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Episode 492: The Daniel Littlewood Takeover Extravaganza!
3 Plays1 minute ago
"My editor was like, hold on, you need to put your thumb on the scale of why this matters. Now, there's no first person in this, but you have your thumb on the scale, you need to assert your own point of view. Like, this matters, why? says Brendan O'Meara, author of The Front Runner: The Life of Steve Prefontaine Mariner Books.
Who the heck does this host think he is being a guest on his own podcast? The nerve of this guy. That’s right, for the third live taping of the Creative Nonfiction Podcast at Gratitude Brewing, I was interviewed by the brilliant Daniel Littlewood, who kinda makes me look and sound like a jabroni’s jabroni.
Daniel is Group Creative Director at The Explainer Studio at Vox Media, Inc. He edited the documentary feature film “Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten: Cambodia’s Lost Rock & Roll.” Formerly, he was the lead producer for HuffPost’s Live’s multi-million dollar sponsored content division. He has a tremendously easy-going, conversation nature to interviewing with tremendous shot-clock awareness that required next to no editing on my part.
So The Front Runner has, at this point, been out for four months. Daniel and I recorded this on July 27 so the book was only out for two months at that time. This was a painful edit for me because I’m so sick of hearing myself talk and talk and talk. I’m not so sure I took a single breath during this conversation, but Daniel was an incredible partner and if something should happen to me, I want Daniel to take over CNF Pod.
In this episode, I talk about:
- My love of my editor
- Valorization of pain
- Making the case for why I was the person to write this book
- Asserting POV in biography
- World building
- And why it was a good thing I forgot the combination of our gun safe
Ruby McConnell introduces us at Gratitude Brewing.
Newsletter: Rage Against the Algorithm
Show notes: brendanomeara.com
Recommended
Transcript
Upcoming Events and Book Signings
00:00:00
Speaker
OASI and Effers, the frontrunner, continues striding into fall and tomorrow, Saturday, the 27th of September. I will be a featured author alongside Ruby McConnell for the Florence Festival of Books in Florence, Oregon.
00:00:13
Speaker
It's all day, but the conversation starts at 4.30 to 5.30 and we're just basically talking about literary citizenship and community and showing up.
00:00:24
Speaker
I'll be in Ketchum, Idaho signing and selling books with my own two hands. At the Legends Never Die Ultra Marathon on Friday, October 4th and Saturday, October 5th.
00:00:36
Speaker
Then I'll be at Fleet Feet Meridian in Boise, Idaho on Monday, October 6th at 6 o'clock, where I will be joined by Steve Prefontaine's high school distance coach, Phil Persian.
00:00:49
Speaker
Should be a fun discussion. And on Tuesday, October 6th, I'm at Old Speak in Boise in conversation with my good pal,
Call for Submissions: New Audio Magazine
00:00:57
Speaker
Kim H. Cross. Stay plugged into my newsletters and brendanamero.com.
00:01:02
Speaker
Secondarily, on Instagram at Creative Nonfiction Podcast. And wouldn't you know, there's a call for submissions for a new themed audio magazine called Codes.
00:01:13
Speaker
The Mandalorian in his kind lived by a simple code, always punctuated by saying, this is the way. What codes do you live by? What codes were you at one time or another told to live by?
00:01:25
Speaker
Has a code led you down the right path or the wrong? Essays should be no longer than 2,000 words. Email submissions with codes in the subject line to creative nonfictionpodcast at gmail.com.
00:01:37
Speaker
Original, previously unpublished work only, please. Deadlines October 2025. twenty twenty five There is cash on the line, burrito money from the O'Mara grant. So send me your best fully formed pieces and consider becoming a patron to help put money in the coffers that helps put money in the pockets of writers, patreon.com slash cnfpod.
00:02:00
Speaker
It's a horrible panic and I'm so glad I forgot the the combination to our gun safe because that was that was a liability if I had known that code.
00:02:15
Speaker
The fucking nerve of this guy.
Live Taping with Daniel Littlewood
00:02:19
Speaker
primarily to writers about the art and craft of telling true story timeim brendan o'mera very tired so so had a big eventful weekend and my battery has bottomed out and i'm going to the redwoods for three days so i'm producing this episode on a monday and what do you know who the fuck does this host think he is being the guest of his own fucking podcast the fucking nerve of this guy That's right.
00:02:45
Speaker
For the third live taping of the Creative Nonfiction Podcast at Gratitude Brewing in Eugene, I was interviewed by the brilliant Daniel Littlewood, who kind of makes me look and sound like a jabroni's jabroni.
00:02:57
Speaker
Daniel is the group creative director the Explainer Studio at Vox Media Inc. He edited the documentary film Don't Think I've Forgotten, Cambodia's Lost Rock and Roll.
00:03:10
Speaker
Formerly, he was the lead producer for HuffPost's Lives. multi-million dollar sponsorship content division. He was a tremendously easygoing conversationalist. Just got a great nature to his interviewing.
00:03:28
Speaker
Tremendous shot clock awareness that required next to no editing on my part.
Pitch Club Initiative
00:03:33
Speaker
Show notes of this episode and more at brendanomero.com. Hey, hey, there you can peruse hot blogs, tasteful nudes, and sign up for my two very important newsletters, the flagship Rage Against the Algorithm and Pitch Club.
00:03:44
Speaker
Would love for Pitch Club to catch fire. Let's keep doing it. We're going to be looking at book pitches, agent pitches, radio pitches, doc film pitches, pitches to sources of like lobbying your case that you should
Writing the Prefontaine Biography
00:03:56
Speaker
write about them. Yeah, pitches, they go.
00:03:59
Speaker
They go there, man. Maybe we'll talk about my Prefontaine book proposal. Maybe my next book proposal, if and when it sells, it'll sell. It's got to sell. Oh boy, better sell. Pitch Club will never cost a dime. I will never paywall something this rich.
00:04:15
Speaker
All I ask is for your permission because platform is currency. Both are first of the month. No spam. So far as I can tell, you can't beat them. Also, if you care to support the podcast and throw a few dollar bills, visit patreon.com slash cnfpod.
00:04:27
Speaker
There are some rad perks, but most are just happy to throw a few bucks into my guitar case. So the frontrunner has at this point been out for four months. and Daniel and I recorded this on July 27th.
00:04:39
Speaker
So the book was out only for two months at that time, roughly. This was a painful edit for me because I'm so sick of hearing myself talk and talk and talk. I'm not so sure I took a single breath during this conversation, that kind of nervous, frenetic energy. I hope I don't sound like too much of a fool.
00:04:56
Speaker
But Daniel was an incredible partner, and if something should happen to me, I want Daniel to take over CNFPod. In this episode, I talk about my love of my editor, valorization of pain, making the case for why I was the person to write this book, asserting POV in biography, world building, and why it was a good thing I forgot the combination to our gun safe.
00:05:18
Speaker
Ruby McConnell introduces us at Gratitude Brewing, but for now, here's, look, me. I am so, so sorry.
00:05:30
Speaker
Riff.
00:05:37
Speaker
Like, how many times do you need to get hit by a fucking piano or jump off a cliff? I'd rather not hit it on the nose because I have bad aim, you know? we're We're different people now. We've changed.
00:05:48
Speaker
but This is going to have to interest somebody somewhere other than me.
00:06:04
Speaker
We are back. It is time for the main event,
Prefontaine's Impact on Track and Field
00:06:09
Speaker
which is always exciting. um For those of you that need a primer on Steve Prefontaine, here's your primer.
00:06:21
Speaker
Don't raise your hand, don't let anybody know who you are if you need this. This one's for you. So, Steve Prefontaine is known for pushing the boundaries of track and field in the 1970s, not only with record-breaking race times, but also with the way in which he chose to run and win.
00:06:41
Speaker
He gave every race his maximum effort. He competed in the 5,000 meter event in the 1972 Olympics in Munich, and he held the American record in every running distance from 2,000 to 10,000 meters.
00:06:58
Speaker
He was the very first athlete to ever sign with Nike. setting the stage for commercial sports sponsorship, especially in the fight for amateur and collegiate athletes to be compensated for the work that they do.
00:07:16
Speaker
He played a significant role in popularizing track and field, and his charismatic style and bravado created a legacy that clearly endures today.
Challenges of Writing an Unauthorized Biography
00:07:27
Speaker
He passed away in a tragic accident here in Eugene on May 30th, 1975 at only 24 years of age and 50 years later, his legacy is still inspiring runners from all around the world.
00:07:42
Speaker
So I give you Brendan O'Meara in conversation with Daniel Littlewood about Prefontaine, the front runner. Let's hear it for him.
00:07:53
Speaker
before I start with the biggest and the simplest one. Why pre? Why you? but Well, that that is like the central question that you're always asked by, say, like an editor an agent, especially the why you, and I'm something of a nobody, so I had to do a lot of a lot of prep to make sure that I was the right person to tell this book because i'm not a track and field writer, and I don't have much of a track record, pun not intended, when ah writing a you book ah ambitious like this.
00:08:20
Speaker
But... When you're looking to sell a book, it's always great to be casting your gaze ahead to these major anniversaries. In 2017, I was already thinking eight years ahead when it came to him. Like, well, the 50th anniversary of his death is way out there. I didn't know what the shape of a project might look like.
00:08:41
Speaker
But I was starting to save string, reading and rereading Tom Jordan's sort of seminal introductory Prefontaine biography. which I consider that one something of a character sketch. And then by the time I was looking to get to my book, I wanted to do more of a character study.
00:08:55
Speaker
And 50 years gives you that perspective. It was also a time in the country where we're really starting to interrogate a lot of the statues that were standing in this country. there was no bigger statue in Oregon than Prefontaine. And with the big anniversary coming up, I'm like, well, there's a good chance to reappraise his life in this modern rubric and start to maybe get to the man behind the myth and start to interrogate that mythology and to round out his character in a way that hadn't really been done before. Because ah over the last several decades, we've been kind of spoon-fed a particular mythology.
00:09:28
Speaker
and yeah mythology is kind of a damning thing to fall and fall prey to. So ah biography done well is always looking to burrow below that and you know show a certain measure of humanity that ah that I think we can all appreciate.
00:09:44
Speaker
I think one, you know I assume there's always this moment of, okay, I think this could be a book. What was the moment for you of, this might not be a book. I've done the research. I've thought about it. Oh, I don't know if this is going to happen. And then what'd you do?
00:09:58
Speaker
Yeah, so ah so many times like yeah I would wake up at 1 or 2 in the morning just so wondering like... Just wanted to bring you back to that moment. It's a horrible panic, and I'm so glad I forgot the the combination to our gun safe because that was that was a liability if I had known that code.
00:10:14
Speaker
Because waking up at 2 in the morning was like definitely a very vulnerable time for me when it comes to a book project.
Research and New Perspectives on Prefontaine
00:10:20
Speaker
And so it was always this idea of like trying to come up with try to find new material. What hasn't been said before?
00:10:27
Speaker
So many conversations with a lot of priest contemporaries were like, well, what new can be said about this guy? you like There's so much to be said. There's been movies, there's that documentary, there's like there's a lot of other things that have been written about him. like What are you bringing to the table?
00:10:40
Speaker
And I was like, well, you know you just you start combing through the archives, and then you newspaper archives, and you find all these random names that have not been on the record before. and you hope they're alive, and you hope that the phone numbers you're able to find are valid and work, and you don't get that awful buzzing sound and ah of a dead phone number. And you just call like crazy. And then you eventually you start finding people who have never been on the record, who all have their little slice of Steve Prefontaine.
00:11:07
Speaker
Thousands of people. anyway I spoke to hundreds and read thousands of articles, but he touched the lives of thousands of people. And all those people have that experience with them. And if you can get enough of them, you can start layering those things like a 3D printer and you get a much more three-dimensional picture of who this person is, especially getting to those people who really weren't as prominently on the record.
00:11:29
Speaker
And so those were the things that was often keeping me up at night. was just like, how how does this how does this not feel like a retread of the movies or the book that's been written before just a little thicker?
00:11:41
Speaker
And so I like to think that through... you know through a lot of rigor and the time afforded to me by a certain measure of privilege i i benefit from that I was able to you know reach that level of depth with this one.
00:11:54
Speaker
yeah well you You told me coming into this, this is a ah podcast by writers, for writers, let's get into the nitty gritty. so I'm going to ask that question one more time, but ask you to specifically describe one of those moments of, gosh, I don't know. what do i do you what do you do? Do you stand up? Do you take a walk? Do you get out of bed at 2 a.m.? What was your Give us a flashbulb of that.
00:12:16
Speaker
Yeah. So i would, you know it if I was in bed, yeah some thought a lot of times I would go go to the couch at that point, and then I would be followed by Sister Kevin, our German shepherd, and then she would jump up on the couch, and she would take my foot room, and then I'd start hearing the claws of the other dog, Hank, and he's just sort of like a meathead. he's just like, doo, doo, doo, doo.
00:12:41
Speaker
He's coming up, so I have to slide even farther down the couch, and he gets up there, and then he farts when he gets up, so then the whole area smells, and I'm like, I just need some clear headspace, and here you two come in, and in imposing your will on me, don't you know I'm writing a book?
00:12:57
Speaker
and Am I writing a book? Oh, no. Yeah, am I writing a book? Am I going have to, like and and and the other thing, too, my wife is in the audience, and we weren't allowed, she was just like, don't spend your book advance, because we don't know if we're going to have to pay it back.
00:13:08
Speaker
I was like, I was like, well, you're absolutely right. And I was in a panic the whole time until I turned it in. I'm like, yes, I can keep the money.
00:13:19
Speaker
And so that that would that was often a lot of the a lot of the trepidation around around that. But like during the daytime, when I'm interviewing people and finally getting people, in i may make 20 phone calls and land too.
00:13:31
Speaker
And it's just it was always very energizing. So if I could get someone on the phone, it it is um it is a numbers game. Like ah writing a biography is a math problem. It's like you need just, it's a summation. Get as many as you can.
00:13:44
Speaker
And so I would get when you yeah one or two or three in a day. and And being an introverted person, I can only take about, you know, maybe three hours or four hours on the phone in a given day, you know, just really listening intently with these people, trying to get into the headspace of Stephen. Like, tell me, where's his head at? we are Or here we are here.
00:14:02
Speaker
Where's his head at? Where's his head at? What was he like in the quieter moments? We know kind of we know the track. like I know the crowd was loud. That's great. But I want to know a little bit more about him in the quieter moments. And then you you start getting some of that stuff with his high school, say, with his high school teammates. You know, like, oh, yeah, well, what was he like away? Like, when would you wake up in the morning? If you went on the run, what were you talking about? It was always girls.
00:14:25
Speaker
And what he was a bit of a prankster too. He would do those things where you'd run by a sign and smash his head on the, ah you know, fake like he's smashing his head on a sign. It's like, all right, this is cool. This is the stuff giving me altitude and giving me confidence. i Like, okay, I'm starting to tread into some areas that haven't been done before.
00:14:42
Speaker
You know, some heavier, some lighter. But by being able to connect a lot of these dots, I was like, okay, I started to get more and more confidence.
The Role of Storytelling in Journalism
00:14:49
Speaker
I was like, oh, cool, we're getting to a good place here. Add to that, I just i won the lottery with my editor, Matt Harper, brilliant, brilliant editor, and he was so invested in the project to see it through.
00:15:01
Speaker
We had great 90-minute conversations, just kind of like talking it through. just like, all right, like, You know, what are these things really saying about him? You know, if you're gonna write about a race, so what is it about that particular race that is eliciting something about his character?
00:15:16
Speaker
That's why 60,000 words from this original manuscript were cut, because there was a lot of bloat in there, because I threw so many cool things up there. And so a lot of that stuff had to fall by the wayside when you're like, OK, this particular race is his real assertion on the track, when he might have really ossified a certain bond with the crowd. OK, that matters.
00:15:37
Speaker
How can we bolster that up even more? So as I'm starting to get more of those dots to connect, you know the stress levels come down ah little. So to distill a little bit, get on the phone.
00:15:52
Speaker
Yeah, talk to people, get an interview, move forward progress. Was that really what sort of kept you moving over over some of these? Yeah, exactly. So like in my bullet journal, I would start, and for my next book, I have a specific notebook for it that I call the compendium. And it's just like giving me an itemized look at what I'm doing on a particular day. Who did I leave a voicemail with? Who did I text with? Who did I email?
00:16:15
Speaker
Did I reach this person? Did I leave a voicemail? And I hate nothing more than doing cold calls. like It's my least favorite thing in the world. It gives me tightness in the chest. Hate it. It's just not in my nature to just get on the phone and just randomly call people who don't know me and who they i have this random North Carolina phone number. And I'm, calling for this book, predominantly calling Pacific Northwest people.
00:16:37
Speaker
yeah that That was my hell. like So much of this book was my hell, and that one in particular was certainly part of it, a significant part of my hell. So I would have a script on my monitor in front of me. I'd be like, hi, yeah I'm Brendan O'Meara. I'm a sports writer based out Eugene, Oregon. I'm under contract with Imprint of HarperCollins.
00:16:57
Speaker
to write a book about Prefontaine. but pause Pause for it. Yeah. It was just like, yeah, it's just like I understand that you were a competitor or teammate or you know fill in the blank relation there. And he'd be like, you know, I'd love to have set up a time for a phone call.
00:17:11
Speaker
And you know, no experience is too small. I would love to just have you on the phone and we can get to talk about how your life overlapped with him, no detail being too small. And then ah most of the time they would call me back and then we would just start, okay, you know, what was your earliest memory of him?
00:17:26
Speaker
And then you start, you know, it's a very surface level question. What do you think about when you hear his name? And they'll give me something else. and then we start burrowing a little bit deeper and deeper and deeper. And then I know I'm getting to someplace rich, usually like 30 minutes into these conversations where you're like, you're starting to get a to the meaning of things versus just what happened.
00:17:46
Speaker
So you hate phone calls and you are a journalist who has a podcast. Yeah. Okay. you Yes. yeah You're realizing that just that how incredibly weird a career path I have chosen for myself. but But I owe my mother a debt of gratitude because she is the greatest listener that anyone will ever come across. And a lot of my friends growing up They would just sit on the couch with her and she they would just talk her ear off and she was always just
Prefontaine's Relationship with Pain and Competitive Spirit
00:18:14
Speaker
very good at listening. yeah We always had Visa subsidized snacks in our cupboard and i so we'd always have all kinds of junk food in there and everyone just coming in grabbing junk food and IBC root beer and ho-hos and whatever.
00:18:28
Speaker
ding-dongs. And so she they would sit on the couch and she would listen. and And that's the kind of slow journalism that i that I like and I think I took from her, that ability to sit and have a conversation.
00:18:40
Speaker
It's not like adversarial journalism. It's this kind of stuff of like, I want to know where you're coming from. I want to seek a greater degree of understanding. And the better I can do that and get into the sensory details of a particular scene, then maybe I can build a good scene and convey it on the page in a hopefully skillful way.
00:18:57
Speaker
I think you gave me a great segue there with sensory details because one of the things I wanted to talk about that really comes through in the book is pain. I kind of want to throw it pretty open-ended to you because there is a lot of valorization of pain. There's a lot of revealing of pain and there's a lot of, I think I even wrote it down, Steve courted the pain as a mistress.
00:19:19
Speaker
what is What is pain to Steve Prefontaine? What is pain to you writing this book? He was someone who really invited that. ah in in a And a not nothing really new. all Runners for decades and decades and decades look agonized at a finish line, be it a Ron Clark or a Jerry Lindgren.
00:19:36
Speaker
And then certainly as as Prefontaine comes along, So it's nothing entirely new, but the way in which he courted it, the fact that he would go to the lead and just dare everybody to come after him, and he would put himself through the wringer of an entire race like that, just because he just thought it morally corrupt to leech off a front runner. He just wanted to take it to the front.
00:19:59
Speaker
So as a result, you know he would you know he would speak about it openly, about just having having this degree of inviting it. And I think he fed on it. yeah He would invite it, and knowing that other people behind him were going to start to feel it because he felt it. He was honest about it, but he thrived on it.
00:20:17
Speaker
and like He ate it. And so as a result, he knew like in a one particular cross-country race, like he attacked this one hill that was really bugging him. But the fact that he pushed through it with such skill, it's like he knew that behind him people were going to start falling behind. So he's like, this hill is going to make them slow down, so I must go faster.
00:20:35
Speaker
and and he And he did that. He would go win that NCAA championship. Yeah, there were any number of times where he would be at this one particular race, 1970 against Washington State, a dual meet here at Hayward. he it was It was the race that kind of put him on the map in terms of the three mile.
00:20:52
Speaker
ah He won this race by... 200 maybe yeah probably about 200 yards and it was one of those things where no one had any business winning a race like you don't get any more points for winning it that by winning by that distance so as a result he is everyone is just going insane as he's winning this race like well what business does he have running out there and steve savage who was one of his teammates ran behind him he could see steve across the across the infield And it was just one of those things where he had no business running that far that far ahead that hard because what but point was it?
00:21:26
Speaker
But the point was the connection and the point was the pain. And later he would like articulate, he was coming up to the two mile mark faster than he ever had. And he's just like, oh, like I haven't been here before.
00:21:37
Speaker
And like I got another mile to go. And it's just like, what choice did he have in his head but to keep going and to keep inviting it? Because the more he invited it, the more the people gave it back to him. and it And it just put more wind at his back.
00:21:48
Speaker
Do you think writing an ah an unauthorized biography let you be more honest about some of the pain that Steve went through in his life? Oh, absolutely. Yeah, an unauthorized biography, people don't know, it's kind of got a bad name for itself just on its term. me It feels kind of salacious.
00:22:03
Speaker
um But all it is is journalism. It's just a journalistic biography where you're hopefully you work in cooperation with central figures or the family, but not in collaboration where where those central figures might be able to sanitize.
00:22:18
Speaker
certain things that might be a bit unsavory. you know sir So I don't think I would have been able to get away had it not been unauthorized. like At the very start of the book, we're going to get a window to the abuse that he suffered at the at the hand of his father primarily and how Nita Prefontaine was his protector, like would pick him up and shield him from
Prefontaine's Childhood and Resilience
00:22:41
Speaker
abuse. Ray Arndt, his first cousin, like witnessed his father take out his belt and just beat the shit out of him.
00:22:47
Speaker
right there and it was just one of these things like that degree of abuse was like literally beaten into him at a young age. I don't think I get away with that if it's not unauthorized. Like that's the kind of journalism that you get that is just what you're able to report on when you don't have to answer to anybody except what you hope is the truth.
00:23:04
Speaker
And then you triangulate that as best you can. like You speak to Nita, you speak to Ray and anecdotally there's a fraternity brother, you know, John Van Zonneveld who I tracked down and he able to attest to it because he came from a similarly abusive background and he just remembers Steve like ah shaking his head, he's like, yeah, that's kind of how I got my start in running.
00:23:23
Speaker
And so you get a real idea that it was that degree of pain and that that really informed the way he was able to inflict punishment also on the track. Maybe that's a bit of a stretch and a bit reductive to think of that, like this pain here, inflict pain here.
00:23:37
Speaker
But, you know, it's it's an experiment, thought experiment worth playing with. But yeah, to your point, if it was a collaboration, Yeah, I don't know if you were able to put that in, because it's an unsavory detail, but again, it kind of rounds out the humanity, maybe gets us to a greater understanding of who he is and who he was.
00:23:53
Speaker
well And you gotta live here. this is This is Eugene. like does that Did that have any fallout? Does that feel like you had to pull punches? Does that feel like you got you were you're ready for anything that might happen next?
00:24:07
Speaker
Yeah, I didn't really feel like I had to pull any punches, and so much of the reporting of this book anyway was like on the phone. ah So i maybe I was a bit detached. and you know And I wasn't about to, you know if I came across an unsavory detail that was germane to the story, and I never felt scared off or maybe like maybe I should tread lightly here.
00:24:27
Speaker
And so I was yeah i was very you know aware that maybe I was and starting to you know throw paint on the statue of a demigod, but I didn't see it that way. as Doing long-form journalism in biography and some of the ugly, unsavory details that help get us to their humanity ah makes me, as a reader, ah like them even more, and you get a better understanding of these people.
00:24:52
Speaker
If I came around with something that just felt like it just was hero worship and hagiography, I'd be like, oh, this is garbage. And I've read some of those Prefontaine things and they are
Integrity in Sports Journalism
00:25:03
Speaker
garbage. They're they're just not good.
00:25:04
Speaker
Like, oh, cool. You recounted a bunch of races and said how good he was. Like, that's boring and not really true. Is that sports journalism?
00:25:18
Speaker
Nowadays, you have to tread so much more lightly with very famous athletes because they all have their production companies now. So it's just like you can't even get to them anyway. ah But yeah, back in the day, ah so many reporters would be on the planes with with teams. You know, the Boston Globe reporters would be on the plane with the Celtics. And so they would be at the bar after games with Larry Bird and and everyone. And so there was a degree of relationship. But I did think they had they probably had some degree of understanding.
00:25:45
Speaker
of the give and take, at least back in the day. Nowadays, like, athletes can kind can can control control their message so well that it it's very hard if you don't, like, butter them up to maybe get an exclusive thing. But they all have their own podcasts now in social media. So it's like and sports journalism and long-form journalism has really suffered. So you almost have to go to the fringe sports who don't have a whole lot of platform, track and field, or... women's basketball and women's sports by and large aren't as popular, so you can still get good access.
00:26:18
Speaker
Like through over my career, I've had better access to women athletes than men just because you know they they're not getting as much coverage, which is a shame, but for me, selfishly, I'm like well, that's good, because I can get and can get closer to them.
00:26:31
Speaker
So yeah, it's it's ah it's tough. Yeah, sports journalism now. i'm I'm glad I'm not like a beat writer or anything like that where you might have to really stroke the egos of some of these guys to get information. ah It's not how I really operate.
00:26:43
Speaker
yeah Part of the book is about how Steve was great with press, though, how he really used press. Do you want to talk little bit about that, and would that have played out now? Yeah, he was he was built for Instagram.
00:26:56
Speaker
The way he looked and the way he was very vocal about his training, you can really picture him posting these training videos that you see a lot of these modern runners do, but not having that at his disposal back in the day He was great copy every single time. And like great copy begets more attention.
00:27:15
Speaker
And so all all these reporters were always going to him right from a pretty young age. His freshman year at the U of O, he was just all over the news.
Prefontaine's Legacy in Athlete Advocacy
00:27:23
Speaker
And he was just very honest. And he gave great content. And he was funny, at times irreverent, but very at most of the time very just kind of kind of brash.
00:27:35
Speaker
and arrogant, which really rhymes with what we see today. When he was just coming up, he would write these dispatches back to his Coos Bay paper and he just like, this is where I am. Like when he was going to Europe, he would write these letters to the editor and then he would publish it in the paper as like a column.
00:27:52
Speaker
And and this was his this is an Instagram post. This is him having that bond with his fans, a real authentic bond of him just like he couldn't wait to land when he got to Paris so he could go for a run and all this stuff and all that real, that those little things were just so charming that, you know, he's thinking of all these people back home and he knows he's a draw. He knows he has fans and he knows the media is the best way to really make, make a greater connection to that. So he was really made for the modern day, which is kind of a, uh,
00:28:22
Speaker
A lot of grace notes about that in the book, because the original title of the book, I'll just say the original subtitle of the book was Steve Prefontaine and the Dawn of the Modern Athlete. And I think in a lot of ways, like he was embodying a spirit of modernity that we're seeing play out here decades later.
00:28:38
Speaker
from the From the desk of Steve Prefontaine, the dispatch? Yeah, it was so cool. like He would just really write these things, and even at the age of 18, and this is wild too, he was taking shots at the AAU, which is this amateur...
00:28:52
Speaker
a draconian amateur establishment that control track and field. And so he's learning through osmosis with all the other, ah the elder statesmen who have been just beaten down their spirit, beaten by the AAU, and then spit out in their mid-20s in their physical prime, unable to compete anymore because that was just the nature of the times.
00:29:11
Speaker
So Steve's writing back to his paper just be like, yeah, the AAU doesn't know how to do anything, doesn't know how to run shit. And it's just like, oh my god, like no one had the confidence or the wherewithal at the age of 18 without the experience. He didn't have any barely any experience with the AAU. But here he is already voicing a discontent that was bumbling and rumbling, had been for years, and was going to reach ahead definitely yeah in in his lifetime.
00:29:37
Speaker
Do you want to dig into that just for a second, even just sort of a brief explanation of you're a 24-year-old runner and you're out of the game, right? That they're just, because the because of the Olympics, because of amateur amateurism rules, which now feels like a very different period, do you sort of have a quick arc whats of the the pivotal moment that Brie Fontaine was in, and why wouldn't he just run until he couldn't run anymore?
00:30:02
Speaker
Right. Yeah, and this is what's kind of cool about biography, this element of world building. and And we think of world building in fantasy stuff, but there's world building in nonfiction and biography too, and part of this world was the amateur ethic of the day, meaning you couldn't take any money or sponsorships.
00:30:20
Speaker
It was frowned upon to even wear like stuff with logos on You definitely couldn't have your name on anything. You couldn't coach. yeah like These athletes couldn't even coach for for money. that you Steve would do it kind of clandestinely under the table for some women athletes. And you're not even talking about while they're in college. You're talking about after. Yeah, after. like and And so when you can't make a dime from all this, so a lot of these guys, they have the infrastructure at their colleges.
00:30:47
Speaker
So they have nutrition, they have coaching, and then they get spit out. And now you are told you have to just do it on your own. You have to find a job. A lot of these guys are getting married. They're having kids already at 23, 24.
00:30:59
Speaker
They got to start thinking about how to put food on the table and how to keep a roof overhead. And so it wasn't uncommon for a lot of runners back in the day to to be teachers. you know They would train in the morning, teach at night, and they would do their second session in the evening.
00:31:13
Speaker
And you can imagine how hard that is to try to train like an Olympic athlete when you've got eight to 10 hours of the best part of your day taken away. And meanwhile, other countries, be it Russia or Finland, or they they had infrastructure in place that allowed these guys to train full time like professional athletes.
00:31:34
Speaker
not Not so in America. So they were told, like, yeah, you're basically on your own. You want to get to the Olympic trials? You better pay your... You got to get your get yourself here somehow. that's That's where the animus came from for the the amateur establishment that Prefontaine was such a ah vector for change, and it was ready for change.
00:31:53
Speaker
Do you think he changed it? Yeah, for sure. One of the... things that I struggled with, like trying to make my argument, especially towards the end, was like, why are we still talking about this guy today? and And it could be just as simple as he had the look, he had the talent, he had the moxie.
00:32:12
Speaker
Nike was up and coming. He was like Nike's firstborn, track and field athlete for sure. And track and field itself was ready for a change. and he was the embodiment of change. And so Trackwood needed to professionalize.
00:32:26
Speaker
Its amateur ethic had long overstayed its welcome. And so here is this guy who can affect that degree of change. And so he embodied it, i think that's why we still talk about him to this day. And so you know you have this little,
00:32:40
Speaker
contract with Nike. He was like some like national public relations manager or something. forget the exact title, but it was just this brilliant loophole on Nike's part to give him a salary that actually had real no job attached to it aside from going to little clinics around the Pacific Northwest to talk about right running.
00:32:58
Speaker
And it allowed him to train. And, you know, it's no coincidence that towards the end of Steve's life, he's he's really at the height of his powers. He is coming into himself physically, hitting his physical peak. He's five seconds away from the six-mile world record, not even his race.
00:33:11
Speaker
You know, he breaks the six-mile and 10K record in the same race at Hayward Field. If he had just focused on the six-mile, he probably breaks Ron Clark's record and has a world record that he never earned. With the amateur establishment and being the way it was, it definitely had a governor on that engine.
Emotional Connection with Prefontaine During Writing
00:33:27
Speaker
but ah but as a result of what he was doing, organizing these meets that gets international talent over here in the face of the AAU in defiance of them, yeah, he he definitely was the the catalyst for change.
00:33:40
Speaker
to To step back into the sort of the writerly aspect of it, you talked about really kind of building and making an argument. How much of that came early in the process of thinking about this book and how much of that really developed as you did those phone calls, as you learned these things as you learned these things that were then in contradiction with other things that you'd learned.
00:34:02
Speaker
Yeah, was this was the was the book book pitch that clear or did it really evolve over the process? I'd say it it evolved more. It was always we had to really make the case for the book, like kind of like going back to the very start of our conversation, kind of like, you know, why him? Why me? like And now, why now? Like, why are we talking about him?
00:34:20
Speaker
And so that's always the case. Like, why does he still matter? And I didn't never had a real satisfactory answer to that question very until very late when I'm kind of writing my epilogue. and And I started casting my gaze to some other sports.
00:34:33
Speaker
and Michael Jordan and basketball. like Basketball was ready for a change. There were players who were very talented and able to embody that change. and Larry Bird and Magic Johnson got it to a point, but Jordan took it to a whole other level.
00:34:47
Speaker
yeah Tiger Woods and golf. or Whether golf wanted or needed a change, he changed the sport, and he's going to be forever... spoken about how he changed it, the money they brought in so everyone finishing 58th can now you know make make a damn good living.
00:35:03
Speaker
And Caitlin Clark now in the WNBA, there have been far more talented players than her who have played before her and certainly after her. But the way she plays and how she has embodied just a new kind of energy she's going to be associated with a a fulcrum moment for the WNBA. And so it was seeing these other sports, and it's just, it really comes down to luck.
00:35:25
Speaker
I think it came down to, it was Nike at its birth, it's Bowerman, it's Phil Knight, it's Pree's look, the way the establishment was crumbling at the time, and the way he was about to prop up others. It was just, a yeah, it's one of those deals where, oh yeah, it crystallized once I had this hundreds of thousands of words of writing and I was like, okay, this makes sense now. and I hope I make a satisfactory argument at the end. I don't know, that's up for the reader, but I think I landed at a place where my editor and I felt pretty confident we landed on a on ah and a good conclusion.
00:35:58
Speaker
And you can find out when you go purchase a book from Jay Michaels. You also stole part of my last one, which is the Phil Knight quote that you use in the book, where Phil says, I asked myself time and again, what was it about pre that triggered such visceral responses from so many people, including myself?
00:36:16
Speaker
I never did come up with a totally satisfactory answer, which is a great quote. even he had a hard time articulating why. I think it was just this, it's one of those things you just felt if you were there. And so through the reporting, it's like, can i get you there too to feel his vitality and maybe why we are still talking about him today. And just through the research and the reporting of the book,
00:36:40
Speaker
He came to life to me in a way that I didn't really foresee. Like, he felt so vibrant and vital and alive. And then i would forget that come 1975, he's going to die.
00:36:51
Speaker
And I would be like, oh, shit. Like, I feel like like i feel like I just lost a friend. And then I'd get access to another archive. And like, oh, cool. I get to start over again. Like, his first mentions of him in the early 60s.
00:37:03
Speaker
And I'm like, all right, here he is. He's coming to life
Narrative Structure and Editorial Guidance
00:37:05
Speaker
again. Like, he's, like, reanimated. And then I'm like, oh, the calendar turns to the 75. I'm like, oh, man. Like, it's, there's no end. like It's coming. i I know it's coming at this point.
00:37:15
Speaker
And sure enough, it happens, and I feel all sad again. And I'm not comparing my sadness to anyone who was friends with him or his family, but it was just like it did. I was so bonded to this guy for three years.
00:37:26
Speaker
And so when I would go through the writing or the research and he would die on me every single time, was like, God damn it. Like, it was, this sucked. Like, you should still be here. You should be 74 years old right now. And, you know,
00:37:38
Speaker
talking at the U.S. championships in a week. it's ah so and It was ah just one of those things. But yeah, Phil Knight said too, like even he couldn't put his finger on it. And he he lived it and experienced it. And it's, ah yeah, through everybody else's experiences and triangulating all those experiences, then maybe we reach a satisfactory ah conclusion as to why we keep talking about him and yeah why we still love the guy.
00:38:02
Speaker
Did you ever play think about playing with chronology a little more in the book? i not I don't think I'm giving anything away by saying it's pretty linear chronology. Were there times where you thought, the multiverse, or I'll i'll explore in different ways? yeah Yeah, I didn't want to get into hypotheticals at all, like oh what he would be doing, or wouldn't this be cool? i mean I've thought about it. Yeah, it'd be great to see what he would have done on the road running circuit, like in the marathon.
00:38:28
Speaker
It would have been great to see him take is really take the pain to that those levels and can he take it to the front and you know try to wear some of these guys down. I think that would have been fascinating.
00:38:40
Speaker
yeah with The other thing, the the original structure of the book I just so desperately wanted to pull this off and I couldn't do it. Did you watch the the Michael Jordan Last Dance docuseries?
00:38:52
Speaker
For those who might not have seen it, you know the the main the way that's structured over 10 episodes, there's the final season, that last dance that goes over the whole top of the thing. And they seesaw from that main narrative spine back to the early days and eventually the chronologies meet up at the final moment.
00:39:12
Speaker
So my last dance with Pri was him organizing the this Fin Tour and with bringing a series of five meets, which ended up just being four, to the Pacific Northwest, this international talent to the United States organized by an athlete never done before and in strict defiance of the AAU.
00:39:31
Speaker
And I had that over the top. So we were in 1975 for most of the book, but we're swinging at very thematically germane points to crucial point of his backstory.
00:39:43
Speaker
And it just didn't have ah enough heft or backbone. It just sagged under the weight of everything else in his story. So I just, I couldn't pull it off. Though my rough draft did have that hanging above it.
00:39:56
Speaker
But ah the problem was you'd be there for maybe in let's just say 5,000 words and then you'd be out of it for 10 to 15,000. Like you would just get too far away from it.
00:40:08
Speaker
But I so desperately wanted to mess with chronology in that regard and like swing back to that final thing and just thinking then you can plant little Easter eggs along the way and in the backstory that seems to feed into this upper narrative but couldn't pull it off so we just stuck with, we used that chronology as your friend so we stuck with chronology.
00:40:30
Speaker
think I think you might have answered my question with the we, but it sounds like your 90-minute conversations with an editor might have been around that, around chronology. that would be one of the things. Though he did say, he's like he's like, Brendan, you can get out of chronology every now and again. And I do that from time to time. Like, say, after the 72 Olympics, where you know the you have the attacks on the Israelis, that terrorist attack.
00:40:55
Speaker
that really messed with Steve's head in a way that really hadn't been talked about or articulated before. And so like when we're trying to metabolize what's happening there, there's a 1974 article that i kind of cite in the 72 chronology, being like, you know in two years time, he's goingnna he's basically going to say, like yeah he says like the year Israeli thing, like that messed me up, that took me a year to get over, a full year.
00:41:19
Speaker
and And I could have held that on and to 1974 in the chronology, but it would have gotten a little too far away from the main event that caused that. And and so in that chapter, I believe it rebuilt, or where he's trying to really reckon with that humbling.
00:41:34
Speaker
And he's thinking about that, how that messed him up and everything. So thematically, it made sense to come out of chronology for that point. But for the most part, it was like, be really judicious about when you do it. Otherwise, it can be a bit more unmooring for a reader.
00:41:48
Speaker
Well, we're getting close on time here, but also, sorry, that wasn't supposed to be a connection to time, but part of ah but that question for me is, what is an editor telling you, how are you hearing it, and putting it into practice?
00:42:06
Speaker
Yeah, when we have these conversations, i have my notebook out, and I take pages and pages of notes from that, and he And sometimes it was just us, you know, just talk. I would ask him, you know, because he works with dozens of writers, very prominent, well-seasoned writers. Like, you know, what are the things that they're struggling with, too, that maybe I could learn from? And he's just like, i you we always kind of dance around that because I don't think he wanted me to get into a comparison mindset. Be like, oh, Jeff Perlman works like this or, you know, Howard Bryant works like this.
00:42:38
Speaker
he he He would really keep it on me and keep it on the story here. ah But yeah, he was he was just really supportive in that regard. And he articulated things really well and saw things so well, especially in the rewrites. Because this took this took a good half dozen like full good rewrites. like It was nauseating. I've barely read a word of this book since i since it published.
00:43:00
Speaker
like I have this maybe 1,000 words I read for a reading. And that's all I've read since it's published. like I can't touch this thing. Like, it's a good book, but I'm not reading it. Like, that's on you guys. Like, I'm not not i'm not touching this shit anymore.
00:43:14
Speaker
But he would find these things, like these brilliant, brilliant insights of like this one moment where I kind of breezed over it, but he caught onto it. At the end of the summer of Steve's freshman year, he gave voice to quitting.
00:43:29
Speaker
mean, here's this pre-Fontaine, like we just never think, like, oh, he never gives up. And here he is at the end, he's so burned out. at 19 years old, that he was just like thought about just giving up. He's like, I'm done.
00:43:40
Speaker
And i just kind of go over blah, blah, blah move on to sophomore year. And Matt's like, whoa whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Like pump the brakes here. Like we need to examine this. Which gets into this whole idea of like Jim Ryan, who is the world record holder of The Mile, who ends up being this sort of shadow character in the book of a cautionary tale unheeded in a lot of ways.
00:43:58
Speaker
And so, yeah, we kind of we slow down there and try to give voice to this that Prefontaine gave voice to quitting. like let's that That is something we don't hear. that and The mythology, we're spoon-fed.
00:44:09
Speaker
There's no quit. And so he he he thought that. Another time, this kind of merry pranksters, let's call them that. there are There are these runners at the 1970 cross-country cross country ah championships and they they sprint to the front. they they They have no business being up there.
00:44:27
Speaker
They're sprinting the because they want to get on the cover of track and field news. And so it's just a joke to them to run this fast. And eventually, you know, they're out front for about a mile and then Steve come catches up to
Racing Style and Athletic Dominance
00:44:39
Speaker
him. as Ken Popejoy out front. He's mainly a miler from Michigan State.
00:44:43
Speaker
Steve runs up to him. He's like, what the fuck you doing, Popejoy? And he's just like, we're trying to get on the cover of track and field news.
00:44:53
Speaker
And Preet just looks at him he's just like, fuck off. And he just runs. And Preet would, he just goes off and dominates the race and wins. And awesome anecdote, still in the book.
00:45:05
Speaker
But my editor was just like like, hold on, we need to really, you need to put your thumb on the scale of why this matters now. Like you as the author, Like, there's no first person in this, but, like, you have your thumb on the scale. You need to assert your own point of view.
00:45:19
Speaker
Like, this matters because why? Well, for those guys, going to the lead was a joke. But for Pri, going to the front was never a joke. And his competition was slowly turning into a joke.
00:45:30
Speaker
And so this is in a chapter or a section of the book where he's asserting himself as the dominant force in American track and field. So if the first part of the book is him trying to find his voice as an athlete, the second part is him really asserting his voice, then the third part is him giving voice to others, really.
00:45:47
Speaker
Well, that seems like a great place to start opening it up for questions before we circle back for the thing your podcast always ends on. Cool. But did want to see if anybody has any questions out in the audience.
00:45:59
Speaker
And I'll just jump in to hopefully not butcher it. But you and your editor seem to have a great relationship. Going to work on something again in the future? Yeah. When I was lamenting to my agent ah that when this book was sunsetting, I'm like, oh, man, like I might not be able to work with him again. And so and even when talking with Matt, I would just be like, yeah, I was kind of mourning our time.
00:46:19
Speaker
as it was coming to an end, he was just like, oh, you know, it's, you're not through with me yet, you know, we'll see this through for a while, if I can work with Matt again for the rest, or for the rest of my life, my gosh, like, what a joy and a gift, like, he was, because we were, we truly were on the same page, and he's a runner, he's a marathoner, he knew there was a gap on the bookcase for a book of this nature on Steve, and a reappraisal after 50 years, and my, what a joy it was to to work with him, and I, like, it's I tell other people that, and they're like, i don't have that experience with my editor.
00:46:53
Speaker
i was like, I know. ah like I know I won the lottery. like I get it. like I sing his praises every chance I get. i think I wrote 6,000 words to him in the acknowledgments, give or take. And so there was I loved every second I was i had working with him. you know he His fingerprints are all over this book in the best possible way.
00:47:11
Speaker
I'm going let you sum that up in your answer, I think. Yeah, well, I think there's so much there's so much parallels between endurance running and riding. It is such a long game that ah maybe you don't, it is almost painful the entire way, but it rewards you if you can get to the finish.
00:47:30
Speaker
And ah the thing is, with with writing, there is no finish line. So all we can do is, can we get one stride better? you know Can we lower our mile time just a just a little bit more? Because there's never there's never a perfect race or never a perfect book or never a perfect essay.
00:47:45
Speaker
But I think you know Steve's great contribution ah to the culture is running your internal race to the best you can. Most famous quote is to give anything less than the best your best is to sacrifice the gift.
00:47:58
Speaker
And I think that is really true. I think a maybe a really resonant grace note of his life is to maybe not compare ourselves so much to others, but if we can be the best version of ourselves, I think that's that that is ah an ethic worth worth standing up to.
00:48:14
Speaker
Yeah, and there are going to be there there are going to be people just preternaturally faster than you. you It's very easy to compare yourself to others. But if you can focus within, i think he was very good at focusing within as much as he was on trying to bludgeon his competitors.
00:48:29
Speaker
But yeah, I think having having that as a North Star, as a writer, running your own race, I try tell myself that all the time. Stop looking over
Lessons and Advice from Prefontaine's Life
00:48:38
Speaker
your shoulder. Just run your own race.
00:48:40
Speaker
You'll finish when you finish. And I think ah and think Steve embodied that in a lot of ways. Did he answer the part about did it change you? That running your own race thing and and just trying to run the at that internal race for sure. I look to that and be like, you know what? This guy never wasted a day of his life and he packs so much into 24 years.
00:49:01
Speaker
I think I've wasted 24 of my own years, to be perfectly honest, which which maybe leaves me with 21 good ones. I don't know. It might be more. So i think going forward, I might have 40 left on this planet, maybe.
00:49:15
Speaker
And so maybe maybe Steve will let me try to cram as much as I can into those 40. Well, I'm actually going to ask you one question before you press pause. You can cut this out later. all I know you do it. you have Previous to this, you said you end your podcast every time.
00:49:29
Speaker
and now you're on the other side, yeah with a one piece of advice for a writer and one recommendation. you want to do that or do we, ah you work can record that on your own later? let's do that, yeah.
00:49:39
Speaker
I would say the the advice part would be real easy. I try to tell people, and not that I'm solicited for advice very often, but it's the run your own race thing. it Nowadays, it's so easy to compare yourself to the the airbrushed vision of other people on social media to how shitty you feel almost every single day. like I'll never forget just writing these like winners and losers from the Daytona 500 slideshows for Bleacher Report.
00:50:05
Speaker
for 50 bucks on a Sunday. I'm like, right, Thompson and Seth Wickersham and Tom Ginote and Susan Orlean, they didn't have to do this this this crap. um But this is ah is all part of the practice.
00:50:18
Speaker
And, ah you know, there's never a wasted word. So I'm always like, yeah, making sure you're just running your own race, as hard as it might be to veer off track and compare yourself to other people, just like put the blinders on and pretend it's 2007 before any of this stuff started bombarding us.
00:50:34
Speaker
One recommendation. I had my first full body massage a few weeks ago.
00:50:43
Speaker
Maple at Aveda. Set up an appointment. It was the most wonderful experience I've ever had, I think. Life changing. And the the hour went by like that.
00:50:55
Speaker
Full body massage. That's my recommendation. I can say the same thing here. One hour flew by.
00:51:07
Speaker
Well,
Closing and Promotions
00:51:08
Speaker
what you know? What do you
00:51:13
Speaker
For those who haven't seen me at a book event, there you go. there's ah There's me rambling. Thanks to Daniel wo Littlewood for taking over the reins, coming down from Portland, Oregon, taking over the reins of the podcast so I can further feature the frontrunner in front of millions of devoted listeners.
00:51:32
Speaker
Fact checker just said it to dozens, dozens of listeners. Don't forget to subscribe to Rage Against the Algorithm and Pitch Club. Both sign-up forms are at brendanomero.com. Hey, hey.
00:51:44
Speaker
I also hang out on social media at Creative Nonfiction Podcast from time to time. All right. So stay wild, see you neffers. And if you can't do, interview. See ya.