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Episode 218: Mary Pilon, Louisa Thomas, Seasoned Losers
127 Plays4 years ago
Mary Pilon (@marypilon) and Louisa Thomas (@louisathomas) are here to talk about the book they edited together called Losers: Dispatches from the Other Side of the Scoreboard (Penguin).
This show was possible by Scrivener. Enter the code NONFICTION at checkout to receive 20% off.
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Transcript
Introduction and Sponsorship
00:00:00
Speaker
Well, well, we're gonna do this all over again, aren't we? Oh boy. Oh boy. ACNFers, how's it going? Look who's back.
00:00:19
Speaker
Creative Nonfiction Podcast is sponsored by Scrivener. Scrivener was created by writers for writers. It brings all the tools you need to craft your first draft together in one handy app. Scrivener won't tell you how to write. It simply provides everything you need to start writing and keep writing. And if you enter the coupon code nonfiction at checkout, you'll receive a 20% discount on the regular version of Scrivener for macOS and Windows.
00:00:47
Speaker
That'll buy you some coffee to fuel that writing sesh, you know what I'm saying? So, whether you plot everything out first, or plunge right in, right, or restructure later, Scrivener works your way.
Guest Introduction and Book Insight
00:01:01
Speaker
We're all losers, and that's totally fine.
00:01:10
Speaker
well well well hey how are you seeing ever how are you how is it going looking right at you don't don't look at your phone i mean maybe maybe need to turn the volume up or or hit that skip ahead 15 seconds like if you do it yeah i feel it i feel it inside my chest every time you skip
00:01:33
Speaker
It's in the bones. It's in your bones. But you know, this is the creative nonfiction podcast, a show where I speak to badass people about the art and craft of telling true stories. Today I talk to Mary Pallone, who is back for the third time, and Louisa Thomas, back for her second CNF in the rodeo.
00:01:50
Speaker
They edited a book of essays and journalism titled losers dispatches from the other side of the scoreboard. It is published by penguin. You could say this book connected with me in ways that only you can imagine. It is a, I wrote on my high school backpack on the leather at the very bottom loser boy.
00:02:17
Speaker
Loser boy. We'll get to that in a moment. Not the loser boy, but the conversation. But you should know, Luisa drops in at about halfway through the conversation. So it's me and Mary at first, and then the three of us halfway through. So that's cool. It's like someone popped in. It's like, oh, they're here now.
00:02:37
Speaker
Be sure you're subscribed to the podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Keep the conversation going on social, at cnfpod, and link up to the show if you think it's worth sharing.
Social Media Detox and Writing Services
00:02:47
Speaker
I'm in the throes of a social media detox, and I'm digging it, man. It's a little un-mooring, if I'm being honest. Well, FOMO turns into JOMO, of course. The joy of missing out that I've read so much about.
00:03:00
Speaker
But I do feel oddly out of the loop, you know, despite never feeling quite in the loop to begin with, you know, just sitting here and then I just draw a circle around and then I'm in my own loop. It's a sad loop, but it's a loop.
00:03:20
Speaker
Best way to stay abreast of me and the show of course these days is by heading over to BrendanOmero.com to sign up for the monthly newsletter full of reading recommendations and fun goodies once a month no spam can't beat it and at the website you'll find a way to ask me a question anything I mean keep it germane but I'll answer whatever you throw at me click the appropriate button and I'll play your question on air
00:03:47
Speaker
and answer as best I can. Pretty cool right? I think so. I have to be quicker than usual this week because I have to go cut some molding with a miter saw, miter box as we are painting our kitchen this week and let me tell you it is a special kind of hell.
00:04:09
Speaker
You know you need a personal trainer to get in shape, so why treat your writing any differently, man? Whether you're working on a book, query letter, or an essay, I want to help you get you where you need to go. Working with me gets you email correspondence, Skype calls, transcripts of our calls so you can refer to them as notes, detailed evaluation of the work, and that person in your corner that's going to tell you, it's all going to be okay.
00:04:35
Speaker
So if you're ready to level up, I'd be honored and thrilled to serve you and your work.
00:04:40
Speaker
So, Mary Pallone, she's the best-selling author of The Monopolous and The Kevin Show, a Best American Sports Writing alum. I wish I could be Mary Pallone. Louisa Thomas is the best-selling author of Louisa, The Extraordinary Life of Mrs. Adams, Mind and Matter, a book she co-wrote with John Urschel, and Conscience. She's the Best American Sports Writing alum, too.
00:05:08
Speaker
I wish I was Louisa. I wish I was both of them. I guess what I'm saying is, I wish I was anybody but me. Okay, you ready?
00:05:21
Speaker
See, it's the sad loop, right? You laugh at your own jokes in the sad little loop.
Book Origin and Themes
00:05:28
Speaker
Like I said earlier, Louisa doesn't drop into this conversation until about halfway through, so you have that to look forward to. Okay, are you ready? Well, let's do this. You know what we do. This is how it goes.
00:05:49
Speaker
this little collection has been a bit a lot of fun to read because of course like you know the other side of the scoreboard is the subtitle uh the subtitle says it is the it's the more for a writer anyway it's the it's the better place to be so i suspect that's probably where the genesis of this collection came from
00:06:07
Speaker
Yeah, you know, Luis and I were having coffee, I can't remember what this was, which is pregnant, so I could date it that way. And, you know, we both had done books, and we both had been laid off from big sports writing gigs. And we were just kind of chatting about things we were working on. And I don't know about her, but I was on a tear of like rejected story pitches. And I love writing about underdogs and losers. And I feel like in the sports pages, we have this like pro winner bias, and I don't want to diminish
00:06:35
Speaker
incredible amount of work and talent that it takes to be a champion in any sport. But I've always wondered about losers. And so we just started talking and I was like, I would read a whole book of essays about them. And we looked and like nothing existed, which is always the sign that, you know, you should probably look into doing it. So from there we emailed, we hadn't even
00:06:54
Speaker
talk to our agents at this point or propose the book or anything like that we just emailed like we came up with a list of like our favorite like our dream contributors people who we would love to have right for this and it was kind of a mix of you know what ended up actually in the collection journalists whose work we've admired athletes who we thought could have some good perspective
00:07:14
Speaker
And immediately, we just kind of shook a tree branch. We were like, hey, if we did a collection about losers, would you have something to say? And the responses we got were fantastic and beyond anything we could have imagined. And so from there, we pitched the book. And I've never really edited, actually. I've spent most of my career as a reporter.
00:07:35
Speaker
And so this was kind of new territory for me and it was so much fun. The entire process, I felt like I was just dorking out about sports reporting with a friend of mine and many friends of ours. So, you know, the irony is we, you know, kind of conceived of this collection and started putting it together in obviously a very different universe. And then as 2020 rolled around, I mean, originally we thought we'd be launching this into a summer of baseball and the Olympics and, you know, like leading into the US Open and
00:08:05
Speaker
As spring and summer rolled on, we were like, oh gosh, we're all losers this summer. We have this glut of sports content dropping into a world that's void of it. And the themes and things that we were talking about feel even more resonant in a way that we couldn't have really dreamed of. That we actually now kind of are missing and grieving the ability to lose. We never thought we would lose losing, if that makes sense.
00:08:34
Speaker
Talk a little bit about that tear of rejections you went through. With pleasure. Yeah, I had an advisor in college who has since become a friend who she's actually a documentary filmmaker. I remember her saying, your ability to live and die in a creative field is your ability to handle rejection. And I think that's true whether you're proposing losing stories or not.
00:09:03
Speaker
But when you think about, you know, I think that if you're a fiction writer, if you're a novelist, people always ask you stuff like, well, why did you want to write about this? Why did you want to write about this? And I think with journalism, the truth is you're drawn to certain types of stories or certain categories of stories. And I think a lot of it is because of your own biography and your own psychology. So we don't talk about how we as journalists kind of project our own
00:09:30
Speaker
world's onto things and you know what that can mean and I realized you know I've been really into losing stories and loss and you know before sports I covered Wall Street and I was covering unemployment and people who made big you know had big losses in the stock market it was the same thing like it was the same
00:09:48
Speaker
interest and because you know my personal life has been dramatically shaped by grief and loss whether it's the death of a loved one or a breakup or a layoff or I think loss is just part of life and the truth is it sucks but you know from that you also grow and you gain a lot and we we found that in sports you know people love these you know play-by-play breakdowns of how someone
00:10:16
Speaker
you know, one and how someone pulled something off, but loss is just as complex and nuanced and worth breaking down and digging into, even if it's really challenging and difficult. So, you know, it's kind of meta, right? Like these are stories I love to report, but then, you know, in our field, whether you're on staff or freelancing, like you're constantly putting yourself out there and your ideas out there. And, you know, there's a few
00:10:42
Speaker
editors who will have mercy upon you and then you're often just like, you know, rigged to the coals or you know, screaming into a canyon. So I think you also just as by virtue of working in this industry, you know, develop a connection with the slog and the world of having people tell you that what you want to do is crazy all the time.
00:11:03
Speaker
Now for you, you've published brilliant books, so many great long-form online or magazine pieces, anthologize and best American sports writing. So this idea that Mary Pallone is on like a tear of rejections, it makes me wonder what those rejections sound like. So when you're getting rejected, someone who's so seasoned, what do those sound like? What's the feedback you're getting?
00:11:32
Speaker
Oh man, it's very kind of you to say, but like it's so funny because nobody sees your rejections. And actually I think one of the silver linings of COVID is it is a golden era to fail in private right now, right? Like you can do your crazy career that you've always wanted to do. You can gain or lose weight. You can try out a new hairstyle. You can do all sorts of crazy stuff now and literally no one will see it. And I've personally have found that kind of liberating.
00:12:00
Speaker
Um, but I, I remember like one of the gifts I think of my career is like, I've been able to meet really incredible, you know, heroes of mine. And you see that they get pulled through the ringer too. Like there is no, you know, pasture in which you're not going to get, you know, a lot of notes or, you know, BS or editors or, you know, the industry. So when you realize that it never goes away, you kind of learn to lean into it a bit and accept it as part of.
00:12:30
Speaker
as part of life, right? So I think that, you know, as you're growing, okay, great. So when you start out, you know, in my case, the register guard, you have editors giving you notes there, and then you go to a larger circulation paper. So you're playing, you know, you go from the minors to the majors or how, you know, whatever sports metaphor you want to use, and then you're getting notes there. And then it's like, okay, now you're slinging around book proposals. And those are 40 to 60 pages or 100 pages long or whatever. And now you're getting notes on those. So it's like, you're just leveling up.
00:12:59
Speaker
process is the same and you know it's funny because I've my parents chronicled like every essay and every single thing I wrote and I think as a kid you know my mother she was a psychologist but she loved to write and I found a bunch of these
00:13:16
Speaker
you know school papers and stuff that she would sit down and go through editing with me like line by line and never in an antagonistic way and it was like this exciting process of revising and I was like wow like if you can teach a kid to embrace getting better like that and the revision process and that you know often that feedback isn't a personal attack and it's not just a flat-out rejection although sometimes it is it's just like
00:13:43
Speaker
something isn't landing and something isn't working and you just have to go go back and rejigger like what a gift that is. So I think my attitude about this has changed a lot over time that
00:13:54
Speaker
You know, rejection. I also had a mentor who said, like, no is a liquid, not a solid. So I think about that a lot, too. And I think athletes have taught me a lot about this, that there's this relentlessness to keep going. But I think, you know, there's also this idea that if you're going to do that, if you're going to learn from losing, you have to own that pain and you have to dig into it. You know, we were talking on another podcast about Michael Jordan and The Last Dance and how
00:14:22
Speaker
one of the big threads of The Last Dance is obviously it's about Michael Jordan winning in the Bulls and how amazing they are, but there's a huge loss story in that, not just of his father, but how he can harness the fear of losing into rallying himself and his teammates. I think The Last Dance is an amazing case study in losers. And we have a piece in the collection about
00:14:46
Speaker
LeBron James. And at first when it came in, I was like, oh, God, I don't know if we want a LeBron James piece of loser. Like, what does he know about losing? The answer is a whole lot. And Ryan O'Hanlon, who wrote that, does a great job of kind of breaking that down. So it's kind of this fascinating counter example. So so it's it's but it's a taboo, right? Like, nobody likes to talk about losing. Nobody likes to talk about rejection. And that was like why I think Louisa and I were like, oh, let's let's give the world a couple other pages on that. Yeah.
00:15:15
Speaker
And when you're getting notes from stories that aren't getting greenlit, what tends to be the thing that is, you know, in the notes you're getting that's lacking and that's getting the editor to say, you know what, Mary, we got to pass on this one.
00:15:33
Speaker
Well, first of all, getting notes, right? I'm really grateful for that. And so often you don't. So first and foremost, when somebody gives notes, I find that so, so helpful, right? And it could be, hey, we've got a piece just like this coming down the pike. That's good information, right? Like that you don't even know, but smart mind's like, like your story isn't stupid. It could be,
00:15:57
Speaker
You know, I don't want to name what publication it was. A couple years ago, I was doing a story, it was about a female athlete, and I was told, we don't do stories about angry women. And I was like, oh, and I haven't written for them ever since. And I was like, well, you've got an angry woman on your hands now.
00:16:15
Speaker
So, but that's really useful feedback too, because it lets you know that like, that's not a collaborator that you're gonna like vibe with. So, you know, there's that kind of feedback, which is also useful, even if infuriating in the short term. And I think right now, you know,
00:16:34
Speaker
In our current news climate, it's been hard to get a word in Trump-wise. I think that John Stewart always uses this expression like shiny object, right? But people look at the shiny object. But what's fascinating about that to me is sports is front and center in the conversation about politics and race and gender right now, especially this summer.
00:16:59
Speaker
you know, it's sports, I've always felt like is never about sports, it's always about this other stuff. So I think you have to be kind of clever about how you, you know, package your ideas, so to speak. So I feel like that's also a thing I've, you know, that the bar for news right now is so high across the board that you really have to be able to
00:17:20
Speaker
you know, say, why does this matter now?
Social Media's Impact on Perception
00:17:24
Speaker
And that's something you learn, you know, that's like a journalism 101 thing, but I just think now that's shifted a lot.
00:17:32
Speaker
And I think in freelancing in this kind of line of work too, what can really discourage people is that we don't see the batting average. All we tend to see are like the victories on social media. And we don't realize that maybe for that one piece that someone is celebrating, maybe there were 50 rejections to that piece. So the batting average is super low, but it just feels like they're batting a thousand.
00:17:59
Speaker
Right, right. Well, and you know, baseball, like famously is a loser sport, right? So actually, I think that's a good analogy. Because if you talk to ballplayers, like it's that same, you know, there's like psychology that supports this and research, excuse me, psychology research that supports that we hold on to
00:18:17
Speaker
our negative things more than our positive things. I'm going to get this wrong, but it's like you need like five compliments to every, you know, burn or something like that. Like that we're wired to focus on negative things. And, and yeah, I think social media, I mean, it's true in our industry. It's true in life. It gives you such selective storytelling. It's such, I mean, I've really, really in the last couple of years pulled back on
00:18:41
Speaker
All of it because I feel like for me, I mean, you know, God bless the journalists and reporters who really find a lot of value in Twitter and I totally like tip my hat to them. I personally feel like I am in a bar with most miserable people.
00:18:57
Speaker
like yelling at each other and I think you know anytime on TV like I get all these very weird responses like I just was like I don't I don't need this and it's not you know it's not making me a better person and it's not making me a better reporter some people it does and that's totally cool and I think part of it too is what you're saying about you know you only see people's wins and I want to be in a world and I had space where I'm applauding that not
00:19:21
Speaker
Ugh, you know, like neener, neener, neenering it. And especially now, I feel like journalism, like cattiness in journalism, I just have so little bandwidth for because I think you have to step outside and say like, whoa, guys, like our entire industry is in a lot of trouble right now. The general public pretty much hates us, even though what we do is so important. Like we got to band together, you know, like we can't
00:19:47
Speaker
I'm not saying we can't have some pleasant, collegial discussion internally, but we need to be in a place of supporting each other and rooting for more work overall to be created because it's in the public interest and it's so important now.
00:20:02
Speaker
Yeah, I've been abstaining from social media for a while, like a total detox, cold turkey thing, at least until I finish this book I'm working on, which I project to be done with this draft by the end of this month. Thank you. Thank you. But it's just like in the two weeks that I've been away from all of it, even on, it really hasn't even been on my phone. I tend to just use it on laptop, desktop,
00:20:29
Speaker
computers but I've just been totally unplugged and I'm just finding that the fear of missing out like I'm it's transition to the what I've read is the Jomo the joy of missing out and I quite like yes yes I think something that happened to me is like I used to do a ton of breaking news and I really loved it and I think Twitter is great for that you know kind of the minute-by-minute what's happening all of that and as like my career you know got
00:20:56
Speaker
to a place where I was trying to do longer and frankly deeper work, it wasn't benefiting that type of thinking. For me, I was getting better insight by stepping away from my computer and going for a run and just tuning out, or the nature of the work I was doing benefited longer term thinking more than shorter term thinking.
00:21:20
Speaker
you know, you put this in bad running terms, it's like if you go from being a sprinter, a middle distance runner to a marathoner, like you got to start running longer distances and you got to start changing, you know, your workouts and your approach. So I think that was part of it, too. And honestly, I think one of the more rewarding parts of it now is finding good stuff to read. I feel like it's like, oh, wow, that great big magazine piece landed. I want to make sure I, you know, look at that this weekend. And I've been reading. I'm always a big book person, but I'm blown away by how many people on our field don't read books.
00:21:49
Speaker
And there's something, you know, jarring to me about that, but I just feel like, especially now with COVID, you know, we're in front of our screen so much and just, you know, diving into a book is like such a pleasure for me now. I mean, it always has been, I'm a lifelong reader, but there's something really great about it in terms of just how it pulls my brain away from a screen, pulls me back in time, transports me, like, I think this is a golden age of reading.
00:22:15
Speaker
Um, because it's serving a different purpose of a serving a different need that maybe we hadn't considered before. And I feel like that's been way more gratifying to me than even like the best tweet I've seen all week or what have you. So I kind of have like a drop in, like I make an appearance and then I leave like, get out, get out while I can.
00:22:35
Speaker
Yeah, the having like paper habits and analog habits is something I've always been into and attracted to being a longtime journaler and I've actually started of late like totally like it's really curved my anxiety and everything with just doing like bullet journaling.
00:22:54
Speaker
I love it. It's totally been a way to calm my frenetic head. And having these paper habits when we're so screen centric has really, I think it really tamps down a lot of things. It helps me keep things in order. It's like a butterfly net. If there's these ideas pumping around, it's just like, ah, grab it, write it down. I might not be able to address it now, but at least it's captured.
00:23:21
Speaker
Absolutely. I mean, every morning I wake up and I do a handwritten brain dump and I just dump my brain. It maybe takes me five, sometimes 20 minutes, depending on what's going on. And sometimes it's dream. Sometimes it's, I mean, and it's purely no judgment. It's for no one to read ever. And I can't tell you how, I guess to start doing, I've always been a journaler, but I really doubled down on that a few years ago and it's such a godsend and it's hilarious to reread because
00:23:48
Speaker
Our memories, you learn this interviewing, but like our memories are terrible. And it's not malicious. It's just how memory works. And, you know, in March, like early March, the first time I wrote about COVID, I just found this thing where I was like, yeah, you know, I, I was in LA for a couple of weeks and I flew back to New York and I went skiing. And I was like, people, people seem to really be worried about this virus stuff, but
00:24:10
Speaker
you know worst case scenario two-week lockdown like we're all full of it you know we don't know we don't know and i think it's also a humbling reminder of you know what you think you know and how your past self can be um you know really helpful but also just totally
00:24:29
Speaker
totally like not knowledgeable. So yeah, I think that that's a huge, I think more and more as I think about writing and, you know, the bizarreness of this job. I try, I try to think about, you know, there's a lot of woodworkers in our family and like, it's more like woodworking. It's like, you just you got to whittle away. No one's going to do that work for you. You got to
00:24:52
Speaker
You got to take out your little knife and your block of wood and you have some scrap wood and you have some beautiful oak that you're working with and you got to put your hours in and some days you win and some days you hack off a big lump of something you didn't
Exploring Themes of Loss in 'Losers'
00:25:05
Speaker
mean to. And that's just kind of the nature of the beast. Nice. And it looks like Louise has joined us either. Yay. Hi, sorry. Hey, no worries. How's it going?
00:25:17
Speaker
Good. Glad to be here. Excellent. Excellent. It's kind of really good timing because I wanted to unpack this, you know, something that you guys wrote in the intro to losers, where this one phrase I came across was like losing forces a person to account for the past and revise the future. And Louisa, since you're just jumping in, I wonder if maybe you can unpack that a little bit and how that resonates with you.
00:25:43
Speaker
Well, I mean, I think that everybody enters not just a competition, but anything that you've committed yourself with a
00:25:52
Speaker
idea of the future and what you're putting into it and a plan, right? I mean, you have some sort of, even if you have no hopes of winning in a kind of traditional sense, you have some vision for a best case scenario and you sort of use that to justify everything that you're giving up for it and everything that you're working for. And when that doesn't work out the way you imagined it,
00:26:17
Speaker
Yeah, you have to sort of like live with that and you have to sort of rewrite, you know, the value of the work and the value of the sacrifice. And, you know, you have to get something different out of whatever you've done than whatever it was you imagined you were going to get.
00:26:34
Speaker
Yeah, would you say that maybe winning creates sometimes a false positive and that maybe you won despite maybe certain deficiencies or extraneous circumstances and that really the ultimate growth comes from losing versus winning?
00:26:54
Speaker
I mean, it's funny because I think about this actually as a writer a lot. I think that we have a tendency to sort of, you know, we obviously write from the perspective of everything that went before. And so we tell ourselves a story that, you know, ends in a kind of teleological way. Like, of course it worked out this way, right? And all the sort of contingency and luck and accident that went into it, we sort of smooth over or justify or
00:27:21
Speaker
Um, you know, because it has to make sense to us. And I think that that's actually necessary and very human, but it's also not true to a large extent. I mean, I think that, yeah, I think that like, if we actually are being honest with ourselves about when we win and when we lose often, you know, there's a whole lot of agency mixed with accident. And I think that there's something about losing that makes you really kind of like,
00:27:49
Speaker
can grapple with in an honest way both your own role in your life and also the various things that are also out of your control and sort of like face that honestly and then you know having to build back up from there is a really I think
00:28:05
Speaker
Yeah, maybe true positive that you can take from it. Although it can be really hard. I think there's maybe a mistake. I think that we need to be careful, just as we need to be careful in exalting too much, we need to be careful about saying, well, every loss is just an opportunity for growth. I mean, that cliche doesn't always necessarily hold. It's okay to be.
00:28:28
Speaker
Sad, you know. And Mary, maybe you can speak to what it was like collaborating with Louisa on this and how you guys went back and forth, you know, soliciting pieces or republishing others and, you know, what that process was like, you know, curating all this.
00:28:46
Speaker
Sure. So I believe Lucy and I first met when you were at Grantland, right? You had edited a story I did about Steve Prefontaine. Actually, that story has a lot to do with loss and grief. He's this iconic runner of Eugene who died at a very young age tragically to car wreck and
00:29:01
Speaker
So I did a story for Grantland, rest in peace, about kind of what that meant in Eugene, what that meant for running, kind of the Merc around the details of what happened that night, the fallout for his family in Nike, et cetera. And so we, you know, like I mentioned earlier, we kind of sent out this email to like people that we thought would be like a dream list of contributors and they wrote us back and they had these great ideas. And so
00:29:26
Speaker
we kind of, you know, poked at this while we were doing other assignments and work and things. And it was always, you know, because I haven't edited, it was like always this joy when like something came in my inbox, I was like, oh, so and so, you know, the piece about Las Vegas is in or, you know, we got the Doyle piece cleared or so it kind of came together like little, little by little. And I feel like, I don't know, maybe Lucy feels differently about
00:29:50
Speaker
her books, but like, there's something magical when it goes from like a collection of like Word doc icons on your computer screen to like them sending you a piece of like a stack of papers or a book and you're like, Oh my god, this thing that we were talking about, it's like, it happened. So I feel like it, it was like a really fun kind of companion project to all this other, you know, crazy stuff that was going on the last couple years.
00:30:14
Speaker
I am going to also claim more credit because I reached out to Mary when I was an editor at Griteland and I was like, I want you to write. That's how we met. I cold called her. That's right. That's absolutely true.
00:30:31
Speaker
So that's how that piece came into being. That's crazy, because Louisa, the last time you and I spoke, you talked about how much you hate cold calling and making those... I know, it's true. Oh my gosh, yeah. And also one of the cool things about Louisa and one of the cool things about Great Land is I was like, oh yeah, I want to do a spoon river anthology about running in the 70s. It's just a thing nobody else would agree to. She was like, great, go for it. Have at it. It was like the perfect Maryland piece.
00:30:59
Speaker
Yeah, I can still see it. The animation of Prefontaine kind of sort of running in place. Like I still have I have it printed out, believe it or not. It's in a on my shelf. Yeah, it's a great piece. And it's so cool to learn that the two of you worked on that together. It's great. But that's a great example of like that. I had been obsessed with Prefontaine, obviously as Eugenian forever. And I had like this file that sat on my desk at the Times forever with like the police report and a list of who I'd interview and just like the bones. And it just sat there forever.
00:31:29
Speaker
because it's so not, you know, earlier, let me say we were talking about like rejection and freelancing. And I was like, that is so not a New York Times story. And that's not a knock on the times with sports desk, which, you know, was really a fun place to be. But like, that's exactly the kind of story where it's like, you can get so frustrated when you have a vision and you know exactly what you want to do. And, you know, you're still trying to like agent your work into these places that, you know, it doesn't necessarily make sense, especially because sports writing
00:31:56
Speaker
you know, has all this tradition and formula to it. And you're like, yeah, but I don't want to do that. I don't want to do it that way. And so what was the process by which you, so you compiled this dream, dream list of people you wanted to sort of work with and curate for the, for this list. So how do you go about, you know, getting, you know,
00:32:17
Speaker
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's piece in here and then maybe having you know, you know someone else write write something that was Specifically for the anthology like how did you go guys go about that? I call called sir applicant Elementary my dear Louisa. Yeah, I think he was into that stuff. So I probably can access I
00:32:43
Speaker
How did we go about, I can't remember how we found the Doyle piece. I think like, you know, we- I think it was Google. Yeah, I think our friend Google tipped us off to that.
00:32:53
Speaker
We can't you know it was nice because we kind of got a good balance right off the bat like I do remember at one point, as much as we both love baseball saying like we can't have 20 baseball pieces like that we we reached out to a group of people that were pretty diverse in their interests and background so you know we got like I wasn't like oh man we have to have a bull fighting piece but when Barry Newman served us when I was like yes please.
00:33:17
Speaker
So we kind of, you know, I don't know if that was as intentional as we thought when we reached out to people, but the variation was kind of in the people we reached out to. I do have to say that there are a couple of people who have been like, Oh, did you run this, you know, when they heard that we had some classics too? And they're like, Oh, what about, you know, Roger Angel and the Mets? Or like, what about Don Larson piece? And they're all baseball pieces. And they are all amazing. I'm like, Yeah, we should have included those. But
00:33:44
Speaker
And we knew we wanted like Gay Talis, we kind of, he's like the patron saying of not just like journalism or sports journalism, but like his, his like canon of loser work is really like commendable. And so we kind of had to debate which one of his stories we wanted something in there that we could get. But yeah, so many brilliant pieces that and the Floyd Patterson piece is just, it's incredible. I could read that 50 times. I love it.
00:34:09
Speaker
Yeah, you could almost shoehorn any of Talisa's work into the loser cannon. Like, you could even, like, even Silent Season of a Hero. It's just, you know. Totally. Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah.
00:34:21
Speaker
I mean, we were talking about like LeBron and Michael Jordan and kind of the contrarian losers, like his Joe DiMaggio piece, right, is like a great example of like, you know, he's Joe DiMaggio, he's this icon, but there's this loser tint to it. There's this sadness to it, this filter he puts it through that's very unique and cool.
00:34:39
Speaker
Yeah, and he becomes all the more of a loser when he's sort of in the shadow of Marilyn Monroe is just like, you know, it's like that moment where she where she comes to him. She's like, Oh, Joe, they were cheering for me. You wouldn't like you would never know what that was like. And he was like, Yeah, I do. And it just like it just it's so heartbreaking. And then it goes into a great set piece of just how iconic he was.
00:35:04
Speaker
It's also true that that piece speaks to the kind of expansiveness of loss because, you know, again, like the things he's lost, he's lost his youth, he's lost some of his fame. It's a piece about the loss of Marilyn Monroe to some extent. You know, it's a piece about a grieving man. It's a piece about loss.
00:35:22
Speaker
And then the way it ends, he finally gets in the batting cage and he just takes one off the hands and he can't do it. And it's just like, yeah, it's just, it's sawed off at the hands. It could have been the title of that piece too,
Complexities of Writing on Sports Personalities
00:35:38
Speaker
you know?
00:35:38
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And he's also so good. Like, I think sports journalism gets this bad rap for not having enough, like the feelings can become really formulaic. And it can become very, there's all these tropes and cliches. And to least just like, he gives you feelings in this really complex, like, multifaceted way that, you know, you could give two hoots about baseball and still love that piece, you know, like, it's right. So good.
00:36:06
Speaker
Louisa, someone who's so plugged into tennis, did you guys give any weight or consideration to the David Foster Wallace Michael Joyce piece? That was a good one. I actually think that's one of his best. That's my favorite one by him. Yeah. Yeah. We didn't, but it certainly would have been it.
00:36:28
Speaker
A good string theory candidate. Yeah. With the Curios piece you wrote, was that specifically for this book? No, that was the New Yorker piece. It was, okay. I looked in the rights at the end and it was just like, I didn't see like permission from New Yorker. It just said like copyright, Louisa Thomas. So I thought that maybe it was, you had just done that. I own the copyright, but yeah, it's at the end of that piece actually. I think it says it ran in the issue. I think it was 2017.
00:36:58
Speaker
Yeah. So that was a, it was definitely not a piece. That was a piece I was thinking a lot about losing, like winning. I wasn't necessarily thinking about him as a loser, obviously, but like, what's the value of winning and what do you do with someone who sort of refuses to play on the kind of like socially or the accepted terms of, of winning and losing as the ultimate goal. So.
00:37:22
Speaker
What makes you walk into a personality like that? Is that the kind of person you like to cover that seem to have those kind of layers about them, very sort of problematic or even a troubled though talented person? No, I mean, for me, I want to be able to answer the question of why am I interested in this person, beyond the fact that they're good, what they do.
00:37:51
Speaker
Um, and I think actually that's like, I mean, I sort of laughed at that distinction cause it sounds so obvious, but I think a lot of pieces are written based on like you, they just only answer that question. You know, why are they good at what they do? And that's valid. Like, I mean, I think a lot of pieces are really great at answering that question. Um, and in fact, most pieces are written, are written from that perspective. But for me, I always want some sort of like, why, like what's really going on here? Like what's interesting about this person and what is sort of like, where's the tension, you know?
00:38:21
Speaker
Where is the friction between what I'm supposed to think and what is actually going on? And obviously with curious, it's pretty obvious. But a lot of people, I am drawn to a lot of those stories. And sometimes it doesn't work out. Sometimes you meet someone and you're like, actually, this person's just lovely and uncomplicated.
00:38:44
Speaker
And that's actually true with a lot of athletes. I think they live their lives smoothing out psychological complications, compartmentalizing, and whatever. And that can be complicating in itself. And we have a couple of pieces that speak to that. But for a lot of them, they are actually like, you really want to probe them and be like, oh, but how are you actually tortured? And it's like, no, they're actually just able to focus.
00:39:08
Speaker
Well, that goes to the heart of bringing up Wallace again in his piece on Tracy Austin. And it's that very thing. Like he wants them to be complicated, but what makes them so great is so they are so fabulously uncomplicated that they can compartmentalize what's going on in the court and just basically have the memory of a goldfish and just go to the next point. It also is true. I mean, even if they have a, you know, even if they're someone who holds onto their losses a little bit more, I mean, sometimes like
00:39:37
Speaker
Yeah, there's just a capacity to believe in the cliches. And the funny thing is that sometimes people will be like, oh, athletes are just bad interviews. They don't say anything. And sometimes I'll talk to an athlete and I'll just be like hanging on every word, right?
00:39:52
Speaker
And they seem so fascinating to me because every word is imbued with real feeling and meaning. And then you look at the transcript afterward and you're like, wait a second. But it's not dishonest, is what I'm trying to say. People are like, oh, they've just been trained out of saying their true feelings or they've been so media trained or whatever. And I think that that's definitely true sometimes. But there is an awful lot of
00:40:19
Speaker
Yeah, believing the truth, to speak to the Tracey Austin thing, they're like actually really kind of like, there's a great like, if you can, if you can believe that stuff, if you can really truly believe in, you know, the value of toughness and, you know, all the cliches and things like that, then you have a advantage.
00:40:40
Speaker
And Mary, there's a in Louise's piece about curious there's this is sort of this thing how the sport kind of turned on him, and he had an adversarial relationship with and that's something I can certainly certainly attest to with the way my baseball career panned out just.
00:40:55
Speaker
It was like I was at odds with it instead of rowing in the same boat with it. I think the same can be true for freelance journalism, whatever kind of writing we do. And I wonder maybe for you, and I'll certainly extend that to Luisa as well, it's just like, has this thing ever turned on you in a way that made it not fun for you to swim in this pool?
00:41:18
Speaker
Oh Lord, all the time, like all the time. I feel like I've had so many moments, and maybe some of this is my attitude or a lot of it's my attitude, but I can pinpoint the moments when I've been told in so many words to like go away or stop doing it.
00:41:36
Speaker
I've learned something about myself, you know, sitting here in Eugene, going through the archive of my high school essays, which is like, it's actually like the single, if anybody really, I think my parents understood this about me that like, if you ever really want to get me to do something, tell me I can't do it. Like, it might be like a little sister chip on the shoulder thing.
00:41:55
Speaker
And so I've kind of over time, you know, tried to draw on that. But I think about this all the time. Like, this industry sucks. And there's so many terrible things about it. And it's hard. And it's relentless. And but that said, it's the only thing I've ever done. Like, I'm also somebody who's just thrilled to not be in law school.
00:42:16
Speaker
And the idea that anybody pays me to do this feels miraculous too. So it's a balance for sure, but I think that's pretty normal. I think that's pretty healthy. And I think you have to keep in mind why you're doing it. And it's like, this is a cliche, but in pretty woo woo, but you have to think living inside out rather than outside in. And if you listen to what other people are telling you and how you should do it and this, that, and the other,
00:42:46
Speaker
it's not necessarily gonna serve you as well as if you really kind of are like, why am I doing this? And I think constantly asking yourself that is like a healthy exercise. And you know, in the case of like my career, it's changed a fair amount, right? Like I now love doing audio work and podcasting, and I never would have even thought about that 10 years ago. And
Embracing Loss and Resilience
00:43:05
Speaker
I love doing, you know, books and these longer projects, but I had absolutely no desire to do any of that, you know, in 2008 or nine or 10 when I was writing about the economy. So like,
00:43:15
Speaker
I don't know. I think that that's pretty normal. And, you know, as you were asking the question, I was thinking about that part in Open, Andre Agassi's memoir where, you know, he and Steffi Graff, I think they're on a beach somewhere and, you know, they're like two icons of the sport and they just are like, we hate this.
00:43:33
Speaker
They're just like, we hate tennis. And I feel like I've had moments like that too. So that's a long-winded way of saying absolutely, but I think that that's like, you know, how it is and fine and healthy and okay. I wish I had Mary's gumption. I feel like you're the person when someone's like, you can't do that. I'm like, you're right, I can't.
00:43:57
Speaker
in the same way, but like, yeah, you make a good point. I mean, it's a real, it's a real, real issue. It's actually kind of a funny, it's like a, you know, my husband is much more like Mary, like, you know, he'll like make up, you know, he'll like tell me I told him he couldn't do something, you know. I'm like when, you know, but just because that's what
00:44:18
Speaker
I'm going. Whereas I'm like, but he will actually kind of like try to motivate me in the same way only as like the opposite. I was saying that to motivate you.
00:44:35
Speaker
So, yeah. But yeah, I wish I were. But yeah, I mean, I feel like giving up like this morning I was talking to my mother and I was like, well, what am I going to do when I lose my job? Like, how will I ever be able to get a job? Do you think law school will still look at me?
00:44:55
Speaker
I still, I have a joke with an editor who had asked to do my letters of rec, like when I was in college, who's actually a professor of mine, he's like, how are your LSATs going? I'm like, hey, it's still in the back pocket. You know, like it's still, still an option. Who knows? So yeah, so if you need a writer,
00:45:14
Speaker
You're a company. Think of me. Yeah, so that's all to say. Yeah, it's, it's like a daily struggle for me. The cover of the book, you know, normally, I feel like with book covers, there's all this like haggling that goes on and most book jackets are terrible the first time when we got this one from Penguin, both of us were like, yes, like, this is my I'm three, I feel like my covers are I've had what if I've had four book covers with Penguin and
00:45:43
Speaker
everyone has been like a hole in one. Yeah. Your cover game has been strong, but they got it. I feel like they understood the essence of like what we were trying to achieve when we got this cover. I was like, they get it. Like, yes. Thank you. And I think our editor's background is in architecture background. I didn't know that. So has a kind of like a little bit of a leg up on the rest of the rest of us in terms of
00:46:11
Speaker
design aspects. Yeah, it's it's great. I just love the woman on her knees hanging her head. The ball is there, pastor. It's just like it's it's just the the the sorrow and the desperation in this picture. It's just like, yeah, I know exactly what that feels like. Like that's book revisions, you know, like that's like your fifth rejection on a pit. Like that's that's it. You know, like there's something I don't know.
00:46:39
Speaker
I love it. I'm proud to have my name on this cover. Feel free to judge it by its cover. Early on in the book, you guys write that the two of you are seasoned losers. Mary and I were talking about this a little bit earlier off, Mike, but in what ways would you guys identify as seasoned losers? I think I just answered your question. Like I said, I wake up every morning ready to
00:47:09
Speaker
have the rug pulled out from under me. I mean, I think in some ways, like,
00:47:16
Speaker
doing I mean we could speak to bigger things like Mary and I have both lost jobs we've you know lost people we've lost relationships we've lost things we've lost you know I think a lot of you know athletic competitions in our day um but I also think that you know one thing that is also true is that as a writer I mean as I was thinking about this as Mary said that's book revisions um one thing that you know you
00:47:44
Speaker
there's a little bit of an exercise in humility when you're a writer because you put something down and often you think it's terrible, but sometimes you think it's brilliant. And then you look at it and you're like, wow. It's just this sort of humbling. Yeah, it's very humbling. And I think that there is something to, that's something maybe we have in common with
00:48:10
Speaker
athletes, you know, you have to sort of be able to swallow crow and then move on.
00:48:19
Speaker
Oh, God. Yeah, I totally agree. And I, you know, found my fourth place track ribbons, my gymnastics participation certificates, and like all of that. And it's, you know, it's funny, because I think the thing that blows me away about sports is that the achievement model is so narrow. And our field, there's so many paths to success and ways that
00:48:41
Speaker
success, you know, what that can look like. So whenever I think about like losses that I felt, it feels like, well, at least you know, you have time and space to kind of deal with it.
00:48:55
Speaker
Yeah, I don't, oh God, I just, you, we were talking about this earlier, like you hold on to your losses in a different way than you hold on to your wins. I think that's a universal thing. Like, you know, the masochism of books is like, yeah, you can get a bunch of four or five star reviews on Amazon. But I remember before the monopolist, my first book came out, um, Amazon or somebody had sent
00:49:18
Speaker
copies and someone put a one-star review up that was like this is a feminist rewrite of history like just like something nasty and for two months I was like oh my god I have a one-star book coming out my entire career is over I remember that I don't remember like I have to remind myself of any of the good reviews I got after that
00:49:36
Speaker
You know, that was like years ago. So you hold on to this like really silly stuff sometimes. And then, you know, something, I don't know, I feel like it changes, but something kind of miraculous can happen where it's like if you're hiking and you're carrying a big backpack, and then you just kind of let it go. And you're like, Oh, I don't have to carry that anymore.
00:49:55
Speaker
We're all losers, and that's totally fine. Yeah, and you guys write that losing reveals something raw about what it means to be human. In your experiences of both covering high-level athletics and even playing a lot of sports yourselves, in what way has that sentiment really resonated with you?
00:50:19
Speaker
And your frustration.
00:50:26
Speaker
Yeah, but again, it goes back to it being a taboo, right? That there's something uncomfortable about... The other thing with sports is like, it's like one of the worst or harshest moments of someone's life and it's public. Like that's always struck me that so often it's like all these people are watching you lose this thing. Like nobody sees when I have a book proposal that gets shoved back in my face, but like the idea of a stadium full of people watching that just feels like, oh God,
00:50:52
Speaker
Or even if it's just like, I mean, playing high school tennis, like I eventually banned my mother from my matches. Every time I hit an error, I would hear her go. Oh, that is so loaded. Oh, mom. And she probably didn't even realize she was doing it. Oh, no, totally. Totally not. She knew she did too, you know. Oh, wow. How's your relationship?
00:51:23
Speaker
Oh, good. I remember, like, only praises, hallelujah, mother. Nice, nice. Well, that's good. Yeah, when I was little and playing ball, I'm working on like an essay about it called The Car in the Outfield. And my mom would always watch their games because just her social anxiety, she wouldn't be in the stands, but she would always park in the outfield. And
00:51:48
Speaker
And it was at one point in Little League, it bothered me that she was there and I basically told her, I'm like, I don't want you at my games anymore. And it's just like irrevocably like broker spirit about it. But eventually she started pulling up the old 89 Ford Escort to my games.
00:52:05
Speaker
Or like the thing I've been thinking about a lot lately is like that somber drive after a soccer game. Like my dad, you know, it was a Ford tempo then, but like, I'm now so grateful. Like there wasn't anything sad. Like it was silent and how that's also kind of a gift of just like, you're not asking your kid for the play by play breakdown of what went horribly wrong. You're not saying anything judgmental. You're just going to put on some like country, some Johnny Cash and just like,
00:52:32
Speaker
let the cold, rainy, you know, snot come down your nose, just like that's when I think about my, you know, illustrious soccer career, I'm like, Oh, thank God that my dad just kind of let me chill out in the car for a little bit. Oh, man, I had in my senior year of high school, we were in like, we had to win a certain, we had to win this match, had to win it to get to the state tournament. And with about five minutes to go, and I was like our score at the time, and we get a PK.
00:53:02
Speaker
And there's under five minutes to go. I hit this PK. We're going to go to the tournament. Our coach will get his 100th career win, blah, blah, blah. I tee it up. I'm thinking I'm aiming lower right 90. It's something I've always struggled to hit, but I'm like, this is where I'm going with it. And I'm right handed. My left hip kind of bails on me. And I hit the fucking ball right at the keeper, dead center.
00:53:29
Speaker
And we tie. We don't go to the tournament. Coach never got his 100th win. And I just was in a ball. Like I just laid down on the sideline at the end of the game on the ground. Everyone left. I left me behind. And then eventually my dad came up to me. He's just like, come on, get up. You know, in a few months it's baseball. In a few months it's baseball season.
00:53:53
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, it's just it's in the bones like losing. Losing is like an ink tattoo where winning is like the temporary ones that like burn off in five days.
Conclusion and Listener Engagement
00:54:05
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I want to be mindful of your time, guys, but it was this was so great to get to talk to and talk about losing and everything and what it means. And I think it's it was such a wonderful collection to read through. And it was just great. I'm so glad you guys were able to do it. So do you have any sort of parting losing words for the listeners out there who want to pick this book up?
00:54:34
Speaker
Don't share your stories. Yeah, you're not alone. None of us are alone, but particularly losers. Well, that was exciting. I mean, having two people on the show doing these kind of things is kind of cool. It feels like we're sitting around a table or something. I don't know. It's pretty rad.
00:55:03
Speaker
How'd you like that? Pretty great, right? Thank you so much for listening. Really mean that. And thanks to Scribner for the continued support of the podcast. Be sure to use that promo code nonfiction to get the best writing software you'll ever use for 20% off. Do it up. Okay. And if you're feeling kind, leave a nice review on Apple podcasts or button up against a really milestone number and it would be really cool to get there. Please, please.
00:55:28
Speaker
I like those two. Mary and Louisa. They're some good people. Seasoned losers. I feel like I found a couple of kindred spirits there. Now, if only my writing were 50% as good as theirs, I might be in business because, as you know, if you can do Interview, see ya.