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Episode 232: Change is the Only Constant with Glenn Stout
129 Plays4 years ago
Glenn Stout returns to the podcast to talk about the 30th and final edition of Best American Sports writing. His new book, Tiger Girl and the Candy Kid, is available for pre-order.
Promotional support for the podcast is shared with The Writers' Co-op, a business podcast for writers. It is hosted by Wudan Yan and Jenni Gritters.
Consider supporting the podcast by becoming a member at patreon.com/cnfpod.
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Transcript
Introduction to The Writer's Co-op
00:00:01
Speaker
Hey, if you enjoy this podcast, you may also enjoy The Writer's Co-op, hosted by Wudan Yan and Jenny Gridders. The Writer's Co-op focuses on the business side of running a freelance writing career and concurrently building a life you want.
Season Highlights: Featured Writers
00:00:18
Speaker
Wudan and Jenny are candid about talking about freelance pay, contracts, saying no to work, and more. This season, they're interviewing freelance writers on how they make it work.
00:00:30
Speaker
Guests so far have included Maya Kozov, Aurora Almondroll, Daniela Zaltzman, and Matt Vellano. Hey, listen wherever you podcast, man. You dig? Good. Because I think it's important that you recognize that it's not, that readers recognize that it's not my book, really. It's not the publisher's book, really.
00:00:58
Speaker
It's the reader's and the writer's book.
Creative Nonfiction Podcast Intro
00:01:07
Speaker
Hey, it's CNF, the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, the show where I speak to badass people about the art and craft of telling true stories. I'm Brendan O'Mara. Hey, how's it going, man? Always good to have my best friend Glenn Stout on the show. He's here to riff on the final edition of Best American Sports Writing, the 30th.
Jackie McMullen as Guest Editor
00:01:29
Speaker
It is published by Best American Paper.
00:01:32
Speaker
guest editor is the iconic basketball writer Jackie McMullen. I'm working out a time to have her on in the next week to talk about the the pieces in the edition and just her approach to the the whole thing and what it means to be guest editing the final edition
00:01:50
Speaker
I was hoping to have her on and patch Glenn and Jackie together, but it didn't happen. Podcast mechanics being what they are. Before we get to Glenn, I want to thank you for listening. And not just some flippant thank you, like a heartfelt thank you. I mean that. And being part of this jam band, you know, thanks for being a part. Thanks for picking up an axe and just, you know, stepping on that pedal and hitting some chords, man.
00:02:21
Speaker
Who's keeping the beat? Hank? Nope, he's sleeping.
Listener Feedback and Engagement
00:02:28
Speaker
Keep the conversation going on social media at cnfpod and consider leaving a kind review on Apple Podcasts like this one from Lori.
00:02:36
Speaker
Titled, inspiring podcast for CNF writers and readers. I've listened to almost every episode and I often come away with something I can use in my own work. The only downside is that my to read list is exploding since I want to devour so many of the books and essays discussed here.
00:02:54
Speaker
Thank you, Laurie. Love it. Love it.
Newsletter and Patreon Promotions
00:02:58
Speaker
Head over to BrendanOMara.com for show notes and to subscribe for the monthly newsletter, reading recommendations and articles and an exclusive invite to the CNF and monthly happy hour. We just had our December one the other day, nice little gang, and we talked about struggle. Good stuff. Good stuff, man.
00:03:20
Speaker
Hope you have a chance to listen to issue one of the CNF and audio mag, the inaugural one, themed isolation. I think it's been received pretty well. It's pretty rad.
CNF Audio Mag and Exclusive Content
00:03:32
Speaker
It's free for all issue one is, but subsequent issues will be exclusive to the Patreon community, patreon.com slash CNF pod. Check it out. All right, so Glenn is here to talk about best American sports writing.
Glenn Stout on Sports Writing and New Book
00:03:48
Speaker
really writing and we're not we're not we're not talking infield fly rule here we're talking about writing sports writing two words and we talk about a bunch of stuff regarding the final edition but don't expect the eulogy lots of great juice here he's also got a new book coming out in march tiger girl and the candy kid america's original gangster couple you can pre-order your copy now now
00:04:13
Speaker
Stay tuned to the end of the show for my parting riff, but in the meantime, here's Glenn.
End of Best American Sports Writing
00:04:33
Speaker
But what I found when I was reading the forward to the final edition of Best American Sports Writing, I like that you started it with, you know, you weren't going to eulogize it. So how did you arrive at just at that as your ethos for the forward of the final edition that you were not going to lament and eulogize the 30 editions? Well, I thought there would be some expectation that I would. I might at some point, but I thought
00:05:01
Speaker
You know, let's face it, I'm not particularly pleased that they're ending the series. So I thought, well, I'm going to save a eulogy for when I want to put a eulogy in the book, not for, you know, not for this edition because that's not going to do any good.
Evolution of Sports Writing
00:05:18
Speaker
I do have some things to say about sports writing. I do plan on saying them at some point, but I thought it was more important in this edition just to recognize the people that had been in there
00:05:31
Speaker
I very much wanted to include an index of the 30 years. And the publisher told me, oh, there's no room for that. So I'm like, fine. I'll just thank every writer that's been in it. Because I think it's important that you recognize that it's not, that readers recognize that it's not my book, really. It's not the publisher's book, really. It's the reader's and the writer's book.
00:05:59
Speaker
uh... so that's what i tried to do in in my forward uh... you know i do have things to say about sports right now you know been doing this for a long time and i've seen a lot of changes and i've seen a lot of things that have happened positively i've seen a lot of things that have happened with not so positively but it seemed to me that this just wasn't the place to try to do that i didn't want to grind any axes or
Working with Guest Editors
00:06:23
Speaker
uh... be to be to belligerent or uh...
00:06:27
Speaker
or anything, I wanted to get out of the way a little bit and let the last book speak for itself and also to give Jack
00:06:35
Speaker
to give Jackie room to say what she wanted to say. Of course, yeah, I always love, that's one of the things I've come to love about the collection too, is your forward and then the guest editor's essay as well at the beginning. They always play nice together and it's always, as much as I love the meat of these pieces that are honored in the anthology, it's always great to get the individual taste of the guest editor.
00:07:03
Speaker
and what is driving their taste and their selection. It's always a great insight into a great writer and reporter's mind. Yeah, and I always defer to the guest editor. Generally speaking, I wait for the guest editor to write their introduction before I do my forward because I don't want to step in their footprint. I don't want to step on their toes. They're the guest editor. It's sort of like more their book than anybody else's.
00:07:33
Speaker
And then I just try to kind of do a little counterpoint to that and have something a little different in tone that also speaks to, you know, things I care about. If, if there are certain things I, I felt like mentioning that they didn't talk about, I might take the opportunity in the forward to talk about those things. I mean, last year I kind of, I kind of railed a little bit against, uh, some of the things going on in the business and.
00:07:59
Speaker
And Charlie Pierce didn't. So there was space for both of those approaches in his introduction and in my foreword.
00:08:10
Speaker
Yeah, and this is
History and Adaptability of Journalism
00:08:12
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kind of an odd analogy, but in evolutionary biology, there's always this at the root of a branch of when a species differentiates itself. It's called like a common ancestor, but it's a very mushy, messy,
00:08:32
Speaker
watershed of a moment at that time. And then eventually you split off and you see things. And I feel like for the last 15 to maybe even 20 years, that's what we're seeing. We're seeing that muddy, those muddy waters before something's going to branch. You know, journalism is what it is, but the medium of its delivery is always changing and it has always changed. So I feel like we're just in that ugly mix where we're going to start to see, well, all right, where are we going to branch out from here?
00:09:04
Speaker
Yeah, and there's nothing, you know, really unique about that. I mean, if you go back, you know, 120 years, you know, you're talking about a time where most medium to large sized American cities had multiple, multiple papers. I'm not just talking about two.
00:09:20
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I'm talking about five, six, eight. And then by the depression, that had changed. And there were three or four in many of these cities. And then as you get into the sixties and the seventies, then often it was down to two. Now, if you think about the incredible shedding of not just journalists, but other people who are employed in newspaper line of typists, you know, boys on the corner selling the paper.
00:09:49
Speaker
You know, there have been dramatic, drastic changes in American journalism happening at almost every point in our history. It has always adapted. It has always changed. The only thing that you can count on is that it will change. And I sort of think that maybe in the latter part of the last century, we all kind of thought things were never going to change.
00:10:18
Speaker
And that was naive. That showed kind of a lack of knowledge of history. Things were going to change. And just as the medium of newspapers changed when, you know, they had to fire all the linotypists because they could do it, you know, electronically, you know, the nature of things changed and the nature of how it's done changed. You know, I started in this business writing stories out longhand and then typing them on an electric typewriter. That doesn't happen anymore.
00:10:48
Speaker
Um, that's something I had to adapt to. Um, you know, there was no such thing as an online, you know, it was online publications. One of the great sources for the early editions of the best American sports writing were the newspaper Sunday supplements, the Sunday magazines. Those hardly exist anymore. So, you know, that's the one thing I have seen even in just the last 30 years.
00:11:14
Speaker
is this turnover constantly of where stories are coming from, how they're being put together.
Adaptability in Journalism
00:11:21
Speaker
And then not only that, but also what stories are being done and how they're being written rather than just put together. So the only thing I can say to anybody about this business is that change is the only constant. It's not always going to be change that's going to include you.
00:11:44
Speaker
It's change that is going to include somebody else sometimes. If you're fast on your feet, maybe it will include you, but there have never been any givens. And I was speaking to somebody just the other day, and we just talked about how rare it is for somebody outside of the daily newspaper business, and even it's probably true in that now, but how rare it is for someone to have a run of more than like 15 or 20 years.
00:12:13
Speaker
really at the top of their game doing really, really good work. And that was as true 40, 50 years ago as it is now. It's a business that takes a lot out of you. It's a business that takes a lot. And it's never really been forever. And thinking it was going to be forever, that's probably the hubris of our age to think that
00:12:41
Speaker
Oh, well, we've got it figured out now and it will last forever. And I will be able to do this for 40 years. Well, you'll be able to do something for 40 years, but maybe not this now, you know, best American sports writing lasted for 30 years. Um, but, uh, maybe that's the only thing that lasts because previous to best American sports writing was the old best sports story series, which lasted 45 years.
00:13:04
Speaker
So that's 75 years of an annual collection of sports writing that's been published in this country. I do think it will continue beyond this at every step of the way. The old best sports stories book changed. I think best American sports writing changed over the 30 year run.
00:13:21
Speaker
and whatever follows will be responsive to change. And if it's to continue and be sustained, that's what it has to do. I think one of the great losses of the collection will be
Influence of Best American Sports Writing
00:13:36
Speaker
not only just having a treasure chest of this great writing and reporting, it's the notable selections that show where these pieces were published because it gave you a place like, oh, I didn't realize that N plus one published this kind of stuff, and it gave you 20 different places to consider where to place your work in a given year. To me, that was a great hack and one of the greatest gifts of this collection. Oh, where can I pitch stories?
00:14:06
Speaker
Well, that's a really gratified to hear that because I, as the series progressed, I paid more and more attention to the notables because I didn't think there was much value, quite frankly, in necessarily putting, oh, these are the stories that I put forward that didn't make the book. Gary Smith didn't need to have a story cited in the notable sports writing. Everybody knew who Gary Smith was.
00:14:34
Speaker
So over time, I kind of on my own, nobody told me to do it. Nobody told me not to do it. I kind of started to see the notables as a way to highlight lesser known publications, lesser known writers to let people know that somebody's paying attention. And, you know, if you made it in the back of the book, you know, more than anything I was saying, you know, you might end up in the front of the book someday.
00:15:02
Speaker
With a few maybe this year with a different guest editor you might have made it or that story you did with maybe a few changes Maybe expanded or maybe done in a slightly different way might make the front of the book It's been extraordinarily gratifying the last probably five years to realize Just how important it was for writers even to be mentioned in the back of the book
00:15:27
Speaker
I almost feel bad because I feel like I probably should have mentioned twice as many stories in the back of the book as I did in the early years. And I've actually tried to increase that number the last few years because it can make a difference. It can make a difference personally in that you just feel like you have some validation. It can help you keep your job.
00:15:50
Speaker
It can help you get a job. It can, you know, somebody's slugging it out in a small magazine that's just barely breaking even. Maybe that's one of the things that makes them decide to let's do it another year. Let's be a little more ambitious. Look, somebody's paying attention. Because, you know, everything is so facile and happens so quickly now. Yeah, everybody pays attention to everything, but only for like a second and a half. At least in the book, it's there.
00:16:18
Speaker
in print you can look at it and it's there forever that says hey you did something really good here either as a publication or or as a writer or even as an editor who had you know somebody you worked with have one of their stories just be noticed so that's really what I've what I've tried to do and and you know it's over time you know there are people that like
00:16:43
Speaker
that started out in the notables, you know, writing for much smaller publications that are now at much bigger publications and they're in the front of the book now. And that's happened, you know, time and time again.
00:16:57
Speaker
the gas stations to get fuel in this game are sort of few and far between. And you're on fumes a lot of times before you can get to the next fueling station. So seeing your name in the back of that book is just like, okay, I'm not completely diluted. I could be on the right path. And so it's just so good to see that recognition. It's so important. Yeah, I mean, you know, it's anything that helps the larger industry helps all of us, right? Yeah.
00:17:27
Speaker
That's what I've always thought.
Guest Editors' Tastes and Selections
00:17:29
Speaker
And anything that book could do to help the larger industry, you know, the front of the book, hey, it alerts people to the fact that, you know, good writing is not defined by genre. And I would put the writing in the in the sports writing book up against the writing in any of the other best American collections. I mean, early on, Tom McGuain was
00:17:53
Speaker
uh one of the guest editors and you know tom is best known for his novels and he was like i like this book better than the short story book there's a lot better writing in here than there is the short story book and uh not to diminish the short story book but um you know it doesn't matter what you write about good writing speaks to people people find good writing and it the genre really doesn't matter and you know that's why
00:18:20
Speaker
From the start, I insisted that it be sports writing two words rather than sports writing one word, just to make that a little more expansive.
00:18:30
Speaker
It's a little more inclusive. And a moment ago too, you know, being in the back of the book and then depending on the taste and the subjectivity of the guest editor, it could have meant the difference between someone being in the back versus the front. And it's so like key to know that and to have noted that because with someone like a Howard Bryant who is such, he's so clued into tennis.
00:18:54
Speaker
I don't think it's a mistake or a coincidence that say Louisa Thomas who writes a lot about tennis got in the front of the book versus the back of the book same with Christopher McDougal about running there were running stories in the front of the book versus the back of the book just based on that taste so I think it's also an exercise in subjectivity in that.
00:19:13
Speaker
Certain things are out of your control and as as you said Way back in our first early conversations all you can control all you can control is your effort and the rest is you know Everyone's taste or subjectivity Right, and I mean that's the the great strength of having a changing editor every year You know, it was never my book with my tastes. I mean in a given year I would say I would probably have selected anywhere between maybe
00:19:43
Speaker
one half to two thirds of the stories that made the front of the book. But in any given year, that also means that there were probably anywhere from like 12 to six or seven stories that are in the back of the book that I really would have liked to have seen in the front. But had that happened, had the book been constructed that way, well, that it would be a different book would be Glenn Stout's favorite stories. And I never wanted it to be Glenn Stout's favorite stories.
00:20:13
Speaker
I mean, I've told people, people might not believe it, but I've always put forward stories to the guest editor that I don't like, but that I recognize that other people might. Stories that, for whatever reason, are not something that I would have ever picked for the book. And sometimes they've made the book. And that's fine because, you know, my job is not so much a gatekeeper,
00:20:40
Speaker
as somebody who was trying to like always leave the gate open so somebody could bust through. You know, it's like I went hiking in Ireland, you know, you go through all these gates, you got to close them after the walk, you know, so the sheep don't get out. You know, in this book, I leave the gates open. Hopefully, it lets other sheep in, you know, different sheep into the field. Bad metaphor, but you know, I think it illustrates something.
00:21:07
Speaker
What were some maybe memorable exchanges or memorable relationships that you've had with some of the 30 past guest editors?
Experiences with Guest Editors
00:21:17
Speaker
Well, you know, it's funny because they're all different. Some I've had no relationship with whatsoever. Some I never communicated with at all. That was always up to them. If they wanted my input, I was here to help. If they didn't want my input, that's also fine. So there's some people that I simply never spoke to.
00:21:36
Speaker
There's other people that were much more engaged with me, probably no one more so than David Halberstam, surprisingly enough, in the first edition. He was, you know, very collegial. He always wanted to talk about the stories that held true in the best American sports right of the century book we did.
00:21:54
Speaker
You know, I was fortunate that a couple of guest editors are people I knew pretty well. Bill Littlefield, who did the book in the mid-1990s, who had only a game show on NPR. I knew Bill a little bit. We sat at his kitchen table.
00:22:10
Speaker
Howard Bryant, I've known for probably 20 years. You know, we talk regularly. So that was a very comfortable relationship. And we talked about stories. I mean, I remember I won't say the story, but he called up. It's like, what do you think about this story? I'm not so sure about it. And, you know, we could have like a 20, 25 minute conversation about that. So, you know, and those are the ones that, you know, were most enjoyable for me.
00:22:37
Speaker
you know, Jackie was very good. Jackie kind of at the end of the day, you know, put forward was like, you know, here are, I think she had about 22 stories and she was like, you know, are there, is there any stories that you think I should take a second look at? Because I don't have it quite up to 25 yet. And I said, yeah, here's some that I would take a second look at.
00:22:59
Speaker
And a couple of them made the book. I don't know if they were on the cusp of making the book anyway or not. That's not really my role. And the one thing I think that is important is that I never not even once said to a guest editor, this story has to be in the book. Even though there were times I wanted to. And I almost feel bad that I never do that because there's
00:23:27
Speaker
really good stories that I wish would have made the book. And a couple of times I've said to writers, you know, I got to tell you, if it would have been up to me, your story was, you know, one of the best and didn't make it. You know, that's just the nature of how it works, you know. And I don't know if there's a way to or many ways to do it much differently. At the end of the day, sort of one person has to decide what best is.
00:23:56
Speaker
And all the contract says is they need to be selected by literary merit. Now, what the hell is literary merit from one person to another? A story that knocks me over the head and gives me Satori might fall flat for somebody else. Hopefully, the way it's set up, it's worked for a number of readers for a long time. And based on the number of people who send me pictures of the bookshelf they have,
00:24:26
Speaker
with all 30 editions sitting up there, I think for the most part it succeeded.
00:24:34
Speaker
And in your forward, you say some people that really supported you when it kept you moving forward on this project, probably in those darker days and the grinds that this game can sometimes impart on us. And you mentioned Howard, and of course there's Bryn Jonathan Butler and Kim Cross and a few other people. Why were they so important to you?
00:25:02
Speaker
Well, you know, for probably the first two decades I did this book, you know, I was just, you know, I'm just doing my thing. I didn't really have a great deal of interaction with very many other writers. I was writing books myself all the time while I was doing this and only had a couple of other people that I knew that were doing this thing. But as I got involved editorially with some other projects and started to intersect with some other writers,
00:25:32
Speaker
And then finally started attending some, you know, I went to the Mayborn several times and I did some other, you know, literary festivals and things like that. I actually started to meet more writers and have more interaction with them. That really energized me in a lot of ways. For one, it made me think like, gee, maybe I've actually learned something because people came to me asking for my advice.
00:26:01
Speaker
And then I realized pretty quickly that I was getting as much from them as I was giving them. And that was a real boost because you do anything for 20 years, not to mention 30.
00:26:17
Speaker
that certain fatigue starts to set in. And just realizing that the book meant a lot, that people were continuing to learn from it, that younger writers in particular and younger writers who probably didn't see writers like them in the book in the early years, that even they looked at the book and found some inspiration.
00:26:43
Speaker
the experience of having people come up to me and go, I've been reading this book my entire life. Or this is the book that made me want to be a writer. You know, I didn't realize that early on that it was having that kind of impact. But I came to realize, I came to really value it and to really value those friendships because this is hard. To be a writer is hard. You know, it sounds good when you're at the bar.
00:27:10
Speaker
but it's a solitary process. And you don't, as you noted earlier, you don't always get a whole lot of feedback, a whole lot of positive feedback. So it's hugely important to have that group of people, that tribe of people that you can discuss things with. Now, I don't really discuss selections for the book, or at least in this book, with many other people, but I talk about writing a lot. And, you know, and just the nature of being,
00:27:39
Speaker
conversation with writers is you're always alerting each other to to did you see this story have you heard of this writer you know what do you think about this magazine or this this website you should really take a look at that and that just expands you know it expands your field because you know it is
00:28:02
Speaker
You know, even though parts of the industry have shrank, other parts of the industry have expanded. They're also, it's also a little harder to get at. You know, how many websites are there? God, I don't know. I can, you know, you can find out how many newspapers there are. You can find out how many magazines there are. You don't know everything that's on the web. So those relationships become more and more important.
00:28:28
Speaker
Just to keep your own awareness up and keep you on your game So you don't fall into just looking for stories from the same old places over and over and over again the aggregators that have popped up in the last Seven or eight years two are hugely important in that way because those are additional sets of eyes Scanning
Appreciating Writers' Efforts
00:28:48
Speaker
all the time. It's like, you know, you you're in the mothership of the enterprise and you're scanning the planet, you know, and we've got Other enterprises up there scanning the planet
00:28:58
Speaker
and detecting life forms that you might not have come across earlier. And I particularly like how you, it was a real poignant grace note that at the end of your forward, you say, thanks for being a writer. And you list all the writers who have been in the front of the book. And so in a way, because this is a book for writers and a book for readers, how important was it for you to just simply thank them for being a writer and taking up the pen?
00:29:28
Speaker
Well, you know, I started doing that sort of by accident when I was doing some editorial work several years ago. And, you know, I know how hard it is to work on a story or to work on a book. And when I would finish up with someone, you know, I'd kind of let them know we were done. I'd say, thanks for being a writer. It just kind of came to me. It's like, yeah, thanks for being a writer, because I love doing this. I love the fact that, like, I get to interact with writers and, you know, that really fulfills me.
00:29:56
Speaker
And I was surprised that some people were like, no one has ever said that to people before. Thanks for being a writer. You know, people, people give us grief when they don't like what we do. And they might say, we really like that thing you did. But they never really say we like who you are. We like what you do. We like your profession. And I think it's really, I realize it's really important to
00:30:25
Speaker
to recognize that you know thanks for being a writer because without writers none of us are doing anything in this business you know and it is hard and you know nobody you know nobody you know pins a medal to your chest when you come out of the basement after working on a book or a story for eight hours you know they basically say you know
00:30:47
Speaker
How come you didn't hear the phone ring? How come you didn't take the dog out? All that stuff. I mean, I told my wife and daughter, I think I mentioned in the book, it's like, I'm not always present, right? Because words are in my head. That hard drive's always going. That's a very difficult thing to kind of live with. And anyway, I just appreciate
00:31:16
Speaker
that there are other people that kind of think it's worthwhile and against all odds, because most of the people who want to be writers aren't. But against all odds, I really appreciate the fact that there are some of us that have stuck it out and continue to stick it out, no matter how difficult it is. I mean, I've known two people in the last six months who were out of the business and had been out of the business.
00:31:45
Speaker
for five or six years. And they got jobs. Now, how did that happen, particularly at this time? Well, they didn't give up, and they're really writers. Case closed. That's what they are. So they didn't stop, even though they weren't being paid. They didn't stop. They continued. And guess what? They're still writers.
00:32:09
Speaker
And as we bring this airliner down, I'd be remiss if I didn't just at least tease out your new book with Tiger Girl and the Candy Kid and pre-ordering is open. So maybe you can give people a little bit of a tease of what it is and give them some juice to pre-order this thing.
00:32:27
Speaker
Sure, it's the story of what I argue the America's first gangster couple. These two young kids, I mean they were in their early 20s, in the middle of the jazz age, coming out of World War I, a pandemic, and then a very severe economic depression in the country, underwent