Transcript
Speaker: Oh, AC and Evers, if you want signed personalized copies of the Front Runner for the holiday season, email me, creativenonfictionpodcasts at gmail.com, and I'll then email you a PayPal invoice, super cool, and ask you how you want your book signed. It'll be $30 a book, and that does cover media rate shipping, so be patient.
Speaker: While supplies last, man. The skeleton key doesn't work.
Speaker: Let me see an effort. Try not to mess this one up. But this is episode 500 of the Creative Nonfiction Podcast. You heard that correctly. 500. The show where I speak to tellers of two tales about the true tales they tell.
Speaker: There are kilometer stones, let's say. 100, 200, 300, 400. But this one the milestone.
Speaker: but this one is the milestone And it features the writer and journalist who made me want to write narrative nonfiction in the first place, John McPhee. I'm going to let that sink in.
Speaker: John McPhee. John is a titan, a soft-spoken titan. He's the author of more than 30 books, including A Sense of Where You Are, Levels of the Game, his Pulitzer Prize-winning tome, Annals of the Former World, and the book that made me want to write nonfiction in the first place, The Survival of the Bark Canoe. John is 94 years young, still lives in Princeton where he has taught an exclusive master class on factual storytelling, a class taken by the likes of David Remnick and the late Grant Wall, I believe, among countless people who have gone on to write and report with distinction.
Speaker: I put the stinking distinction. I'll have more thoughts about reaching this milestone 500th episode. Have you heard in the parting shot? But let's take care of a few matters of housekeeping. Show notes to this episode and more at brendanamara.com. Hey, bookmark it, man.
Speaker: so you can just browse for blogs. Just published a blog called Don't Wish the Miles Away. I tell you, it's just fun to feed your website the best of you and not the social media algorithms. you know theya let it Let them hang out there. But they're like god god give the give the best of yourself to your own websites and sign up for my two very important newsletters, the flagship rage against the algorithm, which is going to feature my first annual holiday gifts guide.
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Speaker: We had a great ProcrastaZoom happy hour with five people from all over the world. It was an international affair. Just hung out, talked writing, and went on our way.
Speaker: Become a paid member to get access to these or more structured Zooms. Let me be the flax egg that binds together our bakes. Okay, so John McPhee. He's been a staff writer for the New Yorker since the 1960s, I think when William Sean was the editor.
Speaker: And not long thereafter, he was offered a job to teach at his alma mater in Princeton University. And he famously edited student submissions and their work, not unlike how Sean edited him at The New Yorker. Just red ink everywhere.
Speaker: He's written about such wide-ranging topics, from basketball to tennis to bark canoes to Alaska to lacrosse to oranges and geology on top of geology on top of geology.
Speaker: John is synonymous with thinking through structure and coming up with unique structures for most of his stories. Each one is something of a fingerprint. yeah No two structures are alike for the most part. And the facts borne out from his intensive and slow, patient reporting dictate the shape of the story he has locked into.
Speaker: His work is a methodical and patient. He hangs out. He fills notebook after notebook, rarely uses a recorder. Maybe only if there's someone speaking in such technical jargon that there's no way he can keep pace.
Speaker: His career has been this wonderful balance of give and take. Teach for most of the year and not write, and then write and not teach. John is unassuming and gentle, and an example...
Speaker: of how you can do this work without bombast or pyro and still be riveting and at times downright hilarious. When I took a literary journalism class in the 20th century class,
Speaker: with Norman Sims at the at UMass. The UMass.
Speaker: Norm marveled at the genre and how someone can make a book about oranges a fascinating read. And he was talking about McPhee. and During the summer...
Speaker: you know, one of the regulars at the restaurant I worked at around that time, ah learned or heard that I was getting into narrative journalism, and he and he gave me a copy of The Survival of the Bark Canoe.
Speaker: And I guess you could say it changed my life. You know, granted, I've wasted a lot of time in my 45 years, but that book has always been a kind of compass. It orients me.
Speaker: And John's career, with its long arc, its patience, its Playing the long game. It gives late bloomers like me that even at mid-career, gives me that hope that maybe the best is still ahead of me.
Speaker: Am I deluded to think so? Maybe. But John and believing in John and the arc of his career. And no, you can never touch that star. It is too hot. But maybe the best is still ahead of me.
Speaker: I doubt it, but maybe. I could go on, but I hope you get an idea of how important he is to me. And I know thousands upon thousands upon thousands of readers and writers out there feel the same.
Speaker: So in this episode, we talk about the influence of his high school English teacher, Olive McKee, living room fighters, writing on spec, the notebooks he's used for decades, how a lack of confidence is an asset. sho My gosh, I've got assets coming out.
Speaker: What a good editor does. Writing is teaching. How having a plan frees you to write. The panic of not having written leading to productivity. And how proud of his daughters he is.
Speaker: Parting shot on what it all means at 500 and maybe where I see the show going for the next 500. But for now, come on now. Here's John McPhee riff.
Speaker: My career built from the caption up. I'm a weirdo. I kill any number of darlings. He said, well, all right, but readers will rebel. This is going to have to interest somebody somewhere other than me.
Speaker: know I think i got kind of a fun place to jump off of, in it's it's just this this idea of how fascinated we are with you know other writers' writing processes. And I wonder just you know for you, what do you think it is, the obsession and the the fascination of you know other writers and how they go about the work?
Speaker: Well, I'm interested in it, but but I don't learn anything from it. I imagine that that the reason that some people want to know it is because they want to do something similar. to what What works for A might work for B and so on and so forth. and But I think that you actually work these things out yourself over time as you go along.
Speaker: I don't think it's very promising to be interested in someone else's writing process because you're hoping it'll graft onto yourself. And I wouldn't recommend that to any student to worry about.
Speaker: But meanwhile, it's it's a fascinating topic, what what people get up at 2 in the morning and to write. and i mean i'm I'm interested in all that. Somebody had to get himself into a boat and be floating on the water in order to write. i mean or then And then people write in their cars because they can't get ah get away from it.
Speaker: family or whatever, and and lots of people ride in their cars. But I find all that interesting, but it's not useful. Yeah, it can get real easy to be lost in other people's processes, thinking it might be some skeleton key to like unlock something within yourself. And that might be some of the the appeal to it. It's like, oh yeah, so-and-so wakes up at this time in the morning. Well, if I do that, then maybe I can be as good as that person.
Speaker: Exactly. And and and that the skeleton key doesn't work. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it something you you've said before that in interviews and in things you've written as well that I think is really the ultimate mentor and in so many ways is is that writing teaches writing. Over the course of your career, you what lessons did you learn just from the sheer repetition of doing the writing?
Speaker: Well, writing consists of thousands of little things, putting A to B to C to D so that there would be, you know, multiple experiences of how that worked. The thing is that when you do something and it works out, you tend to remember it.
Speaker: So let's say that there are 10,000 things that you need to remember, but one at a time, you learn them by by doing it and by stumbling into it often enough.
Speaker: And then there's just plain memory. I mean, you know, you've You've been there before. You've seen seen this problem before. It's not a single thing. It's a collection of all those thoughts.
Speaker: I think your career speaks to the the patience and the longevity of doing it. And like you've said before, like the mistake some people make is looking at your career through the wrong end of a telescope. But whereas so much of your work has been the repetition of doing it over and over and over again over a long period of time and that patience that it takes to to get good at this. it's um you know just and Over the course of all those repetitions, yeah what might you identify as...
Speaker: You know, maybe a ah big fulcrum moment, like one of those really the sticky things that stuck in your brain, you're like, oh, that's something that I really want to make sure that I employ in future writing projects.
Speaker: Well, the first thing that comes to mind when you say that doesn't quite fit, but it certainly belongs. And that is that I had an English teacher in Princeton High School named Olive McKee.
Speaker: who assigned a great many pieces of writing to us. she like She was a real writing teacher, and as English teachers go, and we wrote three themes a week in her course.
Speaker: As I said somewhere once about her, there some weeks had Thanksgiving in them, but mostly that's what we did. And and she insisted on a structural outline with every piece you turned in. you You turned in something A, B, C, D. You could turn in a little a sketch if you wanted to, you could a doodle.
Speaker: ah You just wanted to show that you had a plan. I've been doing that all my writing life to, you know, yesterday. And so if if if there was a pivotal moment, it was was, you know, the collective moments of Mrs. McKee.
Speaker: ah yeah I'm so glad you brought her up. you know I've got her in my notes and I've read you know heard you speak about her you know in interviews and read your writing about her and how instrumental she was. And so many people associate, of the many things people associate with your writing is certainly your ah your love of structure and the way you think through that. In the Paris Review interview you did a few years ago, you know you in talking about structure, you know you said it sounds very mechanical, but the effect is the exact opposite. What it does is free you to write. It liberates you to write.
Speaker: ah So in that capacity, what has the McKeesian draw of structure, how has that liberated you to write over over the decades? The general purpose of it is you're going to know where you're going, where you're going to end,
Speaker: what your what your piece consists of and all that, and that's its structure. There are modifications to what I just said about leads and stuff like that and when it happens.
Speaker: But basically, if you go out and collect material for a piece of writing and then you have that in front of you like a little mound of stuff and you figure out what you're going to do with it, you are then, free to write.
Speaker: You don't have to worry about every every two minutes about where you're going to go next, what you're going to do. I almost always know the last line of my pieces of writing, even very, very long ones, before I write the first line.
Speaker: Yeah. How important is that for you to have that lighthouse in the distance ah that you that you can see that, yeah yeah, everything you're doing is informing, yeah, that that destination?
Speaker: it's terribly important that you develop a lead first, and and that that comes about not not after you've got this whole structure built. It helps you build the structure. But then the thing is that when you know where you're going and how you're going to get there, I mean, what things to tomorrow and the next tomorrow and so on are goingnna are likely to happen, you don't have to worry about that anymore. You can you can attack what's going on in front of you at that given moment.
Speaker: and With regard to the myriad structures you've applied to so many of the amazing, iconic stories that you've written, what would you identify as maybe one of one or two of your most satisfying structures that you've come up with?
Speaker: The structure of looking for a ship, I'm trying to think what were difficult, i mean or whether it was anything inventive about it or whether it overcame a special problem. The thing is that but ah basically...
Speaker: that structure should be as simple as it possibly can be. And if you take something like, say, a profile I once wrote of Yule Gibbons, I mean, the the structure is very plain and simple. It's a straight line chronology ah with thematic interruptions along the way. And the thematic interruptions are are themselves chronological because it was able to fit Those things were able to fit that particular story.
Speaker: What you can't say is that that, therefore, is a cookie cutter that you can put down on any kind of material and have it the the same structure. That doesn't work. I don't have any two structures that are alike. For sure, yeah. I think of the encircling river, too, of like where you decide to put the bear.
Speaker: you know It's like the the bear happened when it happened, but you're like, oh, how can i massage the at least our temporal experience to make sure that the bear appears in a more climactic place?
Speaker: Well, what you're doing is altering the structure according to time, but you're not altering the time. In other words, you accomplish that through flashbacks. Yeah, I imagine. like And that that kind of gets to the idea. It's a kind of a term you bristle at a bit, maybe but maybe you've come to embrace over the years this idea of creative nonfiction. But that's the creative element of it, right?
Speaker: It's certainly a large part of the creative element element of it. Did I send you that paragraph from draft it number four? you You didn't, but I do have it here. i believe it's in the SAO mission.
Speaker: Yeah, there's a, yeah, the, here, I've got a underline right here. I'll just, I'll just read it because i think it's real a great thread to pull on. um You know, the creativity lies in what you choose to write about, how you go about doing it, the arrangement through which you present things, the skill and touch with which you describe people and succeeding in developing them as characters, the rhythms of your prose, the integrity of the composition, the anatomy of the piece. Does it get up and walk around on its own?
Speaker: The extent to which you see and tell the story that exists in your material and so forth. Creative nonfiction is not making something up, but making the most of what you have. You know, a number of hundreds of Princeton students have heard that right from me.
Speaker: The course I teach is called Creative Nonfiction. Now, i mean, had another title once before. But so anyway, that I wanted to answer that question. what I mean, yeah yeah obviously, everybody has a creative writing department.
Speaker: My daughter teaches in the Princeton's creative writing department. I wanted to answer that question for myself, you know, because people think creative equals fiction. It doesn't need to. It's a different kind of creativity. Yeah, and that's where yeah some people yeah they have bristled at that over the years. And for some reason, I've never... i guess because my primary... the The reading I most enjoy is this kind of creative nonfiction and i end the tools of the of the the fiction writer and as applied to something that's verifiably true. like I just have come to see that the creativity was in ah the voice and the point of view you bring to a piece and...
Speaker: your taste in gathering material and then syn thought synthesizing that into something that is satisfying. ah Yeah, i've I've never thought of it as something made up. I've just like, oh, this is these are the paints with which a particular writer is painting with, and I want to see what they do with those paints. And that's, to me, what it what it stands out as, if that makes any sense.
Speaker: Sure, it does. I mean, I'm addressing something that probably was in the air when I was in college. when i When I was in college, nobody was teaching as literature the kind of writing that that I do now and so on.
Speaker: And they do now. I mean, this form of of factual writing has has become much more acceptable to the act to the academy, to to colleges and all, than it was once. no Nobody taught a course in nonfiction writing before. By before, I mean 30, 40, 50 years ago.
Speaker: oh for sure yeah in And given that, maybe it wasn't taken as seriously as a form, you know say, you know decades ago. What was the the main appeal for you to lean into it as you know as your stock in trade? The thing is that I went I wanted to write for the New Yorker. It took me until I was about 31 to get to join the New Yorker's staff.
Speaker: But, i you know, I admired that form of writing, liked to read it. And I remember thinking, you know, i I think I could do that. And I just was trying to get a chance to do it. But that's that's the history of it. I mean, it kind of the idea grows slowly in your mind.
Speaker: ah And speaking of slowly, yeah you you know, you've spoken about and written about how writers develop slowly and impressing ah impressing upon that upon people who might be, you know, really ambitious and want it to happen quickly. And I imagine a lot of your former students, too, might be frustrated maybe at how long it takes to develop a sense of self on the page, ah a voice and a point of view and just like how have ah you know Just what have been maybe those conversations you've had with with people over the years that it's like, yeah, you know this takes time. you know It takes time to become a skilled and competent and confident writer.
Speaker: Well, first of all, it was my experience that, as I said, that the the New Yorker, which is where I wanted to go and publish things and everything else, Wasn't having any of me until I was over 30.
Speaker: And I was floundering around in my twenty s trying to figure out how to how to do that. And I worked for Time and and wrote for other publications. And I'm a teacher now, or was for 40-some years, ah of of young people, 18, 19, 20 years old, and never going into their twenty s I remember my twenty s and what that was like.
Speaker: And I'm trying to say something that'll be ameliorative to them, that this is a slow process. Don't be discouraged, probably because I was discouraged.
Speaker: and Anyway, the 20s is a tough time to get through when you've got things you want to do and can't figure out quite how to but get there. Oh, 100%. I can relate to that so strongly of thinking of where you want to go and your skills aren't quite there yet. And honestly, I'm 45 now and I still feel like my skills aren't where where I want them to be. but But I think that frustration in your 20s, maybe into 30s, can manifest itself and in kind of a competition and even a bit of jealousy. I love that you've that you've said that the best way, I think, to really combat that is to just be in competition with yourself and you know and develop yourself through the writing. you know How did you maybe you know learn to do that for yourself and maybe not look over your shoulder as much and just focus on trying to be the best you know John McPhee you could be you know when you were trying to break into The New Yorker?
Speaker: Unfortunately, it never dawned on me that competition would be you know a good thing. and and would I mean, jealousy, competition, and everything else, it's just ah it's irrelevant. I've known writers, I call them living room fighters. say They go to a party, and there's two writers there, and they get in a fight because they that the two egos are banging against each other.
Speaker: so on and so forth, but nobody is ever going to improve one iota as a writer by berating somebody else in a living room. And it's just so clear. That's where what I mean when I say that competition just doesn't matter.
Speaker: It's great that so-and-so forth writes well, and it's and it's unfortunate that somebody else doesn't write so well. Neither one of those things has any effect on on on on you, on a given individual who sees that.
Speaker: I have absolutely no sense of competition with any of my good friends who are writers and people who are not. Yeah, it's so great great to hear. And you know I think the ego gets in a lot of people's way.
Speaker: you know How have you you maybe kept your ego out of it so you just stayed in your lane and you didn't look over your shoulder? Yeah. I guess not. don't know. I mean, I don't have any problem with my good friends. that They're terrific.
Speaker: I mean, people like Sandy Frazier and Mark Singer and and so forth that that are colleagues of mine at the New Yorker and and were a good deal younger than I, etc. I just don't have any sense of...
Speaker: them accept that they're very good writers and that and each one is is completely individual from the next. I just think that's so important. I think that the ah gossipy competitiveness on people's part is, I just think it's a...
Speaker: kind of a flaw because I don't think it's helping anybody, most of all the person who feels that way. And i is a lot of your early pieces, I was always struck by ah when you were trying to break the into the New Yorker, you know say with your Bill Bradley piece, and that that was something that you had to take the initiative and write basically the whole thing on spec and try to sell the whole thing instead of getting the assignment and then going out and doing it.
Speaker: that takes a lot of, it takes a lot of time, a lot of resources on the part of you to take that degree of initiative. ah Just, you know, what did you, don't know what was, you know, what's a lesson that a lot of people can learn about, you know, if you really believe in a story, you know, you might have to just go out there, report the heck out of it, write the heck out of it, and then try to make the best of it, and even if it gets turned down.
Speaker: Well, you know, I've often told people that I don't see in whatever situation they had that there was an alternative to writing it on spec. You just have to write it and and hope it works. and And you're not going to be able to go to some editor and say, I want to write this. And he says, yes, and gives you X dollars to go do it.
Speaker: That just isn't going to work out. And so that I think what writing on spec is risky, but I think it's something that okay writers who don't have any track record yet sort of need to do.
Speaker: And I love ah hearing how people, you know, when when they're reporting in the field and yeah the the tools of their trade as they go out to gather information. And my great friend, Kim Cross, she has a really good newsletter called The Waterproof Notebook. And she does a lot of reporting in the field and has a lot of gear she loves to bring along with her, ah various notebooks and pens and cameras and yada yada. And you're someone who's been out in the in the wilderness and fields in canoes. You my favorite book, you know, The Survival of the Bark Canoe. What are always the things that you have at hand for your information gathering when you're on a reporting trip, say like survival the bar canoe or something, you know, be a or coming into the country?
Speaker: Every piece would be the same for you name it. It's always been the same. And the fundamental tool is a, aside from your brain and your memory,
Speaker: The fundamental tool is a four by six inch spiral bound notebook with the spiral binding on the top, not the side. Staples sells them and everybody else sells them.
Speaker: I have been using those little four by six notebooks all my life and I still keep one in my pocket. And The thing is, you know, you whip that out anytime you want to want to preserve anything that you hear or that you observe and think of and and so on. That's my basic tool.
Speaker: Somewhere along the line, way back 1970s or whatever it was, I was was in the office of a doctor in Maine, and he started talking about blood gases and Good Lord, I don't know a lot of stuff. And I couldn't not, I mean, he was speaking rapidly. He was speaking medical stuff.
Speaker: I couldn't keep up with them. And I said to him Dr. Hume, what's his name? I have a device in my car, which records things with on a cassette.
Speaker: Would you mind if I went out and got it and brought it in? That's the first time I i used a recording. And it was, you know, very early in my writing and I think it was it was the first time anyway when I was at some interview in the field like that and I did it ever since but I keep it as a as a secondary thing. I mean it's a you put it in when there's no alternative to it but it it gets in the way between you and your so and your subject. You're spending time with this person and everything else and you stick some device between the two of you. changes the
Speaker: changes the relationship changes the atmosphere. And so I would much prefer to scribble what I can scribble, but i but what I can't cover scribbling, I want to record. Yeah, I love hearing you talk about the recorder as like as a relief pitcher that that you go to in in moments of need. Be like, hey, yeah we got to bring in the lefty now. There we go.
Speaker: Okay. The thing that I've always struggled with, and this just is just me, and maybe maybe you have too, is like maybe you're out in the field, you you're scribbling notes, and you can't keep up, or you know you you realize that your handwriting is so bad, you're like, oh my God, I can't remember. what did What did I write down here? What did they say? And you're realizing, oh man, like I could be losing some really good stuff here because I couldn't keep up or my handwriting was so bad. like What's been your experience with that?
Speaker: Well, the same back to the Dr. Hume story. My experience was that I i turned to the recorder when I when i couldn't keep up. I'll tell you another story. i got i I got into an interview with an FBI agent who lived in western Nebraska, and he came over to Omaha to be interviewed at FBI headquarters in Omaha about work he had done, a case he had followed in Mexico. yeah I mean, I wasn't in Mexico. I was in Omaha.
Speaker: And he was telling me this story, which was very complex, involved as the murder of a DEA agent and so on and so forth. And and it took him a long time, and all day. In fact, t he came, he got there at nine zero in the morning when he was going to.
Speaker: And we sat in that office until after 5 p.m. and And all right, so then I go home and I'm i'm transcribing these tapes. he We recorded absolutely everything. And I got home and I discovered that that one of my little Sony cassettes had failed.
Speaker: I was devastated. And I called him up and I told him this. And he said, what was the end of the previous cassette? And I told him that when I knew it. And he said, and what was the beginning of the cassette that followed?
Speaker: And I told him that. And Ron Rawalt, as it was his name, he he sat down in his own kitchen table and he reaped he made a recording telling this story from where my gap started to where my gap ended.
Speaker: That's my favorite tape tape recorder story, I guess. I hadn't thought of that. That's great. and ah And so now you've say you've gathered all your information over months and maybe even years of research, and you know you've got your your mound of clay that you need to start shaping.
Speaker: i love here have having read and having heard you talk about that that lack of confidence that goes into the that early draft and when you're just feeling despondent about how you're ever going to write again. however how are you going to start this thing, even though you've done it so many times? um like How do you work through that lack of confidence when you're starting to compose after you've gathered your material?
Speaker: Well, a lack of confidence is an asset. I mean, it can be a liability, too, and it can be all kinds of things that come with the term lack of confidence, but it also can be an asset. You should doubt.
Speaker: You should be able to question what you're doing. You should be able to read what you wrote yesterday and and challenge it and not be satisfied with it, you can't fix something or you haven't seen what's wrong.
Speaker: So that this, what we're calling a lack of confidence or or whatever, is also the doubting factor in the brain and so forth, which which which I think is essential to the quality of the ultimate composition.
Speaker: Would you say that maybe you have a certain lack of confidence at the start of a project, but that is limited to, say, that story or that book, but you still have your own self-esteem and confidence in yourself to be like, oh, this is normal. I work through this.
Speaker: ah This is just a lack of confidence in the project, not in fundamentally myself. No. Well, I don't know. I don't think of that, but I don't i don't i don't have a I don't have a whole lot of confidence about things. i mean You start them off, it's always a question of whether it's going to work out, whatever whatever it is. and and and As I said, ah there's this aspect of confidence which is which is important in in in the actual writing.
Speaker: and Then when you come to the end, you want to be able to say to yourself, that's what I want to publish. and There are various places along the way when you want to be able to say that, too.
Speaker: You know, self-confidence doesn't have anything to do. I mean, self-confidence apart from that, self-confidence when you're walking down the street, that doesn't have anything to do with that.
Speaker: In hearing you talk about, there seems to be a tremendous amount of of thinking that goes into your writing process, ah seven hours of gonging around. like something You need that before you can really compose. What degree or how what value do you place place on the amount of you know thinking that goes in, that loading of the well that you can then you know turn yourself loose you know later in the day?
Speaker: Well, it works like this, that anything beats writing. Writing is tough, difficult to do, hard to face this thing with your with your with your deliberate lack of confidence and so on and so forth. the there are Lack of confidence isn't the perfect term for that. It's it's a capacity to feel negative.
Speaker: And that's important to the to the end thing. So therefore, when when you start your day, the last thing that this person anyway wants to do is write.
Speaker: But you're a writer and you're supposed to be writing. And not only that, you've got four kids and a family to support. And ah so I sit there doing nothing.
Speaker: I used to sharpen pencils, but then pencils became obsolete. i I made tea, endless cups of tea. I wasted time all day long, not because I wanted to, but because I i i couldn't get make myself write because I had writer's block for the day.
Speaker: I think writer's block operates on writers every day, at least on this writer, and that you overcome the writer's block as part of what happens in in a day. And if you don't don't overcome it, you're like one of these unfortunate writers that's blocked for months or even years.
Speaker: But I think that that factor is there and probably with most writers every day. How do I get started writing? I mean, I don't wanna do it is what the subconscious is telling you. And I mean, I don't wanna face it. and It makes you nervous because you want it to be good in it and and the negative factor in your mind is telling you that maybe it isn't and so on and so forth. And therefore, the the day goes by 11 o'clock.
Speaker: Go run out, go swimming in the university pool. ah Come back. What rises during the day also is panic.
Speaker: The panic takes over late in the day. When you think, my God, i I'm going to lose this whole day. I've done nothing. I've gotten nowhere. i had to and but but but but And so somehow that panic made me kick in.
Speaker: And I did practically everything everything we've mentioned in this conversation and so on and so forth that I've written has had that experience in each of its individual days.
Speaker: And then at 5 o'clock or something like that, I get going. And I keep on writing until 7 or whatever, sometimes 11, very rarely, because I wanted to go home and have dinner with my family.
Speaker: But that's the typical day. And I'm i'm not joking. that The panic is what breaks you through the the resistance you're feeling to doing the writing. And and because you don't want to lose that day. And that's such an important thing that you're You then get something done. Okay.
Speaker: Then you get 200 words written or 300 words written and you go home. All right. Take 300 words times 365 days and you've got a fairly you've got a book.
Speaker: And that's only one year. That's how the book gets written. And then people come up to me on the campus of the school where I teach and they say, you're so prolific.
Speaker: Yeah. my head i i I don't say anything. I just am stunned. it's I can see that yeah based on the the daily grind and the daily labor of it, it doesn't feel prolific. But when like you open up, let's say, a ah more recent book of yours and you see that giant catalog of all those books you've written, you've got to look at that and be like, oh wow, i maybe I am prolific.
Speaker: Well, I do now at this point. I mean, when i'm when i'm i mean i'm I'm really sort of I'm into my tabula rasa years and is that what ah what a boon that has been. And I can look at those things and and think thoughts like that nowadays. And I do.
Speaker: it it It does look like a fairly long list to me. Yeah. Well, it objectively is, for sure. well When you look at that list and you look at all the all those titles you've you've written, ah what what are some, you look there, that ah you what do you make of ah of your body of work and what are what are you most proud of when you look at that list?
Speaker: Ask me who my favorite daughter is. Yeah, no, I mean, I'm not going to pick out one. but but those Those projects, my criterion is that that I'm not going to call it done until it's best I can do.
Speaker: it might It might not be as good as somebody else can do, but is if that's the best I can do, and that's where I'm leaving it. And and i I don't have the choices to make about it after that, because they're all the same in that respect.
Speaker: um Another answer I've given to questions like this what's what's your favorite piece of writing? there The one I just finished. Mm-hmm. is there is a good answer.
Speaker: Yeah, I guess maybe another way of coming at that a different angle might be like, it you know, was there a particular, you know book where you look at like, oh, you know what, that one took, you know, I had to go into like the bag of tricks, like deeper into the bag of tricks for that one, or that one had a real satisfying structure, or like, oh, I was surprised I...
Speaker: That was just an incredible reporting trip. Like that was ah just an amazing experience, you know, not playing favorites, but like when you look at it, be like, oh, wow, that was I'm pretty impressed with what I did there.
Speaker: Well, you know, in my work as it has gone over the years, I have gone to this place in that and generally speaking, like with the geologists and everything, formed a relationship with a local geologist or whatever the subject I'm writing about.
Speaker: And i just i don't just go and interview them and go away. i go and I don't leave. I'm there for for weeks, months sometimes, back and forth for years to three years to Alaska.
Speaker: This factor is such that that it's very possible to feel quite nostalgic about these things after they're over with. I wrote a piece about the the very last time I was up in the in Alaska in February of some year.
Speaker: And I realized that it was over now because the mail plane was going to pick me up the next day where it was up in Eastern interior Alaska. And the mail plane was going to pick me up today the next day, return me to Fairbanks and then Seattle and then Princeton.
Speaker: And it it was all over. And I i felt... I felt that very strongly up there even, and and then after after you get home.
Speaker: So i don't know. That's how it goes. I feel nostalgia for these people and places after it's all over because it is all over. Oh, for sure. and I think, you know, the the journalism and the storytelling you apply, I kind of it seems to rhyme with ah in Survival of the Bark Canoe, just the care and attention taking place the way those canoes were crafted and built in the way the time you take.
Speaker: to mine materials and to stitch them together in an artful way that stands the test of time. that it's ah It's an age-old craft, but it's not plied with the same maybe care and attention to detail as as in the past because things are so rushed and hustled. So I kind of see a ah ah symbolism between the bark canoe and the kind of journalism you do. i know Is that something you've given thought to? Well, I do too. I mean, i i mean the thing is I've admired so greatly the craftsmanship and and the the scholarship that had gone into the craftsmanship of of the guy who made the canoes. And and he was a single-minded person that all he did. And the analogy is is right. if that mean I see what you mean, and I and i ah don't deny it.
Speaker: The single-mindedness, hey i I'm drawn to those people because I think for me, I fundamentally lack a certain measure of focus in that singular drive and single-mindedness, that that obsessiveness that you see people, be it a Bill Bradley or an Henri Valancourt or fill in the blank of any modern-day person who has that singular vision.
Speaker: ah do Do you feel like over the decades that you were particularly you know drawn to these people because ah you just you admired that about them? Got into the relationships in very different ways.
Speaker: In the case of the four principal geologists who inform Annals of the Former World, Ken DeFays picked each of them and got them interested in having me come in and write about their section of the country and so forth.
Speaker: In Andy Chase's case, he wrote me a letter off of merchant ship in the Gulf of Mexico. And it's one of the two letters ever responded to that where I ah did a piece of writing that resulted from a letter from total stranger who was telling me, i get a lot of letters like that, what what to write about. Twice I've done it. there They're both related because Andy writes this letter from a merchant ship and I end up in South America. and And then Don Ainsworth, ah truck driver, transcontinental driver from a chemical tanker he had, he writes me a letter and says, if you go out the ocean a those those people, why don't you come out on the road with us?
Speaker: And I said, okay. I wrote him back. I said, tell me what you do. And the exchanges that followed that resulted in my showing up in a suburb of Atlanta and meeting him and getting out of his truck in Tacoma, Washington.
Speaker: that Those are the only two stories like that. So they're all different. yeah I'm not seeking out a type of character, put it that way. These people come um into my life in very different ways, and they are very, very different people.
Speaker: And you know over the years, I imagine that a lot of people have come to you for counsel and like to you know pick your brain and assuage a lot of their doubts with writing projects. ah And over the years, your late editor, Robert Bingham, was someone that you confided in. like Who were the people over the years that you've confided in you know when maybe you were feeling low in the middle of ah of a project and you needed that degree of counsel?
Speaker: My wife, my daughters, um ah Bingham, as you say, and Bingham is not the only editor I ever had. An editor is many, many different things, but an editor is the absolute best level. It's an interlocutor who helps you get your thing done, not somebody who rewrites your your sentences or something like that. That's a rewrite person.
Speaker: and but called an editor. An editor draws a a writer forward and helps helps get the thing done by shoring you up in your lack of confidence shows too much and other things. and that and But Bingham is not the only one that that has played that role with me. I mean, The New Yorker, there's several, including David Remnick, who is a former student of mine, and John Bennett,
Speaker: who's no longer alive, and Pat Crowe, who's no longer alive. Anyway, at Farris Strauss, they're a different kind of editor because, you know, when I've published all this stuff in in the New Yorker and then Farris Strauss is going to publish it, the piece is finished when you start off.
Speaker: And so the relationship is different, but I have loved the relationships with copy editors and people like that at Farris Strauss as well.
Speaker: And you've brought up your daughters a couple times, and they a couple of them are novelists as well. So yeah ah yeah the apple doesn't fall far from the tree there. So and gri the the fact that they're into writing, what has that meant to you that ah you know they've picked up the pen yeah for themselves?
Speaker: Oh, I just love it. And it's true of all four of them in their books. ways that I mean, in other words, Martha's a novelist and Jenny's a novelist, but Jenny's also a translator.
Speaker: And Jenny at the moment is winning huge prizes with big bucks involved for her translations of Marante novels. And she translates from Italian into English and and she teaches in the creative writing program at Princeton and she specifically teaches translation and she loves it.
Speaker: She also runs a graduate program at and NYU, comes down here every Friday to do that. So in anyway, I'm obviously very proud of my daughters and not ashamed, not afraid to say so.
Speaker: Oh, yeah. That's all that's amazing. And um yeah something I want to just ah close out with you, John, is um so i yeah my my friend Ruby, she studied as geologist, and she's a brilliant writer herself. And she is someone who has always long loved your work. like In her geology studies, not ah not even in her writing classes, in geology geology classes, they were handed you know control of nature as one of their seminal texts to study.
Speaker: And Geology class? In a geology class. Yeah, not even a writing class. Like, yeah, that your book was part of their curriculum. What I mean is that the control of nature is not one of my geology books, but it is full of geology, I guess.
Speaker: But yeah, she was handed that text and, you know, in in her writing, you know, she's one of the legions of people who write kind of in your legacy. And she wanted me to ask you and she wants to know that, you know, maybe what we're missing ah that maybe you haven't been able to write about so that we can continue to maybe advocate, you know, for the natural world. And similarly to how you reported on the natural world, like, you know, she's like, what do you want us to do? How can we carry on the kind of storytelling that you have done for decades?
Speaker: I don't know. There's several parts to that question. And one, hack can how can we carry on what what I've been doing for decades? Well, somebody has to sit down to do a piece of writing about some subject in the natural sciences and and And they're doing that. I mean, you know, Betsy Colbert at the New Yorker and people exist and are doing are doing that. It depends on what they get interested in. I mean, i ah when I got interested in writing about geology, there have been people writing about geology now and again in the New Yorker. And that wasn't the problem. I mean, i went when I went to William Sean and said that i I wanted to do this,
Speaker: to get into geology and stay with it for a time. he he goes He sighed deeply. And then he said, well, all right, he said, but readers will rebel.
Speaker: okay And readers did rebel. i could I got wonderful, funny stories about readers who rebelled. I mean, that is, you get a letter from from a lawyer in Boston and and and in huge, you know, Sharpie pen letters he has written, please stop writing about geology.
Speaker: What I did not write back to him was what this country needs is one less lawyer. that
Speaker: But anyway, there's, there's, there's that. Oh, for sure. Well, well well John, ah this was so great. I just need to, I mean, i've over the years when you and I have pecked emails back and forth to each other, you know I've always expressed how inspirational you've been to me, the way the things you write about, the way you go about writing, the way you go about reporting. It's just been so fundamentally important to... how I go about the work, and I draw inspiration from you just about every day. So I just thank you so much for everything you've done and for carving out some time to talk shop with me. This was ah an honor and a joy. Well, thank you so much, Brendan. You certainly have called attention to factual writing, which I think is wonderful.
Speaker: Man, we did it, didn't we? Don't forget check out John's work. There's something for everybody. Draft number four, his book on writing is master class in doing this kind of work and thinking through this kind of work.
Speaker: And be sure you're subscribed to my monthly newsletters, the Rage Against the Algorithm newsletter, if you want that hot first annual holiday gift guide featuring all the recommendations from the podcast and all the books I would recommend after a year of reading.
Speaker: And... cool jams i don't know oh and the winner the first annual cnf pod award for outstanding achievement in the field of excellence seriously i i have selected a winner i am ordering a little bamboo plaque and we're gonna we're gonna celebrate it it's gonna be fun announcement coming soon and then there's pitch club welcome to pitchclub.substack.com breaking down them pitches so glad I got to speak to John at length. I i wish I'd asked him about interviewing. Here I am, post-mortem, Monday morning quarterbacking myself.
Speaker: ah yeah Maybe I'll talk to him again soon. Off mic. And i chat with him about that. And maybe I can relay his thoughts if he's cool with that. If not, I will just hoard that information.
Speaker: Anyway, thanks CNFers for making it this far. In this episode, yes, but also to 500 episodes, you heard. i love that people are just discovering the podcast, which is the longest running of its kind by a mile.
Speaker: But there are a good smattering of you who have been along for this ride for several years, and you have no doubt grown along with me and the podcast. The effect it's had on me can't be understated. you know Many of the usual trivialities can get under my skin. I still get jealous.
Speaker: I still get annoyed when people don't return the favor, when a favor is worth returning. and and you know I've always been a kind of good interviewer, you know right from the start of my journalism career.
Speaker: A good sounding board for people to talk and spill the beans. But I've become more attuned over the years at what makes a bad interview, which makes me very aware of how best to conduct an interview podcast and having a good shot clock, realizing that, yes, I am very much a part of the listener experience as much as the guest in some ways.
Speaker: Not in an upstaging kind of way, but just enough seasoning that a CNF pod interview is very much unique and singular. Of course, I can get better, and I'm always trying to.
Speaker: I think I'm pretty darn good at what I do here. To that end, I'm wondering how best to improve while still honoring what people have come to enjoy about the show since its inception in 2013, which has always been a mix of process and headspace, tactical and practical things you can try on for size, celebrating the work in hand, of course, being an essay, an article, a book, a movie, a podcast series.
Speaker: Where I can see it going in terms of what i'm what I find more interesting might be what the work means to people. The animating force of why the work matters to you and what brings you back to it time and again. When outside forces might be telling you to go to law school or get a real estate license.
Speaker: Nothing wrong with that, but it is... no No shade thrown at those professions, but ah the the the nonfiction life, the nonfiction writing life has a way of, well, let's just say those off-ramps to the freeway are awfully seductive.
Speaker: And getting to know a writer's routine or process is all fine and kind of cool from a voyeuristic POV. But getting people to articulate something deeper, getting people to talk in stories, that usually gets me leaning into the edit and leading in, leading, leaning into the microphone when I'm talking to someone. Fostering a greater connection and accelerated intimacy as Isabel Wilkerson might call. it She's not been on the show yet.
Speaker: She doesn't return my calls. Between me and the guest and then I guess by extension you and the guest. But there's only so much time. You know, I record for an hour.
Speaker: And most people get a little squirmy as we approach an hour, a bit fidgety. And if their appearance on the pod yeah equaled a thousand book sales, I suspect they wouldn't get that squirmy. And maybe we'll get there someday.
Speaker: I don't know what I'd do without this little podcast that could. As many of you know, my confidence is often non-existent, but this show has made me far more confident person. I'm sure of myself in ways I could only have dreamed of a dozen years ago.
Speaker: and Just a few years ago, if I had interviewed John McPhee in 2018, would have shit my pants and probably not been able to eat for a week.
Speaker: But for this... I was like, sweet, cool. Like, it's been years in the making. And was like, okay, I'm going to do my homework. to reread some stuff. I'm going to give them a call.
Speaker: And we're going to have a good chat. I mean, I always get the pregame jitters, and especially with the Titans. But those are the good nerves that you shake off once you take your first snap and make your first completion. Usually an easy pass in the flat.
Speaker: Let's move those chains, man. Things I need to be wary of or careful of are complaining too much about things that maybe the average writer or the emerging writer would kill to have. Now, I always aim to be transparent and authentic and forthright, but I never want to lament book advance numbers or book sale numbers, but I think I can analyze them and make commentary without alienating people.
Speaker: I think I did a good job of breaking down my $150,000 book advance for the front runner, which talks about my privilege and also the reality of that advance. When payments are doled out, how much I skimmed off for taxes and agent commissions. It's a beautiful book advance.
Speaker: I'd kill for another one just like that. But when you do the math and break it down, suddenly you get a clearer picture of the reality of it. you know If it was spread over four years instead of three, yeah things might have been a little squirrely.
Speaker: I heard a famous writer on Instagram kind of lament the quote unquote sluggish book sales in their first week of ah of a book that came out this year. They said they only sold 5,000 copies in the first week. And I'm like, ooh.
Speaker: ah All right, take note, Don't do that. Just don't. That number is more than 99% of all authors will sell during their book's lifetime.
Speaker: And to make a comment in the book's first week like that, I think it's a little tone-deaf. But this is someone who has likely sold two, three, or four times that many books in the first week for some of their books and shot up that coveted bestseller list. Hedonic treadmills abound.
Speaker: My lady wife shared a post from another famous writer who said something like, I made the New York Times bestseller list. Why don't I feel better? Or like, I achieved all my dreams and I still feel like crap. And she she said, and I quote, fuck you.
Speaker: Then another prominent author I've seen like ah several years ago is lamenting his publisher-subsidized book tour, multiple-city book tour, and I was like, wow, you might want to check yourself before you wreck yourself, you know?
Speaker: you know I want to continue to toe that fine line between being forth forthcoming and forthright, you know letting behind letting people behind the curtain, you know my curtain, because so much of this world is gate-kept and cloistered.
Speaker: And part of the frustration is just not knowing what's going on on the other side of that gate. But I'm sure you've noticed over the years with your friends maybe who might be upwardly mobile and they complain about certain things that are so absurdly out of reach to you and the average person that you're like, oh my God, like what is your life?
Speaker: So how do you remain grounded? you know Self-awareness is key. yeah i Maybe have an ombudsman on call or something. I don't know. I think I can perhaps be more open about maybe personal day-to-day life in the parting shots, even if it's a little boring or dull or a little too Marc Maroney. It doesn't have to be about writing, though it often is.
Speaker: I'm someone who knows how lucky he is, but I'm also someone who feels crappy 90% of the time. It's just table stakes. I don't know what to say. It's that my out-of-the-box software. I struggle a lot with this.
Speaker: Do I just ignore that? Maybe. and I think my articulation of that has been part of the appeal of this podcast. I'm also not the same person I was when I started or even a few years ago.
Speaker: You know, I've grown somewhat. And to lament the same old, same old gets tiresome, like a broken record. I've outgrown a lot of podcasts, and i don't want to be a podcast people outgrow, but I understand if that happens.
Speaker: yeah i'm ah I'm an acquired taste to begin with and i certainly one to stick with. Fuck, I don't know how fun, hobbies. Come on now. My gas tank of self-hatred is always topped off. Like, fuck, it's a renewable energy that powers up every second I'm breathing.
Speaker: Fantastic. I've long toyed with the idea of doing video of some kind, and I'm confident that I won't introduce that to the podcast because I imagine that things are going to swing back towards audio the audio experience, kind of like how vinyl's back in, in vogue. going to be like, you know, podcast, man, they're just better audio experience. Why why do we need to watch them any anymore?
Speaker: So I was like, still here, never left. I see myself kind of fucking around with video for fun, but not something that's fundamental to the podcast experience. I joke, I kid with myself, just myself, because most of my jokes just, well, they're for me. It's a a little YouTube series called This O-American Life. You get it? My name's O-American.
Speaker: I was 32 when I started this podcast. A flailing, bitter, frustrated, lonely mess. yeah This show started to build me up in ways I could have never predicted. But deep down, I hoped it would be a kind of medicine, a kind of therapy.
Speaker: It was always for me. And the astute listener knows that most of these conversations I'm having with people from the start up until now are experiencing a slice of my own struggles and worries at any given time.
Speaker: But i long knew that the show could it couldn't only be about me and for me. Eventually you reach a certain point where you have to start thinking beyond yourself.
Speaker: I knew by extension it would help others. And I had to be cognizant and aware of the listener and the listener experience. It had to be in service of the greater community, giving the guests a good time that they would want to come back. You know, putting the riffs and parting shots at the end of the show so it didn't create this traffic jam atop the show when attention is most fragile.
Speaker: These were little maneuvers to ensure a good experience for those generous enough to spend an hour with me or more every week. I'm not big on analytics, but what I've noticed is that I've never experienced a spike in growth nor a spike in depreciation, if you will, with the exception of when Apple changed over. it's I won't bog you down on that.
Speaker: It was a weird thing with the auto download. ill Maybe I'll talk about another time. I've talked about it before. Fuck it. Who cares? It doesn't doesn't matter. Forget everything I just said. What I have noticed is the long climb, the slope of a shield volcano.
Speaker: And what this means is that when people elect to hit that subscribe button, I think they tend to stick around. Because there's just something about the CNF pod experience that feels true across the writing spectrum. From the novice, to the emerging writer, to the working writer, maybe even the famous writer or two.
Speaker: To the jabronis. Raises his hand. The show is good company, I like to think. Inherent to this kind of media is a deep feeling of loneliness because aside from my conversation with the guests, and it's almost always remote, this is just me at my microphone reading a script, sometimes ad-limbing a few things here and there, but by and large, it's me reading my script with my beautiful, aging, dying dog to my left on her bed talking into this PR40.
Speaker: But I know you're out there. I feel your presence every week. I like to think on my best week, I'm good company. All I can say, and I say this with all the confidence and certainty I can offer, that I can muster, is you've been the best company for me all these years.
Speaker: What about 500 more? So stay wild, CNFers. And say with me now, if you can't do interview. See ya.
