:30:07
Speaker
and kind of understanding them or whether it's in the Congo or in you know a swamp in New Guinea like those were my places and those and and I and I wanted to kind of excavate those worlds.
00:30:24
Speaker
What struck me about what you said, and I think maybe a lot of people who get into nonfiction writing, maybe not a lot, but a certain subset, are driven by a lot of, let's say, very voicey writers. You're like, oh, those pyrotechnics and those fireworks seem really cool. But what I gather from you is like,
00:30:43
Speaker
I'm not even sure I know what that means, but anyway, go ahead. Oh yeah, like at David Foster Wallace or people who are just like... Who I've never read. Yeah, writers of that nature who really kind of pop off the page and are almost like... Diddy and I guess. Diddy, yeah, very performative. And what I hear from you two is curiosity is your ultimate driver. And I really like hearing that because I think that's where the best narrative journalism comes from is just the writer and the reporter's insatiable need.
00:31:12
Speaker
to find out what these people are like, wherever those people are and whoever those people are. Well, when you're doing narrative nonfiction, when you're doing reporting, the book turns on the reporting.
Nonfiction Reporting Techniques
00:31:29
Speaker
I mean, the book is built from the reporting and the more, you know, the better reporting you do, the more, the deeper you go, you know, that's the building block of the story.
00:31:43
Speaker
And it's not that way with a novel, for instance. Because I've been working on this novel for the last two years, those two ways of doing things really stand out to me. But it's all about the reporting. And for me, that's the hardest part. That's the most challenging part.
00:32:11
Speaker
But it's the most it's the part that makes the biggest difference. I mean, you know, talking about the Trump book, any one of my books, but like the Trump book is a perfect example. You know, I had this idea that I kind of wanted to go in into this world. And, you know, it was built around rallies. And he knew that there was all of this kind of tailgating and everything.
00:32:36
Speaker
But, you know, so my very first rally was in Minneapolis and in October of 2019. And I, and I, you know, went the day before the rally, I got there, I knew people, you know, and I went and scoped out the, the stadium or the arena where it was being held. And, you know, I found like 20 people that were, that were already gathered there.
00:33:02
Speaker
maybe a little bit more. And I sort of checked and I was like, okay, we're starting to gather and I left and I went home I had a good night's sleep. I got up very early next morning like 6am in the morning and I got to the stadium and you know, there were 1000 people already in line. And I was like, spent the whole day there. But ultimately, that wasn't good enough.
00:33:24
Speaker
That wasn't enough. And then I went to Dallas a couple days later. And the same thing, I went to this time, I was like, OK, I'll go the night before. And so I went and I got in line. But I was already too late. I was already hundreds of people back. Maybe 1,000 people were already in front of me. Maybe 800, I don't know. And I spent that night. But I realized it wasn't enough.
00:33:53
Speaker
And it was punishing. Like, you know, you, the last thing I want to do is spend the whole night sitting in a fucking camp chair in a, you know, at a Trump rally outside on some street corner or parking lot. You know, it's suffering, but, but I was like, I'm not getting, I'm not, you know, I'm not really getting what I need. So the next one was in Tupelo, Mississippi.
00:34:20
Speaker
So in Tupelo, I got there three days early and I drove to the, you know, it was kind of raining and chilly. And I drove to the parking lot and I didn't really see anybody. There were no cars, you know, this big stadium. Well, Tupelo is small. It was like 10,000 seat, you know, basketball arena. But big parking lots and then, you know, if you go to a trumpet, lots are full. Well, nobody was there.
00:34:48
Speaker
And you know, I went walking around circumnavigating the the arena and there I found And there were five people there And I was like, oh my god, and they were camped there like they were not intense even they were just sitting in their folding chairs in line and this is three days before the rally And I was like, oh my god, the last thing in the earth that I want to do
00:35:18
Speaker
And sit here for the next three days. And this, it was like seven o'clock at night or eight o'clock at night. And I was like, how can I have to spend, but I was like, this is what I need to do. So I pulled out my chair. I went to my car, but then I had learned, you know, I had to go and get a,
00:35:36
Speaker
to Walmart when you arrive in town and get a folding chair. And so I pulled out my, I went and got my chair and I put it in. I was sixth in line and they said, congratulations, you're number six. You know, and that was when I really, I kind of met a few of these people. I could otherwise talk to them, but that's when I like my sitting there for the next 50 something hours, you know, 60 hours with, you know, uh,
00:36:06
Speaker
You know, Rick and Rick and I mean, you know, all the people who were in my book, really the main characters in my book were people that I became intimate with because I was sitting there.
00:36:22
Speaker
So that's the one I'm talking about reporting like and that it was it was it's it's really hard to do like it's like you know physically to begin a Trump rise physically very demanding if you want to be a real Trumpian you know and you want to be in the first 20 people in line you've got to commit to sitting rain or shine cold Florida or Minnesota
00:36:48
Speaker
You know, doesn't matter. You got to sit out there for for days. And it's punishing. Not only and it's also emotionally punishing. Yeah. As someone who, you know, hates Trump. You know, and you've got to listen to this crazy shit.
00:37:07
Speaker
and hang out with the craziest people. But they made me laugh too. They were funny. They were fun and funny and iconoclastic. So anyway, but when you're talking about narrative nonfiction, that's what gets you the treasure.
00:37:28
Speaker
is committing that level of commitment. And it's hard to do. And it's the same with like my ASMAT, my Rockefeller book. You know, I was in ASMAT, this 10,000 square mile swamp with no roads, no internet, no stores hardly, nothing. And I was there for two months.
00:37:46
Speaker
and kept going to this village, the village where the men who had supposedly killed and consumed Michael Rockefeller were from. And it was just not really getting what I needed. I kind of thought I was and it was punishing. It was a hard trip. You know, I went home and I started writing and once again I realized, you know, I'm just not, I don't have it. I don't have what I need.
00:38:12
Speaker
I have the level of reporting has to be so much more intense. So that's when I learned, you know, a whole new language. I learned Indonesian and then I returned to not only the swamp, but I returned to that village, which was a very difficult village. And I went and lived in the village alone with, you know, before I'd been with a translator and a boat man and all these people had hangers on and, you know, I had this whole retinue. And this time I went by myself.
00:38:43
Speaker
You know, and I stayed and I lived with a, with an elder and his family. I mean, there are 20 people in this frame house with no windows, you know, no doors and, um, you know, over mud. And, uh, you know, I stayed there and that's the, that transformed the book. Then everything happened. And I think that's the level of, you know, reporting that.
00:39:13
Speaker
um you know really deep narrative non-fiction requires and that is what kind of I think fascinates me and the thing that I'm good at.
00:39:25
Speaker
And with Liar Circus, and you're immersed with a certain subset of men that you were around a lot in line at these rallies, and you're just so diametrically opposed to them politically and so forth,
Empathy and Reporting on Trump Rallies
00:39:44
Speaker
And yet you could have easily written a book where you like just make fun of them and stuff of that nature. But I think you report and tell the story very empathically. And I wonder like how you cultivated that muscle to report on people that you disagree with so vehemently, but you still treat them with care in the end. I think it's just a reflection of the kind of person I am, to be honest. I mean, I think I'm very empathetic and I'm probably too empathetic and it's both a
00:40:14
Speaker
when it's a skill I kind of have. I mean, I think to be a reporter, you really need to get people to trust you. You really need to. And, you know, again, it doesn't matter whether it's the asthma in a swamp in New Guinea or, you know, American Trumpians, you know, you treat people with dignity. Everybody deserves to be treated with dignity and with, you know, an open, you know, an open mind. I don't mean that I have to agree with what they say.
00:40:44
Speaker
But I, you know, I'm there to listen. I mean, that's what I told Trump. You know, I said, I'm a right in disguise what I was doing. I said, I'm a writer, you know, they said, well, how do you feel about Trump? I'd say, well, the purpose of this, I'm trying to be agnostic. And I, but I'm here to listen, you know, which is, you know, I honestly mean, did I ever, did I
00:41:09
Speaker
Did that imply that I was maybe more open to Trump, Trump, Trump, you know, to that ideology? Maybe. But, you know, I mean, honestly, I was there. I mean, I was there to listen. Like, you can't go in there and say, you know, you're a fucking fascist and a racist. You know, this is racist. This is racist bullshit. And, you know, people will be like, well, fuck you. Get out of here. Yeah. Now, I didn't agree with them.
00:41:39
Speaker
You know, and if you say anything about racism, for instance, people will always say, oh, you know, we're not racist, you know, we're not racist. So I just think, I think that's what being a reporter is. I mean, you know, you're not lying, but you're walking a narrow line between being, you know, sort of available and open-minded and open-hearted and, you know, open-eared.
00:42:05
Speaker
And then you employ flattery, of course, just by being there in a way and listening. And everybody wants to be listened to. People aren't listened to enough in the world. And one of the great
00:42:20
Speaker
sort of surprising, but it shouldn't be surprising things about, you know, for instance, Trump world is that, you know, you're in a stadium and Trump, you know, there's a, especially in a big stadium with the 20,000 seat arena, you know, there's this set of bleachers toward the back on the floor, which is the press gallery and, you know, and then there are tables around that. So there's this whole
00:42:44
Speaker
cordoned off area and there could be you know during the campaign there could be hundreds several hundred journalists there and television cameras and everything and Trump starts ripping off of them you know and saying that the fake news and horrible and he it's there it's like their foils for him and people are booing and screaming and looking at thing boo thumbs down and
00:43:11
Speaker
But, you know, the minute a reporter comes over to anti-Trumpian at a rally with a camera or a pad or a tape recorder and says, you know, just comes over to them. I mean, they're jumped up, ready to talk. They can't wait to talk. They can't wait. They'll talk to the Washington Post and the New York Times just as readily as they'll talk to Newsmax. Because people want to be known.
00:43:40
Speaker
and heard. And people, you know, people's ego is at play as well. So I mean, all of those things coming together, you know, is why Liar Circus reads the way it does. And I also became friends with them. I mean, you know, I'm still texting to this day with with a couple of them. You know, one of the characters in the book has been to my house, you know, after the book came out.
00:44:26
Speaker
Again, I didn't really have to. I mean, we didn't get into long discussions of what my political ideology was, but we really didn't get into a lot of political discussions even. That's the weird thing. I thought going into that book that I would be having these long substantive political discussions with people around me about Trumpism.
00:44:33
Speaker
I made friends with them.
00:44:55
Speaker
and why they were Trump supporters. But you couldn't really have those conversations in the end because people, you know, we know this now, but I think a lot of people didn't really understand this. You know, reporters who were in Trump world may have, but I don't think the general public really understood this as much that
00:45:19
Speaker
When I went into it and say a big rally is like 20,000 people, 22,000 people, and I would have said going into it, oh, most of those QAnon and all the crazy conspiracy theories, those are fringe ideologies.
00:45:38
Speaker
And, you know, it turned out that that's not true. I mean, of 20,000 people to Trump rally, you know, my guess is 19,500 of them believe in QAnon.
00:45:50
Speaker
And they believe, you know, in some way or another, all the craziest conspiracy theories. I mean, you know, you can't be at a, like, I was never at a, I was, I'd be at the round and I'd start talking to someone who seemed really reasonable and they'd say, oh, you know, like this woman that I met in Dallas, who was like telling me how she used to live in Washington, D.C.
00:46:11
Speaker
She traveled and she traveled to some really interesting places and she was smart. And I said something about, well, you know, conspiracy theories like really troubled me. And she's like, you know, sort of nodded like, yeah, and the next thing you know, she's telling me about, you know, that Hillary Clinton killed JFK Jr.
00:46:32
Speaker
And, you know, that there's, that's constant. So you couldn't really talk about politics. So, you know, what do you do when you're sitting there 50 hours or, you know, in a parking lot with people, you know, the same thing. I mean, you know, sometimes they're talking about politics and they're just talking about Trump. Oh, Trump is the greatest. Those fucking liberals are, you know, something like that. And then you're just like nodding or I'm writing in my, in my, in my pad, you know, taking notes.
00:46:59
Speaker
You know, mostly you're talking about your lives and your families and you're just the, you know, daily shit in sports. And, you know, if you're among men, you're talking about women and, you know, all of all of these daily things. And, you know, then I mean, I went to, you know, in the end that, you know, I ate with them and we went out for dinner and drinking with them. And, you know, most of that's just talking about daily life.
00:47:28
Speaker
And for them, it's very social. I mean, that's a big part of it. It's a way of living and being with their friends in the social life of going from rally to rally like dead heads at a Grateful Dead or fish people at a fish concerts or something. That's their life.
00:47:54
Speaker
And even, you know, I mean, I was hanging out with some of the most obsessive people, people had gone to 50, 60 rallies. And some of those people now probably doubled that. But, you know, it wasn't uncommon to talk to people who had been to a couple rallies, you know, anytime he came into the hood, they went.
00:48:13
Speaker
What struck me in the book, too, was the writing that you cited from Elias or Elias Canetti, you know, just kind of about, you know, this one little passage here where you cite, The autocrat's only true subject is the man who will let himself be killed by him. This is the final proof of obedience, and it is always the same.
00:48:36
Speaker
and how you cite how he would often call up all these people who have basically had to kiss the ring or people who he defeated in in the primaries be it Ted Cruz or somebody else and It just it must have been I mean just when you when you read about
00:48:53
Speaker
it fascism on that level and then you kind of see when you see inaction it was you know what was that like for you when you witness that and then you you read this sort of this intellectual almost academic text you're like oh my god I'm seeing this play out in real time
00:49:10
Speaker
Well, it's so mind, it's so eye-opening. I mean, you just see it, you know, when you're there and you just see everything. You know, Kennedy was someone who experienced fascism firsthand, you know, the world of fascism that led to World War II.
00:49:27
Speaker
You know, everything that he's written in that book, you know, was written before there was a Trump. And yet everything he's saying spoke so powerfully and directly and articulately, you know, straight to Trump and to what I was seeing at the rallies in, you know, in and of itself. And then, you know, this whole idea, like, I'll never forget when I first saw Trump at my first rally in Minneapolis and
00:49:57
Speaker
I was sitting there and I was standing there because a lot of it's standing in the arena itself once he'd come out and he you know I was just it just washed over me like I saw it was like having an eye doing an ayahuasca churning or something and just seeing the truth like you just couldn't look you you know he wasn't like oh this is what I
00:50:22
Speaker
baby is happening. It was just there. It was so obvious. And he was so big. He's big. He's a big man. And he looks big on the stage. And the people who are around him are all smaller than him. I mean, nobody's the same size as Trump. And he's so self-confident. He's charismatic. I mean, there's no way around it. And especially then, he was in his most powerful
00:50:46
Speaker
And you know he's saying this stuff that's just one lie after another and you know people are boring i mean roaring and you know you've got you know and then in a place like dallas he's you know.
00:51:01
Speaker
Ted Cruz, you know, he's just eviscerating Ted Cruz who's standing right there literally below him, you know, below him on the stage and he's just humiliating Ted Cruz. And you see that I was just overwhelmed by the power of it and the power that he like I could, you know, I could feel I could I was Trump.
00:51:24
Speaker
And for that minute, and I could feel the power that he felt and the adulation and the idea that he had gone out of the White House and gotten on his own private helicopter with saluting Marines and been flown to a military, you know, Andrews Air Base, Joint Base Andrews, and he'd gotten on, you know, his own 747, Air Force One.
00:51:48
Speaker
flown to wherever it landed for a rally. And then, you know, some of those rallies, he gets on an osprey, you know, landing in the, you know, in this, in this arena parking lot, you know, or nearby. I mean, sometimes he actually arrives in the arena parking lot, you know, and there's tens of thousands of people waiting for him. And everyone knows him and everyone wants to touch him and be close to him.
00:52:16
Speaker
And everyone hangs on every single word. I mean, the power of that for, for me or for you, you know, you can't even imagine it, but for a guy who's a, you know, a pathological narcissist, it's like fentanyl. You know, straight fentanyl right into his heart. And like, I could see that and feel that. And I just felt this sense that Trump, he could never, and that's what we, you know, that's what happened. Like he couldn't let that go.
00:52:46
Speaker
He couldn't do it. Yeah, there's a quote in the book. I think it's from, you know, Hunter Thompson.
Trump's Influence on Supporters
00:52:52
Speaker
It's like, once you're president, there's nowhere else to go. Once you're the president of the United States of America, you know, it's as high as you can possibly go.
00:53:03
Speaker
you almost see it with athletes too like you know Tom Brady he can't he can't give up football it's just he came back he ruined his family football is nothing football is doesn't matter how big a fan you are of football
00:53:20
Speaker
You know, Tom Brady may be God to some people, but, you know, there's a lot of people who don't give a shit about football and never turn the, you know, and that's only in America and Tom Brady has no power. You know, he has some, his power is, you know, people want to be around him and, you know, to a certain extent, but, you know,
00:53:41
Speaker
Trump is the president of the most powerful country economically and militarily in the universe. That power is unrivaled and he has all the accoutrements of that power and all the symbols of that power every day, every minute of every day when he's president. And those rallies
00:54:07
Speaker
You know, or where it, you know, that's the magic moment where it all happens and Trump is reconstituted. You know, you can see it where he's like filled up. It's like plugging him into a Tesla supercharger, you know, and he's like filled up and he walks out of that arena. You can just imagine it. And he's like, fuck yeah. Yeah. No one is, is equal to me. No one.
00:54:36
Speaker
You know, and that crowd, the power of that crowd that will do anything, he can direct that crowd to the journalist. Boo. He can humiliate Ted. If he's got, you know, in New Hampshire, I went to a rally and it was getting later in the process or something, but certain rallies, you know, there's always the local down ballot people there, but at,
00:55:02
Speaker
Um, certain rallies are sort of more important than others. And I remember this, I mean, everybody was there. I mean, McConnell was there and, you know, everyone, I mean, the whole GOP leadership was there and they were all dangled on a string. You know, they were dogs on a leash, um, underneath Trump up on that stage. And so when all those people,
00:55:30
Speaker
You know, had to vote about impeachment. They thought of those rallies. They thought of that humiliation. They thought of that power. And that's also why people couldn't believe, like if you're in that world, you couldn't believe that Trump could lose because it seemed like everybody. I mean, you know, so many people were supporters of Trump.
00:55:59
Speaker
and you go to a, you know, some anemic Biden rally, you know, and that was just an illusion.
00:56:11
Speaker
The epigraph of the book by Christabel Bielenberg from the part is, myself, it reads, by compromising we could learn how each small demand for our outward acquiescence could lead to the next. And with the gentle persistence of an incoming tide could lap at the walls of just that integrity we were so anxious to preserve. So what was it about that that struck you to make that the epigraph of this book?
00:56:41
Speaker
Well, that is the story of Trumpism. I mean, as it happened, you know, there were moments, you know, Pence for all of his, you know, I mean, he's not, I'm not a big fan of Pence, but, you know, he held the line that day when he, you know, went ahead and certified the election under, you know, enormous pressure.
00:57:09
Speaker
And, you know, the, you know, what is the feeling bird speaks about a tide, you know, at a certain point, there were some walls that help, but, you know, if we were
00:57:23
Speaker
one millimeter away from that not holding. And you can see all of those pieces falling into place from 2015 through the election and through January 6th, where I mean, look at the tide that flooded the Capitol, bent on January 6th, bent on destruction.
00:57:49
Speaker
And we were one inch away from Trump taking power illegally and staging a coup. And you can look at one of the things that always struck me, and I'm sure a lot of people, you wonder, how could Hitler take over Germany? How could that happen? You just can't imagine people
00:58:17
Speaker
acquiescing and doing the things that they did and lots and lots and lots of people had to do it over many years for it to happen. But we saw it with Trump and we're seeing it today. Every single person, you can argue all day long about
00:58:38
Speaker
you know, right or left or, you know, the size of government and whether, you know, abortion should be legal or not. And I suppose those are all legitimate things to argue about. But you can't argue that Trump is a moral, ethical, competent human being who deserved to be president. And all of those, you know, everybody who even today believes that he
00:59:08
Speaker
you know, supports Trump, they're traders, you know, and they're, and they're, and they're maybe traders without understanding it. And that's one of the great, great tragedies of all this, they've been lied to. But they they they're accomplices. And there are people who are very good people. It's strange to say that. But there are people who are
00:59:35
Speaker
kind and they love their children and they love America. They love the idea of America who would destroy everything that America means in support of Donald Trump. And so that's why that epigraph is there.
00:59:57
Speaker
was reading about when I started to do this book, I started reading a lot about, you know, fascism and in its forms and in history and World War II. And I was led, of course, to Nazi Germany. And, you know, I read Shire's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, for instance, and other some other books. And I, you know, included these references to Germany and Nazi Germany.
01:00:25
Speaker
in my book and my editor, for instance, was like, you know, first my agent who read the book and my, and they were like, you know, these, we should take these out. They're too facile. Like, it's just, you're making these references that, you know, this isn't Nazi German. Trump isn't Hitler. But I think, you know, I think we all now can see that in fact, there were and there are
01:00:52
Speaker
you know, to, you know, that there, there are these enormous parallels. And, you know, Trump was more haphazard and maybe even more narcissistic, you know, it's just, you know, behind Trump, leading Trump doesn't seem demanding. You know, I don't know that Trump holds any real beliefs or ideologies beyond himself, you know, and the saga is not over. I mean, he looks diminished.
01:01:21
Speaker
greatly and he's under a lot of legal peril. And I don't think he will win again, whether he wins the nomination or not. I don't even think he's going to get the nomination. But even if he does get the nomination, I don't think he's going to win the presidency again. But he could. Anything could happen. And if it does, watch out.
01:01:47
Speaker
Because he has no, it's not just him, he has no, and this goes to the epigraph, he has no restraint. And we can see that there are people who are so blinded by greed and power that they'll go right along for the ride.
01:02:10
Speaker
Well, Carl, as I like to bring these conversations down for a landing, I always like getting a recommendation of sorts for the listener from you.
Recommended Reads and Writing Reflections
01:02:20
Speaker
And it can be anything, something professional or something kind of fun and quirky. And I extend that to you as we kind of wrap up our conversation. What might you recommend for the listeners out there?
01:02:30
Speaker
You mean you're talking about books? It could be anything. It could be reading. It could be books. It might be a brand of coffee you're really excited about or like a really great moisture wicking sock. You know, anything. No, no socks, no coffee. I'll say books, you know, writers. I mean, there's so many great writers out there.
01:02:56
Speaker
I mean, these days I'm reading a lot of fiction, probably more fiction than I, than nonfiction. I'm sort of changing a bit. We'll see what happens. But, you know, in nonfiction, Anna Bodkin is writes, you know, spectacularly, so beautifully, and, you know, Moshe Hamid, the Pakistani writer of fiction, I'm finding I really, is a,
01:03:26
Speaker
It's pretty brilliant. You know, Barbara Demick, her book about North Korea, nothing to envy was really spectacular. And she wrote another one about to that most recent Eat the Buddha. I mean, you know, I think, you know, in the world of nonfiction, you know, some of the great people working today.
01:03:50
Speaker
Nice, and before I let you go too, you know you've alluded to this novel you're writing, and given that your body of work to date is non-fiction, repartorial, and you're bound by certain rules in that playing field, what has been the experience of going into fiction where you can lean on imagination when you need it?
01:04:15
Speaker
Yeah, that's the problem. Those rules, you know, I've always sort of believed that nonfiction should be true. Yeah. And that, you know, when I when I hear that Bruce Chatwin, you know, made a bunch of shit up, it bothers me, you know, or I heard that, you know, Kapuchinsky was such a hero. And then it turns out he may have just sat in the hotel room and kind of dreamt it all.
01:04:43
Speaker
Um, you know, that bothers me because it's not, you know, the, the reason that we use it is because it's true because he's capturing it in this sort of novelistic way, but he's capturing, you know, reality true. So that bugs me, you know, in, in my Rockefeller book, I.
01:05:04
Speaker
you know, was criticized. And this is sort of a moment for me, and I did it because the story kind of demanded it. The structure was sort of forced upon me, really, I think. But, you know, this, I have a very vivid
01:05:23
Speaker
graphic, detailed, vivid, two very short chapters, scenes about Michael Rockefeller leaving his overturned catamaran and swimming away and encountering the men who then murder him and dismember his body and consume him.
01:05:43
Speaker
And then the third chapter begins, you know, we're hit by a wave. I'm traveling, you know, in the same place that he was traveling when the, when his boat, uh, hit a, you know, was overturned and a wave hit us, knocking me out of my reverie. As I imagine that's how Michael Rockefeller, uh, was, was killed and or died. And, you know, so that was first two scenes like I, they are,
01:06:13
Speaker
novelistic in a way like I mean I don't know exactly you know they're made up in a certain way but they're made up with incredible details like I knew everything there was to know I mean I knew you know the temperature of the water what the tides were I knew when he left the boat I knew what he said as he left the boat I knew what he was wearing as he left the boat I knew where the boat was I knew what the
01:06:38
Speaker
I knew how far away from shore he was because I knew what the horizon line was. I mean, I knew what the shoreline's topography was and how high the trees were to know how far away that horizon would be visible from sea level. I mean, I knew that the men from the village of Ochinep had where they had been and what time they left and the route that they took.
01:07:06
Speaker
I mean I knew all those things and I knew how people were killed and butchered according to anthropological articles, one in particular from 1959. So I had all that information and then I sort of, you know, I
01:07:25
Speaker
deployed it in a narrative, literary way, but then I copped to it and I said, you know, this is how I imagined it, and then built the story from there. And I still, you know, I got some grief in, in, in doing that, like, you know, was that permissible? Was I crossing the line as a nonfiction writer? But that was also a moment where I was like, you know, I liked the way, you know, it was the first time I really saw how you could
01:07:55
Speaker
how fiction speaks to the truth and that fiction is truer than non-fiction in many ways and can be and so you know and I kept in my efforts to make you know narrative and narrative come alive and place and you know all and dialogue and all of those conventions and techniques and logistics of non-fiction you know I
01:08:26
Speaker
You know, as I get closer to doing that in a novelistic way without violating the rules, the next step I wanted to try a novel, I wanted to make it all up. You know, I wanted to use the world that I had seen and known and felt and experienced over, you know, my half a century of life. I wanted to write a true story that was made up.
01:08:54
Speaker
Did you find that it was just really, was it just fun to be able to do that too? It was really, really hard for a lot of reasons that would take another podcast to talk about, but you know, the
01:09:13
Speaker
You know, it goes back to the, what I was talking about with nonfiction, you know, I mean, with those books, all those books, I mean, the Trump book, I did fast. That was because I had to, but, you know, I, you know, it, it, like the, my Borneo book, my Ask, my, my Rockefeller book, and those books took a solid year, year and a half of reporting.
01:09:36
Speaker
and sometimes having a researcher who was working simultaneously with me, working 20, 30, 40 hours a week. So by the time I sit down to write, you have everything, all of them all there. And with a novel, you have to invent all of those things. You have to imagine everything from whether
01:10:04
Speaker
You know, she's got blonde hair, dark hair, blue eyes or green eyes. And, you know, every single thing is imagined and it has to come alive. And, you know, the, you know, showing versus telling, you know, in nonfiction, you're sometimes, you know, they're showing in nonfiction and that's important, but sometimes the most like, you know, you're in nonfiction, you're going for that sentence that just says that, like you saying,
01:10:34
Speaker
this putting your finger right on the thing, the truth, this moment of shining the light on something and the more specific definite that you can say it, the better that moment is. Whereas in fiction it might be, it's really different, like you have to imply that, you have to show that, you have to make you think you as the right reader, grasp that maybe without even saying it.
01:11:05
Speaker
And that is really different and really, really hard for me. I mean, you know, I think it's hard period, but it was hard because I had to sort of read, like I would just say something and then I'd be like, no, I'm just saying, I'm not showing, you know, I'm not showing it. And it's just, and that was really, really hard. It was hard, you know, yeah, it was, it was just really hard. I mean, you know, I haven't sold the book yet, so I don't know.
01:11:30
Speaker
Maybe I didn't do it well enough. Maybe I didn't succeed. I don't know. Well, I hope that the landing gets stuck because I'd be fascinated to read it. And it's funny on this podcast, I don't have novelists on the show unless pretty much their body of work is nonfiction. If they write a novel, I'm like, oh, cool.
01:11:51
Speaker
Yeah, let's call the creative nonfiction. Exactly. So we can bend the rules a little bit. And so yeah, if that novel comes out, I'd love to read it and we can talk all things about it because get into the nitty gritty of that and the writing of that. That'd be a lot of fun. But until then. Yeah, it would be fun. I mean, yeah, it's super to me. It's really interesting. It's something that I'm still trying to figure out and understand is these differences between
01:12:21
Speaker
fiction and nonfiction. Yeah. Awesome. Well, Carl, this is so great to get to talk to you about Liar Circus and about the arc of your career or date.
Closing Thoughts
01:12:30
Speaker
And it was a lot of fun just digging into how you go about the work. So thank you for carving out the time. You're welcome. Thank you.
01:12:42
Speaker
Oh, thanks for making it to the end, CNFers. Thanks to Carl for coming to play ball. Be sure you head over to Brendan O'Mara.com. Hey, sign up for the up to 11 rage against the algorithm newsletter and consider shopping around at patreon.com slash CNF pot. Show is free, but it sure is LA and cheap. If you like what you're hearing, go ahead, link up to the show, tag me or the show, and I'll be sure to give you some primo James Hetfield gifts.
01:13:09
Speaker
So you know I'm something of a closeted cartoonist and desperately wish I could be a cartoonist. It's not necessarily because I love to draw or that I occasionally come up with like a funny quip. Like this one drawing I did a while ago and it was a gravestone with an epitaph that said lived, laughed, loved. Come on, that's hilarious and you know it, Melanie. It's because cartoonists don't have to talk to anybody.
01:13:33
Speaker
That's the best job perk in the world. Maybe I'm wrong, and if there's a cartoonist out there listening who does a lot of interacting with people, by all means, prove me wrong and put a stake through my heart. But the cartoonist, in my view, metabolizes culture, and then through their wit and whimsy, comment on it with a crudely drawn panel. But it's, you know, even, see, the drawing doesn't really even matter. It's the writing that makes cartoons pop.
01:14:03
Speaker
And if you can be a tremendous artist on top of that, great, but it's the writing. It's always the writing that makes cartoons funny. This past week on my never used personal Instagram, this American life. Oh, American life, get it? I drew a series of little cartoons that were middle-aged Mutant Ninja Turtles.
01:14:27
Speaker
crew drawings of Michelangelo going to work on the subway, Leonardo passed out drunk on his couch, dad bought Donatello eating pizza, and Raphael in a cubicle typing in his laptop with a little pennant on his cubicle wall that says Go Terps, the Maryland Terrapins. In relatively speaking, a lot of people liked them and shared them and commented on them, even though it was just in stories.
01:14:55
Speaker
And it was better than anything I've ever done in my entire life. And I didn't even have to talk to a single person.
01:15:01
Speaker
You might be like, well, then why are you a journalist? To that I say, I have no fucking clue. But you might ask, why do you host a podcast where you literally talk to people? Again, I have no fucking clue. Maybe it's because the more I talk to other people about their lives, the less I have to actually examine my own. There will come a day when I get away from nonfiction as a vocation because talking to people makes me so anxious and drains me so much that I wonder why I torture myself.
01:15:29
Speaker
Like, when I have an early podcast to record, I can barely sleep the night before. And I am truly curious about other people and how they do what they do, but after every conversation I have, I want to go to sleep for like 10 hours.
01:15:43
Speaker
So I wish I was a cartoonist, which is probably the only way I'd ever get published in a place like The New Yorker anyway, because I'm not a great journalist. Okay, I'm definitely a better drawer than I am a writer. And I'm an okay interviewer, but like I said, it kills me to speak to people. Thankfully, it's 99% remote, because if they were in person, I would die.
01:16:05
Speaker
The other day we had to go to a holiday party and I told my wife that it's cruel and unusual punishment to make introverts go to parties and see people in public. She's the same way. She agrees. Thankfully she's a supervisor and nobody wants to hang out with their supervisor so we were spared for having to socialize for any longer than 45 minutes. Sat at the end of the table had a kombucha.
01:16:30
Speaker
Cause, uh, if I, if I, if I drink, then I'll start talking and no one wants to hear that. So this took a turn. I didn't see coming visit, patreon.com slash CNF pot. If you want to support the podcast and if you can't do interview, see ya.