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Episode 206: Neal Bascomb on Deep Research, Failed Novels, and Locking into Nonfiction
136 Plays4 years ago
Neal Bascomb, the best-selling author, joins us to talk about Faster: How a Jewish Driver, an American Heiress, and a Legendary Car Beat Hitler's Best (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020), joins us to talk about the book, the essay he wrote as a kid that sent him on this path, and the myriad failed novels that put him on the nonfiction track.
Keep the conversation going on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, @CNPod. I'd love to hear from you.
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Transcript
Introduction and Sponsorship
00:00:01
Speaker
All right. Well, right now this thing, this little thing I'm doing right here, it's kind of a placeholder because I've got a really exciting new sponsor that's starting up soon for a pretty short trial run, but I think you're going to dig them. And I just want you to get used to this idea that we might just be starting the show with a little ad, a little riff, if you will, before we dive into the teaser, say like right now.
00:00:30
Speaker
I read a little too much Hemingway, a little too recently immovable feast packed on my bags and I moved to Paris.
00:00:44
Speaker
My, my, my. How goes it, CNFers? You know what time it is. This is the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, a show where I talk to badass people about the art and craft of telling true stories. I'm Brendan O'Mara. Hey, this is my podcast. Be sure you're subscribed to the weekly party. No RSVP needed. Wherever you get your podcasts, we're talking Apple, Spotify, Google, Pocket Casts. That's where I listen to my podcasts, is on Pocket Casts.
00:01:11
Speaker
and keep the conversation going on social media at cnfpod across the mall. I'd love to hear from you. Tag me and I'll give you those old digital fist bumps or whatever and we'll just talk shop. That's what it's there for. It's horrible for promoting stuff but it's great for engaging one-to-one. I'm happy to do it.
Guest Introduction: Neil Bascom
00:01:33
Speaker
This week's guest is Neil Bascom, the author of Faster, How a Jewish Driver, An American Heiress, and A Legendary Car Beat Hitler's Best, Houghton-Mithlin-Hacot. I feel like I'm a company shill for them, but they send me great books with amazing authors, so whatever. And you know something?
00:01:54
Speaker
No matter the week, I think I'm Thursday night when I'm packaging this, this MF, when I'm recording my intros and of course my outros, it's time to celebrate, right? Getting this thing together is often no shorter than a miracle. It's like what Lorne Michaels says about SNL. We don't go on because it's perfect, we go on because it's 1130. And then after the show, they're all kinds of happy. You know, it could have been a great show,
00:02:23
Speaker
but they got it done, it doesn't matter. I think even NFL teams, even if they win ugly, at least they won and they celebrate that. It doesn't matter if they did it in style, they won and that's a reason to break out the ax and shred. So I think I'm gonna break out my version of the ax and shred. This frothy number, cheers.
00:02:56
Speaker
is RPM IPA from Boneyard Brewing out of Bend, Oregon. And why shouldn't we celebrate bringing another hot episode straight to your brain? In this episode, we talk about Neil's rigorous attention to research, how he uses Microsoft Excel to organize it all. The essay he wrote as a kid that gave him the juice he needed to pursue writing, writing several failed novels,
Neil's Background and Early Writing Journey
00:03:23
Speaker
moving to Paris and ultimately locking into the trip that is narrative non-fiction. You're gonna dig this one, I guarantee. He was born in Denver, grew up in St. Louis, played a whole lot of hockey, loves the St. Louis blues, and he is here to rock and roll. So let's hit it seeing efforts with a woo!
00:03:57
Speaker
Lewis. So at what point, you know, what, you know, what kind of crew are you running with? At what point are you starting to get sort of that maybe a literary bug, a literary virus, sort of inoculated in you? I was a big reader. Growing up, I mean, I would spend hours reading, you know, mostly the sort of fantasy fiction, you know, Lord of the Rings, C.S. Lewis kind of
00:04:24
Speaker
genre and just read all the time. In fact, my parents would often be like, you know, get out of the door, you know, go outside. So I was always a big reader. I remember, you know, I was actually a big programmer, computer programmer, growing up again, you know, parents were like, get out of the house. So, you know, I would do those sort of things and, and
00:04:52
Speaker
And in fact, the first thing I ever wrote that I tried to publish was a, a review of some fantasy computer game. Uh, bizarrely, this was, I, I, gosh, I, I must've been 10 years old, 11 years old, submitting this to a magazine, you know, sort of hoping for, for a good answer, uh, and received this sort of a polite
00:05:17
Speaker
You know, you're obviously a kid. Why are you sending me a review? You know, praising the writing nicely, but sort of like, you know, not really. So I never really thought about being a writer or what that would be like until ninth grade when I might actually just posted this a while ago on my Facebook night. I had this great English teacher named Mrs. Barkley.
00:05:47
Speaker
And she had a right of assignment for us to write about a place that was special to us. Um, and so I chose this Valley, uh, that, uh, that's about a couple of hours outside of St. Louis. My, I had this core group of four or five guys. Uh, they had older brothers and we would go out with the older brothers camping for, for long weekends. Um, just, just the last, I mean, all of us in high school, uh, and you know, with sheet guns and.
00:06:15
Speaker
and hunt and camp, you know, four seasons a year, often in the snow. And we would go to this particular valley to fish. And it just was a really special place for me, particularly because it was freedom for me and friendship and camaraderie. And so I wrote about that in this really, you know,
00:06:46
Speaker
using every adverb I could find. And really, you know, flowering it up a lot. But I remember painstakingly, you know, line writing, line by line writing and revising and wanting to create something that was really good. And, you know, after I submitted to my Mrs. Barkley, she brought me after class and just, you know, praised it and said, you know,
00:07:16
Speaker
this is really extraordinary and I want to submit it to a national contest and, you know, have you ever thought about being a writer? That was kind of the, if there was a crystalous moment, that was probably it. So probably soon after that, I, and then I, you know, was reading more sort of literary fiction, of course, when you're in high school and reading, you know, got away from fantasy novels and reading other wide range of fiction.
00:07:46
Speaker
And I think soon after high school, I knew I wanted to be a writer.
Transition to Narrative Nonfiction
00:07:53
Speaker
Although I thought I wanted to be a novelist. Yeah, I think a lot of people who write narrative nonfiction, I think at first, I think novels just hit us first and we're like, oh, that's the thing I want to do. And then you kind of, but then you kind of realize you're up again.
00:08:12
Speaker
Well, I actually just kind of maybe stumble upon some narrative nonfiction. You're like, oh, I can do this and maybe work for a newspaper or maybe a magazine. And then it feels like you're getting paid to do this thing instead of going out on a lark hoping to get this novel published on spec or something. So maybe it feels more tangible when you can pivot to the journalism and the narrative nonfiction. And it feels maybe more something like you can actually grasp versus the novel seems kind of, I don't know, ethereal in a way.
00:08:42
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's absolutely true. I mean, I will say that sort of failure led me to, and I say this, I love what I do. I love writing narrative nonfiction. So that's the perfect thing for me, but failure led me there in many ways. Like I really took the novelist ambition pretty seriously. You know, when I remember graduating college and, you know, my father is very,
00:09:13
Speaker
Uh, practical person, um, you know, sort of middle-class upbringing he had, you know, and, and so, you know, it was all about getting good, stable job, uh, raising a family living in St. Louis. And, you know, he told me very clearly after I graduated college, like, it's great that you want to write, but you need to get a real job. And so.
00:09:39
Speaker
And now that I'm a father and I'm almost 50 years old, I have children, like I understand where he was coming from. You know, that was set out of wanting me to have a stable life, which I understand. But it was crushing at that age, right? I mean, absolutely crushing. And so I became a journalist, to your point.
00:10:05
Speaker
right out of college. During my summer of my junior year, I worked at a magazine in London called Euro Money Magazine. And at the end of that summer, they offered me a job once I graduated college. So as soon as I graduated college from Miami University in Ohio, I got on a plane and moved to London and was there writing, researching first and then writing
00:10:35
Speaker
And then in Dublin, I did the same thing. And then I moved back, I moved to New York because I wanted to be a writer. And I thought that was the place to be. And, but I didn't know how to do it. And so I ended up deciding my best move was to become a book editor and learn, you know, how to, how to be a writer, how to write books, be a sort of immersed in that world.
00:11:02
Speaker
And so I became an editor at St. Martin's Press or an editorial assistant, which is basically a secretary, and then making my way up to editor over four years. But all through that time, the point is, as I meander, was that at night I was writing novels. I was writing John Lecare like novels. I was writing Stephen King like horror novels.
00:11:31
Speaker
John Grisham legal thrillers. I was writing, you know, all these genre novels that, you know, I thought I had a great idea about the United Nations and the thriller set there and then various other ones. And I would write every night at a coffee shop for a couple hours. And I was producing roughly a novel every year and I would submit them.
00:11:59
Speaker
And I was in the business at that point with them, the friends and who were editors or agents. And, you know, they just, they just didn't work. They were terrible. And so after about four years of doing, I think I wrote three or four novels over four years, I decided, you know what, I can't do this genre fish. And like, I need to write the great American novel.
00:12:29
Speaker
So I packed up my bags. I read a little too much Hemingway, a little too recently Immovable Feast, packed up my bags and I moved to Paris. I didn't speak a lick of French, but I decided that I had to, I laugh about it thinking about it now, but that I had to live in Paris and write the great American novel.
00:12:56
Speaker
So I did that, uh, and it was terrible. It was called chasing blue. And, you know, it was like most first novel first sort of literary novels written by people. It was, you know, it was an autobiography in some senses. So it was, it was bad. I didn't think it was bad. I thought it was great force. Um, that's,
00:13:22
Speaker
thing you kind of need if you're a writer you have to think your stuff is really good or I don't think you could wake up in the morning and submitted to people and friends who were editors and who I knew knew their stuff and you know and they just thought it wasn't very good and I was just crushed and it's like why can't I do this like I feel like I'm a good writer like I just can't get this right and I moved back to New York
00:13:54
Speaker
And then a friend of mine who was an agent, Scott Waxman, who's a very good agent in New York and was a friend of mine said, you know, I have this story about these architects in New York, you know, in 1929 who were former partners and then became rivals. And they each ended up being assigned to design and build the tallest building in the world at the same time, which was the Chrysler Building and the Bank of Manhattan Building.
00:14:22
Speaker
And he's like, it's a true story. I know you want to write novels, but you should see if you could write this.
Research Methods and Immersion
00:14:30
Speaker
And I put together a proposal and gave it to him. And it just worked. Whatever it is of my style of writing, my style of research, it sold right away. It sold well. It won awards.
00:14:52
Speaker
thing I've done since has been very, you know, I don't want to overstate it, but it's been easy. Like this is what I should be writing. I love the iterations of the fact that you wrote so many novels that, you know, on the surface, yeah, they, you know, they, they failed, but not every word was wasted because it got you to a point of proficiency and skill that when you locked into the thing that you were really supposed to do, it's like, it seems almost like the skids were greased.
00:15:21
Speaker
in a sense because you were able to lock into story you had that practice you put in the rigor the hours after work when your eyes are already bleary from reading manuscripts all day you still made the time to do your work so you had this muscle built up even though it wasn't it didn't come to the fruition that you would hope but that said when you were able to lock into this non-fiction story it you know it clicked like you said it clicked yeah it was it was you know in many respects it was effortless which writing
00:15:51
Speaker
fiction was not for me. Yeah, you know, not that writing nonfiction is, is in any way simple, like I still labor over it, just like I did that first story of the valley. But I very seldom do I have to rewrite something or in terms of struggling over how to construct a certain paragraph or how to approach a individual character or person that I'm writing about, as I did in
00:16:21
Speaker
in contrast to fiction.
00:16:24
Speaker
Well, I think a lot of that has to do with the immense detail you pay to research and setting yourself up so the writing is, for lack of a better term, the writing is easy given how much heft you put behind it in terms of how you go about structure and research and putting it into an Excel spreadsheet. So maybe you can elaborate on that, just the sheer volume that you're doing to set up the writing and make the writing the fun, easy part, if you will.
00:16:54
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I kind of look at it. You know, my work as a narrative nonfiction writer is like, it's, it's, well, it's really three jobs in one if you put it out because you, you got to come out and publicize and be out there and market your books and talk about them. Um, that's a part of the job, but, um, the sort of two key essential parts of the job are one, the, the, the research and the other is, is the writing and.
00:17:21
Speaker
For me, the books generally take two to three years, depending on the particular project. And I would say 60% of that time is spent researching. 30% is probably writing, and 10% is rewriting. And that 60% is, as you say, becoming so immersed into the particular world that I'm writing about, let's take faster as an example than my most recent book
00:17:51
Speaker
about Grand Prix racing in the 1930s. It was, you know, I wasn't a car guy. I didn't know a lot about French race cars in the 1930s, uh, nor the drivers, but you have to inhabit the world. You have to inhabit the language. You have to inhabit the characters. And so that is a process of, of, you know, hoovering up information.
00:18:18
Speaker
Um, and just reading a ton, like there's just no way around it as far as I see. And, you know, I love the research and I, you know, I could spend hours in a library reading or an archive or doing interviews or going through material. I love that part every bit as much as, as the writing. And that's a very different brain cut part of the brain that you're exercising and doing that. It's detective work. It's.
00:18:47
Speaker
collaboration, because I often work with research assistants, because most of my books are set overseas. And so I have people on the ground that I'm working with and collaborating with. And it's just spending time gathering up the details. What was the weather like? What was, in the case of Faster, what did these engines sound like? How did they feel in your hands when you were gripping the steering wheel? What happens before race starts?
00:19:17
Speaker
What are the movements? What's the orchestration of these races? What are the audiences doing? How do these race cars sort of move together through a circuit that threads itself through a tight city? What are the most dangerous parts? And that takes a lot of reading of contemporaneous
00:19:45
Speaker
coverage of the races or the race car drivers, but also takes, you know, walking the courses yourself and feeling the contour or seeing the contours of the streets of the race courses. And that's, that's all like super fun for me, because I know when I'm sitting down, when I've done with the research and I'm, you know, I'm writing, like, I need that detail.
00:20:14
Speaker
And I need it at hand because I don't want to have to do, because I'm in a different world at that point. I'm in the world of trying to write and trying to construct a narrative that's moving quickly. I can't divert my brain from that to, you know, going to a library and looking for particular detail. I have to have it all there. So I never start writing until I have more than everything I need, like so much more.
00:20:44
Speaker
And I'm sure you had, um, other guests on here that, that say, you know, I probably have 10 times the amount of material that I ever shoe horn into a book. And you know, that's the case. Like you just, you never know exactly what you need until you're actually writing. Um, but for me, I, I, I feel like I viscerally need to know how everything sounds, smells, looks, you know, taste may be taking it too far.
00:21:12
Speaker
But I need to have as much as possible. Coupled with that just because of your question about the Excel, like coupled with that is, and I could totally
00:21:22
Speaker
you know, weird out on this kind of thing. I love it. I love it when people weird out on their on their on their habits of how they how they go about it. It's just like Nomar Garcia Parra like tugging at his batting gloves, tapping his toes in the batter's box. It's like whatever you need to do to get into the right headspace to hit that ball or or to write a book. I love it. I love all the weird stuff.
00:21:46
Speaker
Yeah, so I was just having this sort of Twitter correspondence with Alexander Rose, whose newest, he wrote Washington Spies and Empires in the Skies, his new book, and it's really great. And we were weirding out over our, you know, our research, I don't know how best to describe it, how we assemble our research and organize it.
00:22:09
Speaker
And so I do it through Excel. I will read a book. I will take notes on what's on a particular page, if it's a quote that I like or a source that I need to look up or a particular explanation that I found very good. I will put that, you know, if I read a 300 page book, I may have 30 to 50 lines in my Excel file about what's on a particular page. Same with an interview. If I'm interviewing,
00:22:38
Speaker
for instance, for faster, like if I have interviews with Renee Dreyfus, like what'd he say on page two of the transcript about his race in Monaco when he first sort of left onto the scene? Like, similarly with archival material. So it's all put all the, you know, a year, year and a half of research, what I've found, what it says, what's particularly interesting, what's unique, what's original,
00:23:07
Speaker
what I found nowhere else is all put into this massive Excel file. Uh, that is probably, you know, for faster, I think it was something like 6,000 lines of material from everything from, you know, a French newspaper. Like I went through French newspapers of the period. Um,
00:23:32
Speaker
What's on what was on particularly March 20th 1938 what was in the French newspaper with the headlines I wouldn't say about Renee and this great race And so all that sort of packed together into this excel file and then it's Oregon and then I I take that sort of raw material that I've collected that's interesting and
00:23:58
Speaker
then I read through every one of those lines. And from that, I construct the narrative, the outline of what's in each chapter. What's the flow between different characters, the timeline. For Pastor, it's, where's Rudy Kerachula, the German driver? How much room does he have versus Rene Dreyfus? Is it two to one, that he's in, Rene's in two chapters for every one of Rudy?
00:24:27
Speaker
how do I thread them together, weave them together? So I'm not just reading about Rudy and then Renee sort of is lost. Like, so it's a chapter by chapter and then section by section within each chapter guide. And so let's, by the time I, I'm ready to write, I know what's in chapter 12, section one. Uh, and I've coded that into my Excel file so that,
00:24:56
Speaker
When I'm writing chapter 12, section one, my cell file will spit out, you know, every archive, interview, book page, magazine article that is relevant to that section. And so for me, it's, I read all that stuff and then I write the section and then it's just doing it all the way through the book. And very rarely will I.
00:25:26
Speaker
steer away from that.
00:25:29
Speaker
That's incredible. When you're reading, let's say, the memoirs of Rene Dreyfus and you're trying to process it in a way to make it fresh and new and faster, what becomes the challenge in reading some of that sort of primary source material and to not make it just sound like you're merely regurgitating what they've already said? How do you balance that?
00:25:59
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's, you can, and I, you know, when I read other narrative nonfiction, I, again, I kind of geek out on it too. I'm like, I will be reading sections and I'm like, where'd he get this? Where'd she get this? And be like, okay, is she drawing it all from one book? Or is he drawing it all from one book? Or is it this range of sources? But because for me, like, for the most part, faster, for instance, like,
00:26:28
Speaker
Rene wrote a very good memoir. It wasn't terribly exciting, but it had a lot of good information in it.
Balancing Historical Context in Storytelling
00:26:39
Speaker
It had, in fact, even dialogue that he recalled having. So the material is really good, but how do I make that material read in a narrative, non-efficient way?
00:26:56
Speaker
How do I read it with kind of a novelist eye? How do I present it? And so doing that, taking that sort of primary source material is really taking that sort of core. Let's say it's a scene that I'll give it, it's probably better explained in a specific example. René won this competition in France in 1937 to be the fastest driver in France, which sort
00:27:26
Speaker
Catapulted him into a position where he could take on the Germans so he recounts in his memoir that race It's called a million Frank race in 1937 in his memoir. It covers roughly two Two and a half pages not terribly heavy on description. It's more like a couple things on what happened in this lap what happened right before the race some thoughts and
00:27:53
Speaker
But like I painted that scene in faster over the course of 20 pages. Right. And so I knew I had this course primary source material, what Renee was thinking, feeling, but that's not anywhere near enough to put readers there, you know, give them a real sense that they're, they're, they're involved in the scene. And so.
00:28:22
Speaker
It is threading, to use the word again, it is threading that primary source material with the six accounts by French newspaper journalists who were on the scene and experiencing it from an omniscient point of view. It's taking various other people who were there. It's taking video of the event, sound of the event, and bringing it all together
00:28:51
Speaker
in a way that you don't lose what Rene's feelings were because he told you what he was feeling. But like, that's kind of not very dramatic unless you have the world around it.
00:29:03
Speaker
Yeah. Does that answer your question? Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it's it's it's really just getting getting immersed in it. And it's it's kind of like, you know, adding to that is you getting your your boots on the ground there, too. Like, you know, the writer Philip Gerard, who's a friend of mine and writes historical nonfiction as well. He when he was writing something for about the Civil War and, you know, the Battle of Gettysburg, like he
00:29:32
Speaker
started at the lower hill and like marched up the hill of Pickett's Charge and you don't realize how grueling that hill is until until you actually walk up it and then you picture you know cannon fire going off you know
00:29:48
Speaker
you know, rifles firing your way and having the duck behind rocks and all this. And then all of a sudden you're there and you can be with these men in this position. So it's kind of, it's great that, you know, you're, you know, of course you read Renee's account, but I'm sure you also like walked or drove the course and you kind of had an idea of, Oh, this is what it's like to be here. Yes, absolutely. So yeah, it's, it's an immersion details. And I was thinking to some of the other night was like,
00:30:15
Speaker
How did you describe the, the language? Cause at one point I write about, you know, how the sounds of the engines, it sounds like, you know, a bunch of wailing cats. Yeah. And like, how do you get there? And similar to your friend who's who wrote the civil war, it's like, it's by reading the, all these accounts. So if it's a, if it's a war story, it's, you know, reading diaries until, you know, your eyes want to sort of pop out of your head.
00:30:46
Speaker
um so that you're you're immersed in the language and the sort of cadence and the and the detail uh and so that when you're writing you know in some ways it's it's imitation so you know it's not by no means is it plagiarism but it's it's imitation it's you know it's sort of getting a feel of the language and how people describe things and and
00:31:15
Speaker
at that particular moment in period of time and place, and then coming up with your own way of saying it that echoes the scene that as it was.
00:31:28
Speaker
And when you were writing this book, I imagine it would have been awful tempting to thread in almost an obsessive amount of Hitler's rise and the rise of Nazism, though it's just a subtle backdrop of
00:31:51
Speaker
his rise to power and the symbolism of the silver arrow and what that really meant for the Third Reich. Did you wrestle with how much sort of Nazi seasoning to sprinkle through this? So ultimately the story had that villain but it wasn't rooted solely in the rise of the Third Reich?
00:32:15
Speaker
To that point, I'd say, you know, I maybe say it may get the narrative structure sound sort of simple to do. But I think probably of any of my books, this one was was probably the greatest struggle just in terms of how much of this story is Hitler and the Nazi rise. You know, how much do I need to go into Italian fascism? I mean, all these elements are
00:32:43
Speaker
important as context because nationalism infected the Grand Prix, uh, in the thirties, just like it did other sport, like the Olympics of 1936, just as it did sort of boys in the boat era, um, as well as the, the surrounding world. But like, I don't want to just, I don't want this book to be a primer on the rise of nationalism. This is another rework of that.
00:33:10
Speaker
And in the first draft, it was more of that. And I had to remind myself, or actually I had my editor remind me not to underscore how important a good editor is, like, what's important for the reader to know in terms of the rise of nationalism as it relates to the context of the story that you're telling, not as a separate entity, right?
00:33:35
Speaker
you only want to tell the sort of rise of fascism and Hitler as it relates and faster to how it impacted the Grand Prix. And so I went away from, I remember cutting a lot of rise of fascism and going back and sort of bringing in how that related to Mercedes, how that related to auto union with the two major automobile manufacturers at the time who were being funded by the Third Reich. And so,
00:34:06
Speaker
It's a good reminder, and even though I've written a bunch of books at this point, I constantly have to remind myself, what does the reader need to know? What's important for the reader to know? Only as it relates to the story that you're telling that propulses the story forward, because I'm not writing door stopper history. Door stopper history has a place.
00:34:36
Speaker
important place. But it's different than creative nonfiction. It's a different style of writing. You're conveying information differently. And I believe that sincerely.
00:34:52
Speaker
Yeah, and it's something I loved, too, is just how, you know, in the face of this, you know, Hitler, you know, basically tears up the Versailles Treaty and, and people who might not be too well versed in World War One history might under like, why was there this appeasement? And like you wrote of, you know, people driving through the French countryside and seeing like, the scars of the trenches and is like,
00:35:17
Speaker
World War I had just ended, you know, barely 20 years before that. And that just, the Somme, Verdun, everything was so fresh in people's memories that it's like the idea of another war just could not be fathomed. And so that's, of course, why people just let Germany kind of do its thing and just cross their fingers, really. No, that's absolutely the case. I mean, I think it was a willful ignorance over
00:35:47
Speaker
or turning a blind eye or just believing what you want to believe. And you know, it's the people in the story of faster you sort of step out of that. And in particular, I think Lucy shell did that in a way that was important. Like she, you know, she had her experience in World War One as a nurse in Paris, that informed her view of Germany, the view of the of the whores that could come from further aggression from Germany.
00:36:17
Speaker
And so that she, that was so important to her motivation. And I was probably 90% of the way through the research when I found that, that she was a nurse in World War I. Wow. Right. Um, I didn't know it, didn't know it. And then I was just doing another kind of dive into Lucy to try to, to
00:36:43
Speaker
get at her, because of all the people in this story, she was the most challenging to get at. And I remember doing this sort of research of I knew she was lived in Pennsylvania at the time. And so I did a bunch of local Pennsylvania newspaper research in, you know, from 1900 to 1925. And then I found this article about her experiences as a nurse in World War One, her feelings towards the Germans, and that sort of like
00:37:13
Speaker
boom, it opened up a world to me. And so those elements of the research and echoes of what happened in the past and how they inform a person in the story that you're telling are super important to connect.
Spotlight on Lucy Shell and Racing
00:37:30
Speaker
in in you said uh... i look for stories about people doing what we think is impossible stories about ordinary people being put in extraordinary situations and coming through it and the characters in this book so many of them fit that mold so well and maybe you can talk a little bit about me what we may be can start with lucy of course and uh... what i what an extraordinary character
00:37:54
Speaker
uh... she was uh... you know a marathon racer and then of course uh... the primary bank roller of de la haye and and the one forty five that would uh... ultimately uh... uh... beat the beat the nazi car and uh... in poe yes so what was great about lucy is i mean i and i'm kind of embarrassed to even say this like i've written i think this is my ninth book and
00:38:23
Speaker
the majority of the stories that I've told are about men and their sort of experiences, whether it's spies or soldiers or runners. And I'd never had a woman at the central part of one of my stories. And so it was an absolute pleasure to have Lucy Shell as that role, because I mean, you just, it was impossible not to write
00:38:52
Speaker
Lucy shell. Um, well, like she just was an absolute dynamo. Um, you know, she is an American heiress. She was rich. She could have lived the sort of very comfortable, idle life, but she met this man who Laurie shell loved racing and she decided she wanted to try racing and then just fell in love with racing itself. And.
00:39:18
Speaker
ended up becoming one of the, the, the great, uh, American Monte Carlo rally drivers. And, and really getting at the heart of her was, as well, one, the, the nurse story, but also again, and this is just the testament to sort of research of like going through these French newspapers day after day after day.
00:39:40
Speaker
Um, cause they're not indexed and finding, I remember when I found that I can remember that moment vividly, like I was going through this French newspaper called Intensigence. And, uh, in 1933 is this article, um, where Lucy is meeting this journalist, uh, and he's asking her if he can go sit in the backseat of her car as she does the Monte Carlo rally. And so,
00:40:07
Speaker
over the course of probably 10 days of newspaper coverage, Jacques Marciec is there in the car with Lucy as she runs eight days, nine days in the Monte Carlo rally. And you just get so much insight into who she was.
00:40:26
Speaker
And he was a great journalist and so wrote and had all these terrific lines. But one of his best was like, the icier things got, the more dangerous things became. Like Lucy Shell's smile just got bigger and bigger and bigger. And like, boom, you know who she is, right? Yeah. Um, right there. Like, you're like, okay, I understand this person. And.
00:40:50
Speaker
just, just tremendous. And so she, you know, when she decides that racing's not, she's going to hang up her, her overalls. Um, she decides to start a run grand Prix racing team, uh, and take on, you know, very David and Goliath story of, you know, I'm going to take on the Germans cause no one else is going to do it. Um, and so she was the first woman to do that and own and run her own grand Prix team. Uh, and yet we know nothing about her, right? I mean,
00:41:19
Speaker
She's classic, one of these, you know, the New York Times runs these profiles of amazing people who never got their sort of due and for obituaries. And I feel that way about Lucy, like she never got her due. And one of the pleasures in writing faster is that I, in some small way, hopefully sort of put her place back in history.
00:41:41
Speaker
Yeah, you're able to note that she didn't get her due even in her day. She was constantly overshadowed by the men in her wing when she's like, no, this is my thing right here. This is my jam. But everyone, the sexism of the day was just like, nah, she couldn't have done this. Yeah, it's extraordinary to me in this day and age. I mean, I probably even shouldn't say that, but it was
00:42:11
Speaker
particularly for her, she understood the role, right? Like she played it in some ways. Like she would be in a race overall as an after race. She would put her dress on and heels and, and take the glamour shots in front of her car. Like she understood that that was, that was a role she had to play, uh, as a, as a female race car driver.
00:42:33
Speaker
And yet when she began to run her own team, it became too much. And I actually found in this strangest of places at this automotive library in Florida, like this letter that she wrote these editorial, these editors of all these French newspapers saying, you know, I am the owner of Eckery Blue. Like this is my team. I fund it. I run it.
00:43:00
Speaker
And yet you were constantly saying that my husband, Lori, is the one in charge. Like, get your story straight, or I'm going to boycott you completely. And that was, I can imagine at the time, a very bold thing for her to do.
00:43:18
Speaker
Yeah, and then, of course, I mean, there's Rudy, too, whose deal with the devil essentially was driving for the Nazis and having the Silver Arrow as his car, but he was especially interesting, too.
Complex Characters and Themes of Resistance
00:43:33
Speaker
Given how rudely dangerous the sport was and how deadly it was, he walks away with a shattered leg, and then something else horrible happens to him, and he's just in this grip of
00:43:46
Speaker
depression and you note it so well by pulling out a passage from something he either said or wrote that it was just like you are the will that controls this creature of steel you think for it you're in tune with its rhythm and goes on I had to drive there was nothing else for me yes and that came from his yeah one of his three autobiographies and you know if you if you listen to those lines it was about power
00:44:16
Speaker
in some ways, in trying to reclaim his power, reclaim his sort of sense of like ownership in the world. And when he had the terrible accident in Monaco, and then he lost his wife in a tragic ski accident, like there was nothing else in life for him but racing. And so he was this, you could paint him very easily as this, you know, Nazi banner boy who
00:44:45
Speaker
You know, it was the hero of Reich, but it was a much more complicated tale. Like he was not political. He was not. He didn't really subscribe to the Nazi ideology, but he wanted to reclaim the only thing he had left in his life, which was racing and his standing there. And so he went and drove for the
00:45:10
Speaker
the third Reich because they were the ones providing the fastest cars. And he was willing to be that poster boy so he could drive, even if he didn't subscribe to the technology. And I think that corrupts him completely. I don't want to understate it, but it was a human decision. It wasn't a dastardly evil character decision. Yeah.
00:45:34
Speaker
Yeah, and I love too that I read somewhere that you said, you know, I asked myself two questions before I start a book. Do I have something new to say about the story? And does the story have something important to say? And I think that's a wonderful starting point. And when you stumbled upon the faster story, what was the answer to those questions? And how did that excite you as you started to delve into your research?
00:46:01
Speaker
Every story is different. Some stories I know at the beginning, I'm like, this is the theme. This is what I wanted to say. And this is an important book to write. Honey Eichmann, my story about the capture of Adolf Eichmann in Argentina. I knew before I knew that I could investigate it and uncover new information. I knew thematically this was an important story about justice.
00:46:30
Speaker
Here was this great spy story, and yet it gave us the reason why justice is so important, why memory is part of that. And so I knew from day one that that was what I wanted to say. With Faster, it was a little different. Like, Faster, I sort of fell in love with the idea of the story, the idea of this car, the Delahey 145, four were ever made.
00:46:59
Speaker
Um, when the Germans invaded, uh, Paris, like they sent people to find these cars and have them destroyed. They went to the automobile club of France and, and took all the records to, to a racist history. Like the idea of that was fascinating to me, like just on a pure narrative level, like what happened? What was it about these cars? Um, and their story that was so important. And that brings you to Renee Dreyfus and Lucy shell.
00:47:27
Speaker
and everything. I didn't know for sure what the answer to those two sort of rubric questions that I always asked myself were at the beginning. I very quickly learned that really the story wasn't very well known and that if I could uncover the research that I would be telling a new story. And I think that's exactly what I did with FASTER. It's like, this is a story that very, very few people have heard of.
00:47:54
Speaker
most of the research is original and new. And so that answered the question very easily for me. What thematically it was saying, I didn't really know until I was in the midst of writing it. Like for a long time, I just was like, I know, you know, what is this story about? Um, and it's really the story about what Lucy shell did. It's like, we all can do, you know, in the face of, of injustice or
00:48:23
Speaker
a corrupt regime or, uh, inequity or anything else is like, we can't all be Martin Luther King. We can't all be great national leaders, but we all can sort of stand up in our respective worlds and make a difference. And like, that's what Lucy shell did in her world of racing. She said, no one, the Germans are just winning every weekend. It's making the third Reich seem, you know, indomitable.
00:48:52
Speaker
At least in racing, I'm in the racing world. I'm going to make a stand. I'm going to attempt to sort of knock them at least about the off their perch. And so thematically, that was what I sort of gripped onto. And like, that's the story that I, that I tried to tell. And what's interesting, at least for Renee, the driver is that he was apolitical, just like Rudy was.
00:49:16
Speaker
He didn't care that he never really subscribed to his religion. His father was Jewish faith. His mother was Catholic. He didn't assign it. He was a race car driver. Like religion meant nothing to him. And so he kind of was the reluctant, quote unquote, Jewish hero in this story. And Lucy had to sort of bring him in there and make him understand that the sport was, had become national and it becomes symbolic and that
00:49:46
Speaker
he needed to sort of step up to the plate. And in the article that you wrote for Lit Hub that really dives into a lot of your research practices, I went below to read the two comments and one was kind of a troll, but the other, I don't know if you read it, but one guy was just kind of a dick.
Writing Process and Finding Stories Locally
00:50:05
Speaker
But the other person was – it came from a place – it was kind of pouty in a way. But the kernel of the question is really – it's important, I think, and this is what he or she wrote. They wrote, you know, what is his advice, I wonder, for those with a limited travel budget? Write about something down the block or just your narrative on – or just set your narrative on Fantasy Island?
00:50:31
Speaker
Nonfiction is my favorite type of book to read. Writing one, though, is not so easy. I wish I could be that footloose. And so in any case, this person's just like, oh, you know, in order to write a great story, you must be able to travel around the world. But the fact is there's a lot of backyard narratives, I think. So I don't know. Maybe you could offer a little advice to this person that you don't necessarily have to be a globetrotter to find great stories. Yeah.
00:50:57
Speaker
Absolutely the case. I mean my wife and I've said this in a talk here there is like my wife says that I choose my books based on where I want to travel next and You know, I I tend to like stories that have an international flavor To them. I find that they're a little bit untread More than American stories, but there are you know, I live presently in Philadelphia and There are probably a dozen
00:51:27
Speaker
narrative nonfiction stories, whether historical or present, that I could go on to tomorrow. There are stories everywhere. It doesn't require being put loose or spending assistance or travel budgets or anything like that. You could tell a great story following the Philadelphia Police Department right now.
00:51:54
Speaker
Or and countering that with the resistance Black Lives Matter movement right now. You could be on the ground covering that today, and it would make a tremendous story. You could be in the hospitals covering the COVID narrative of what the present doctors, nurses, and even medical students who were sort of pushed to the front lines of this pandemic.
00:52:24
Speaker
What's their story? That's right out of my door. I could walk three blocks and do that story. So I think it's really about opening your eyes and being open to different stories, and you can find it anywhere.
00:52:42
Speaker
And granted, Laura Hillenbrand has a pretty severe sort of medical condition, but she wrote two of the greatest books of the 21st century basically from her house. She couldn't go anywhere or travel. She just did it from archival research and phone interviews. And look at what she was able to do with Seabiscuit and Unbroken. So yeah, you don't need to be globetrotting. No, you do not need to be globetrotting. And Laura is, you know,
00:53:12
Speaker
of anyone doing this kind of non-fiction, I mean, she's the hero, right? She's incredible. She's incredible. And the diligence of her research and the way she goes about it and the way she even, you know, the amount of time it takes her to go through material, it's just incredible. And, you know, there are so many resources. I remember when I started Faster,
00:53:42
Speaker
I mean, hire my first book back in, you know, 2000, like it was just a very different research than it is today. Like there's just so much available digitized, um, that, uh, there's really, you know, a welcome material out there. What would you say is like maybe where you feel the most alive and most engaged in the entire book process? Very good question. I haven't thought of that. Um, I would say.
00:54:16
Speaker
the first, usually the prologue or whether the first chapter, like I write it and finish it. And then it's really the moment that I'm kind of most excited about the writing and like, oh my, this is an incredible story and I'm going to kill it and like read, you have to read this. And so it's the only, you know, I,
00:54:44
Speaker
I don't intentionally do this, but whenever I finish that prologue or the first 3,000 words, I'm always sending it to my agent. I'm sending it to my editor. I'm like, here it comes. This book is going to be amazing. I'll let my wife read it. And I'm like, I'm a genius, and this is fantastic. I take the best job in the world. And then usually they write back and say, oh, it's very good, and basically say,
00:55:14
Speaker
Uh, and then it's back to the job, right? And then it's like, Oh my God, I got 98,000 more words to write over the next six months to a year. I'm going to become this miserable Herman of a person. I'm not going to call my parents. I'm going to know like my wife and my children. Uh, they're going to be mad at me. Um, my agent's going to be asking where it is. And my editor is going to be saying, are you going to hit deadline? But that.
00:55:43
Speaker
prologue is, you know, is regardless of whether it's crap or it's good. For me, it's gold. Like I've, I've sort of hit the moment.
00:55:55
Speaker
It's kind of like the shape of a hammock between two trees. Like right at the start, you're all kinds of high. And then it just goes downhill. Then it's just a sagging slog of the middle. And it's just you're hanging there. But eventually, you go back up. You're like, yes, I can see the end. And there you are again, back on a high after going through that ugly middle. Yeah, no, I think that's a very good analogy. That moment in the beginning is a very sweet one.
00:56:24
Speaker
I don't know if I'm most alive in that moment, but it's the sweetest moment of each book. Well, awesome. Well, Neil, The Faster was such a fun gripping read, so informative, and just that I really just fell in love with all those characters. And that's a testament to the research and the work you were able to do to bring these people to life nearly 100 years ago, 80 years ago or so, 90.
Conclusion and Call to Action
00:56:51
Speaker
that they feel alive and you know and we and I knew I just grew to like about like them and care about them so much so you know thank you so much for the work and you know where can people you know get a little more familiar with you and your work and of course you know find the book and buy the book absolutely so and by the way this was super fun to talk about I love the questions like I haven't talked about some of this stuff in a very long time so that's
00:57:19
Speaker
I'm glad you brought this stuff up. They can find my stuff, www, if I need to say that, neilbascom.com. HTTP colon backslash backslash. They can search Neil Bascom, N-E-A-L-B-A-S-C-O-M-D.com. My books are there and you can find me, my social media from there and newsletters and that kind of thing.
00:57:47
Speaker
And I hope your listeners get faster in some of my other books that I shot. Yeah, and they sign up for your newsletter too because you give away signed book plates, which is really, really cool. Yeah, I'm doing that. I'm trying that something different. You're always trying different things. And I have these very cool book plates for faster that I put together. So yeah, I'm happy to send them to people.
00:58:12
Speaker
Fantastic. Well, yeah, of course. Thank you so much for hopping on the show, Neil. And, you know, best of luck with the book. And we'll have to do this again, hopefully not in the not too distant future. That'd be great. I'd love to come back. My goodness, that was a fun jam. I thought so.
00:58:36
Speaker
Thanks to Neil for coming on the show. What a trip. Love that guy. Faster is the name of the book. Great book. Go get it. I feel like there's a lot of books around sort of diving into Nazi times. There was Christina Gaddy's book Flowers in the Gutter earlier this year. I have a few others on the shelf I haven't even touched yet. It's really rich. You have a baked in universal villain.
00:59:03
Speaker
Sometimes that's hard to find in nonfiction when you can walk into a villain. Well, shit, the fucking Nazis. Don't get much more villainous than that. Be sure you're subscribed to the monthly newsletter where I send out reading recs and what you might have missed from the world of the podcast. For subscribers, I raffle off copies of books I receive. As long as you remain subscribed, you're always eligible. First of the month, no spam, can't beat it.
00:59:31
Speaker
And here we are. We've done it. Even after 206 of these jams, one thing rings true. If you can do, interview. See ya!
01:00:08
Speaker
you