Remembrance of Really Important Stuff

I'm currently reading David Lodge's classic The Art of Fiction, and it reminds me that I have absolutely nothing to add to the great body of work on how to write. Some of that great body is actually great writing itself, so why bother?

Well, I keep at it mainly to remind myself of what to do as I work on my next book. Speaking of which, I wish to say a few words about memory. Here they are: Memory is important.

If this seems obvious, I refer you to the recent hyperbole that claims the Internet effectively functions as an extension of our memory, that we no longer need to actually keep any information in our heads, but merely need to know how to look it up. To me, this is not only idiotic, it is dangerous. It is rather like saying that the existence of pharmacies means we longer need to take care of our health—we can always go to the drugstore and get the appropriate medication.

OK, that's a terrible analogy, or at least an imprecise one. The point is there has always been a difference between reference works and actual knowledge. For a nonfiction writer, the distinction is essential. There's simply no substitute for keeping lots of information in your head.

If I really must explain why, let me simply say that research is not simply a process of transferring data from a source to your word-processing files (or manuscripts, as we once called them). Rather, you must understand a fact's significance as you research, which is only possible if you remember previous facts you have encountered. To understand your research, you must see connections between data, which requires you to keep a great deal of information in your head. Indeed, if you have a good memory, certain facts will leap up at you as significant, in light of what you already know—facts that eluded other writers, or were discounted by them.

When you write a biography, you are in the process of painting a richly detailed, realistic landscape. If all of your previous brushstrokes disappear from  your vision every time you make a new one, the final picture will be utterly incoherent. But if you keep the whole in your mind as you work, it stands a chance of emerging as an organic, authentic, and recognizable whole when you're done.

So to hell with that "the Internet is my memory" crap: Know what you're talking about, and you might actually make some sense.

Entertainment vs. Accuracy

A month has passed without a new post! My apologies. It has been . . . busy.

On my return, I found a comment waiting, asking for my opinion on balancing accuracy and entertainment. How far can a biographer (or nonfiction writer in general) go in making a scene vivid, or heightening the drama?

As is so often the case, this is, ultimately, a matter of each writer's judgment. There is no easy formula. And, is so often the case, that judgment should by guided by a sense of truth and authenticity. Research—thoughtful, creative, but pertinent research—provides the material for vividness and drama that is still accurate.

The worst thing you could do is to invent, even if it seems highly plausible. Just because a subject is often described as behaving a certain way—for example, arching her eyebrows and snorting in derision—does not mean you have license to describe that character as behaving that way in a specific instance, when no direct evidence suggests any such thing. Specific details must come from direct evidence, or you're slipping into fiction.

Somewhere between bad and OK is the openly stated guess, indicated by "surely," "likely," and "must have." An example might be, "Washington surely found British intransigence to be infuriating." This is honest, since you're being clear that you don't really know Washington's mental state, but it's unsatisfying at best and distracting at worst. Ask yourself: Does the reader really need to be told what Washington likely or surely felt? Don't the contextual facts suggest his likely reaction more strongly than your commentary?

Usually such guesses should be spoken when they run counter to the obvious. If there's a reason why Washington might not be infuriated with intransigence, that's interesting—tell the reader why. Otherwise, it's best to let the facts speak for themselves if you truly don't know the character's reaction. Having spoken so wisely on this issue, I have to admit that I've overused these words myself. It's easy to overuse them, because often one use is too many.

So what does work? First, for vividness, do as much research as possible. Bear in mind odd details that you run across; pull them in to highlight your narrative. In discussing Vanderbilt's family and sexual life in the 1850s, I faced the fact that I had precious little evidence. To introduce both the subject and set the stage for discussing the lack of evidence, I began with two contemporary news stories—one a commentary, complaining about how the ladies flashed too much ankle when crossing a muddy street, and another about the prosecution of a large importer of French pornography. The juxtaposition of an obsession with concealment and the consumption of explicit material accomplished three goals: It immersed the reader in the culture of the moment; it allowed me to state openly that I didn't know much about my subject's sexual life; and it allowed me to hint that there was a lot going on, somewhere out of view.

Often this goal of making scenes vivid, when direct evidence is scanty, is simply a matter of reading widely about the times. What were people wearing? What were the cultural sensations of the day? Who were the celebrities? What did the newspapers say about the weather on this day or that? Was there a political conflict that was dividing people? Next, could any of these facts play an organic role in the scenes you're writing—not an artificial one? Research is vital, but you can't just dump it on the page.

In trying to evoke the emotional impact of the death of Jesse James's father, I had no letters or diaries to speak directly to what the survivors felt. So I focused on the estate sale held by the county to settle the late father's debts. The bare list of possessions that were tallied and auctioned off reveals how the family's intimate world was cut open like a can and emptied out before outsiders, who walked off with pieces of that world.

Drama and narrative tension can only come from research that puts you in touch with the intersecting forces, personalities, and agendas that created conflict. Who were your main character and his or her antagonists? What did they want? Why did they want it? How did they set about getting it? What were the implications of each conflict, both for your subject and society at large?

I'm thinking of the second chapter of The First Tycoon, in which Cornelius Vanderbilt helped his employer, Thomas Gibbons, fight the Livingston steamboat monopoly. In rewriting, I had to throw out lots of tedious legal details, which seemed important in the first draft simply because I found them. Instead, I had to flesh out the character of Gibbons, his goals, his plans, his motivations; same with his foes, as well as Vanderbilt himself. I had to look broadly at the times, and identify what larger themes were expressed in this particular legal and business battle.

It was a conflict, I argue, that reflected the last stages of a slow-moving rejection of the hierarchical society of colonial America, and an embrace of individualism and competition. My research not only gave me vivid details about how Gibbons looked or how his rivals handled his challenges to duels—it allowed me to depict this conflict as a high-stakes struggle for the future of America.

In this example, I had to read secondary sources—what historians had written in arguing with each other about the early American republic—to make sense of the primary. But there's no substitute for immersing yourself in the primary sources, so you can evoke an authentic and complete sense of another world.

Time to be Humble (i.e. when you're published)

Having complained about the failings of other writers, let me confess to some of my own faults. Even in finished, polished, edited writing, I find myself repeating the same words and phrases, often in jarring proximity. I create strained metaphors, and overextend them (not a good idea with something that was strained in the first place).

And I often pronounce with godlike certainty, only to find later that I was simply wrong. Example: I wrote in The First Tycoon that Commodore Vanderbilt's youngest son, George Washington Vanderbilt, never saw a battlefield in the Civil War. Wrong: Though contemporary newspapers and the (purportedly) definitive guide to the careers of West Point graduates told me he never served anywhere near combat, I recently discovered otherwise. In conducting research on George Armstrong Custer in the National Archives, I casually glanced at the primary sources there on G.W. Vanderbilt's military record. The file included some correspondence noting that the aforementioned definitive guide was wrong, and evidence that he transferred to the staff of a general who took part in the Corinth campaign. I doubt young Vanderbilt took a shot at anyone, but he definitely went to the front. I was wrong.

A nonfiction writer can have what seem to be absolutely solid sources, and still make a mistake. It might be because you didn't take that one extra step (as in this example), or because there's a source out there that you haven't heard of, but is waiting to be discovered. In either case, you have to present your findings with humility, and be ready to admit when facts contradict you. And be afraid, because fear of blowing it will motivate you to work harder.

Same with style. You can labor hard, rewrite intensely, and submit your work to multiple readers—and still find something painful in your prose. Often you introduce the blunder in the rewriting process, which means that you just didn't reread enough. One more time—two—three—might have brought that blooper up to your weary eye.

And yet, you have to write with confidence. If you're sure about something, don't equivocate. If you are not sure, don't pretend otherwise—present the uncertainty honestly. Ironically, if you accept that you just won't get everything right, and are willing to frankly admit errors or unknowns, then your work will seem more surehanded. And surehanded is good; weak writing is, well, weak.

One more thing: No matter how good you are, there's almost certainly someone who does it better than you. Yes, winning a major literary award is a dream come true, a real thrill—and it yet instantly makes you aware of how many excellent books did not get the prize, but would have if, say, the jury was different by just one person. And an award gives your career momentum, but it doesn't change you. After all the statues and plaques are handed out and they start to pick juries for next year's prizes, you're back to where you were: just as capable of blundering as ever.

Maybe more so.

In Defense of Elegance

I hope it sounds rather odd to stand up in defense of elegance—not because elegance is unworthy of defense, of course, but because it should be a near-universal value in writing. And yet, it is rare.

It disturbs me how often, when I read a serious book, I must kick my way through piles of clichés and dead expressions. I reviewed one book that eventually earned the Pulitzer Prize, and for very good reason: It was deeply researched, keenly astute in psychological perception, and vivid in its depiction of not only the main character's life but the secondary characters who surrounded him. Yet it was spattered with such phrases as "cool his heels" and "stacked the deck against him." There is no excuse.

My complaint is not with metaphor itself. It can make writing more evocative, probably because there's something in the human brain that leads us to reason by analogy. (Listen to almost any Supreme Court hearing, for example, in which the justices constantly discuss legal points through analogies.) But metaphors are nothing more than the mules that pull the wagon. Overwork them, and they die, at which point they do nothing to draw forward the real meaning. Worse than that, they get in the way.

When you find yourself resorting to clichés, it's better to drop metaphor entirely, and get at the meaning as directly as possible, simply and precisely—that is, elegantly. George Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" is cited by virtually everyone on the question of word selection, and I'm one of them. Orwell notes that, if we write in pre-existing phrases, the phrases do our thinking for us. Good writing must be like a window pane, he tells us, a transparent revelation of thought. This can only be achieved by carefully choosing each word.

Academic writing has its own particular set of clichés, which we call jargon—more generously, professional terminology. Its purpose, I believe, is not to convey meaning, but to demonstrate that the writer belongs to a group, which we might call Serious Scholars. Jargon is a rather lazy method of distinguishing scholarly writing from the popular; it's also a means of signaling that the writer is aware of the latest trends in a particular discipline. Such writing may be necessary to advance one's career within the world of academia, but I argue that there is no meaning that can be expressed only through jargon. There is always a more elegant way to say the same thing. Those more elegant choices convince the reader that the writer actually knows what she or he is saying. Jargon raises doubt.

Academics sometimes overreact to their own constricted writing style by indulging in colloquial expressions, including lame puns and jokes. (Many scholarly titles are now of this type.) Colloquial writing is hardly wrong, in and of itself; but it must be true to the work, emerging naturally from the subject and genre. A novel, a personal essay, a letter, an e-mail message—in these places, casual speech sounds right. But it sounds painfully false in a piece of scholarship.

Elegance is not only a matter of clear, evocative style. It also comes from honesty and authenticity.

Details and Depth

The Washington Post has published my review of Jennet Conant's A Covert Affair: Julia Child and Paul Child in the OSS. You can read that review here (and you'll want to, if you're going to read this post).


The short version is this: It's a light, fun read, a bit misleadingly titled (most of the book is not, in fact, about the Childs), not a scholarly or analytical study—not a "serious" book, as the New York Review of Books crowd might say. I make some criticisms of the book for getting a few things wrong, and possibly mischaracterizing the single most important character, but in the end I think it's unfair to put too much emphasis on these failings. It's not that heavy of a book.


But I do have one serious complaint: The author infuses scenes with abundant, minute detail, without always providing sources for these details. See the review for an example. Am I accusing her of making it up? No—I can't know that at all; I just know that I couldn't find the details in the source provided in the endnotes. She might have drawn on sources not clearly indicated in the endnotes. Even at its worst, is it an egregious act? On one hand, it's not. She clearly did not invent events, settings, or characters, or mess with the chronology; she just described these actual moments far more vividly than the cited sources do.


On the other hand, unsourced detail is a serious problem for any nonfiction writing, serious or not. It undercuts the author's authority, and invites incredulity. And, ironically, it smashes the book flat.


In Aspects of the Novel, one of my favorite books about writing, E.M. Forster notes that "history" (which we can equate with "nonfiction") is limited to the surface—to what can be seen and reported. Fiction, on the other hand, can go beneath the surface; to that extent, fiction is truer than history, he writes, because we all know there is more beneath the surface. Fiction can know a person perfectly, in a way that nonfiction cannot.


Quite true, and yet: We also know that surface indications can strongly suggest what lies beneath. This is the secret of great acting, in which an actor's outward appearance suggests inner emotions and struggles and decisions, even when the raw text of the play provides precious little in the way of explicit wording. Nonfiction cannot allow us to know a person perfectly, but it can speak to the depths; it can contemplate the submerged truth lying behind indicators on the surface, to point to what lies beneath, even if it can't go there.

The details at issue—an expression, a head movement, a moment of conversation—are just such indicators, precious to a nonfiction writer when discovered in research. Our authority, as writers, to speak to the depths of human experience rests upon our authority as honest researchers, presenting fairly the evidence we found in the sources, and fully noting all such source material. Once the reader suspects that telling details were not in the sources, the author's authority is destroyed, and with it any true sense that the reader has glimpsed the interior worlds of the characters.

Nonfiction is always anchored to evidence. A nonfiction author can look and point beyond the evidence, but cannot cut loose and roam freely. And the extent and nature of the evidence must be presented fully in the notes, so we know how long the anchor chain can fairly be.

Proper sourcing is not just a formal exercise; it's part of what gives nonfiction a literary soul. 

Good Friday Double: #2: Personal Interest vs. the Marketplace

Here it is, as promised: My second Good Friday post. This one relates to the question of selecting a topic for a book.

I was recently on a panel for adults about nonfiction at 826 Valencia, the writing center for kids in San Francisco, established by Dave Eggers. One of the issues that came up was how to select a topic for a book.

One of the other panelists noted that you must find a subject that you can live with for years, that you shouldn't try to write about what you think will be commercially successful. I agree, but with a few nuances.

First, what can sometimes seem like commercialization might actually be a way of taking your initial topic, and going bigger—escalating the scale of your project, in an ambitious and exciting way. This happened with my book Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War. I initially thought of writing about Adelbert Ames, a Union "boy general" in the Civil War (he was made a brigadier general when still in his 20s) who was stationed in Mississippi during Reconstruction, championed the cause of racial equality, and left the army to pursue a political career. He was an admirable man in an age noted for violence, crookedness, and racism.

But no one had heard of him. When I discovered that he had been the target of the failed bank robbery by the James-Younger gang in Northfield, Minnesota, in 1876, I realized that I could write about the same period, and the same issues, on a larger scale, as well as for a larger audience. Jesse James is iconic; he lives in American culture and memory, as Ames does not. Therefore, in writing about James rather than Ames I would be taking on a much more ambitious project, with larger repercussions.

Did that decision make it more commercial? Well, yes. But it was more commercial because Jesse James is a more resonant subject, one who plays a vastly larger role in America's self-identity. 

But I also believe that you must be true to yourself in picking a subject. You can't escape yourself; many writers end up writing about the same subjects or themes in book after book. In most writers, there are elemental issues and questions that provide the forward thrust. The issues of race, justice, violence, and the making of modern America defined both James and Ames's lives, so switching from one to the other was still entirely in keeping with my core interests. It never occurred to me that I was selling out.

So my advice is not to pursue commercial subjects for their own sake, but to think about how you can go bigger—how you can make your project even more ambitious. If you can do that, there almost certainly will be a commercial benefit; but if you are inauthentic in picking a subject, and simply force yourself to write about something that will sell, then the work will suffer. It won't be a book that you'll be proud of.

Good Friday Double: #1: Greg Mortenson

Having been a bad blogger for some time now (having spent almost 6 weeks traveling), I present to you two writing-related entries.

First, Greg Mortenson. For those of you who threw out your televisions ages ago and don't pay attention to news on the Internet, the author of the runaway bestseller Three Cups of Tea was the subject of a 60 Minutes investigation about two things: the misuse of funds belonging to his charity, and the truth of his book.

I can't speak to the first. My reactions to the second are mixed. I would like to make three points about this frenzy:

First, beware of frenzies, especially the feeding kind. Since I myself have raised questions about the honesty of other books, I think it's entirely appropriate to challenge what appear to be glaring inaccuracies, fictionalization, and outright lies. But there are good reasons why it's a cliché to warn against a rush to judgment—said rushing is unfair to the accused and sometimes ill-considered. Let's hear Mr. Mortenson out, and wait calmly for the facts to emerge.

Second, the press has once again made an error by denouncing book publishers for not fact-checking books. The legal and business relationship between book publishers and books is different from that of newspaper or magazine publishers and the stories in those newspapers or magazines. The author, not the publisher, is responsible for the accuracy of the content; the publisher helps fund, prepare, package, and distribute the final result, but is in no way the author. This is in contrast to newspapers and magazines.

I will add that the business would collapse if book publishers had to hire fact checkers. Individual books are simply too long, and there are too many books coming out of most houses each year, for it to be a practical option. Of course, some publisher may decide that fact-checing would be a market advantage and try it out, but since that hasn't happened yet, we can assume it's a bad bet, economically speaking.

Third, since nonfiction authors are solely responsible for the accuracy of their books, they are REALLY responsible for the accuracy of their books. Honesty, transparency, and accuracy matter immensely, and the author is under a heavy burden to provide all three.

But they are in a descending order. Speaking to the last, first, we must accept the fact that every book will have some errors; accuracy is never perfect. But errors can be found and corrected if the writing is transparent—that is, if the author notes all the sources, and clearly states to the reader when a passage is based on uncertain information, or is entirely supposition or fictionalization. The reader generally gives a writer a fair amount of leeway when the author admits a lack of perfect knowledge. And that proper transparency is itself a product of honesty—of writing with integrity, of being truthful with oneself as well as the reader. There is a difference between good-faith mistakes and wholesale invention.

I will blog more about the issue of accuracy and integrity in a forthcoming post, related to a book review I wrote that will be published soon by the Washington Post. Remember the name E.M. Forster. He'll come up in that blog post.

The Secret Message

Today is the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War. On this day, my great-great grandfather Jonathan Dillon was holding Lincoln's watch, fixing it, and he left a secret message inside of it.

Here's the story I wrote about it two years ago:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/03/the-secret-message/7360/

My Gratitude

It was announced this week that I've been honored with a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. Popularly known simply as "the Guggenheim," it's an award intended for artists, writers, scientists, and scholars who have a record of accomplishment, with the promise of doing still more.

I applied for the Guggenheim, so the news didn't rain down on my head with that entirely unexpected quality of the announcement of the Pulitzer Prize, but rather came at the end of a long wait. I never assumed that I would be selected, and I am deeply honored and humbled that I was. I'm acutely aware that my receiving a fellowship means that someone else who is entirely deserving did not receive one this year. Had the selection committee and the trustees of the Foundation passed me over, there would have been no outraged editorials in newspapers or picket lines outside the John Simon Guggenheim offices. Rather, someone else instead of me would be happy and honored. Furthermore, the fellowship goes to a broad array of artists, writers, and scholars; balancing the distribution of the limited funds is an enormously difficult task. I am exceptionally fortunate that I was selected this year.

For anyone doing something like what I do, I think it's important to bear this in mind. We do not gain recognition unless we work at as high a level as we can, unless we labor and struggle and devote ourselves to our projects. Ambition and sacrifice are essential components for success. But at the end of the process, when a book is complete, I'm aware that it could have been better, that equally good or better books are being published all the time. No matter how hard you work, you are owed nothing. You have no right to anything. And when recognition like the Guggenheim does come, it is only because of the support, feedback, and assistance of friends and colleagues, from those who wrote letters of reference, to archivists who suggested I look here, to historians who urged me to read that. And especially my wife, Jessica Stiles, who is a genius. Writing, seemingly a solitary art, in fact requires the help of countless people, especially in the case of biography. My heartfelt thanks to all.

I urge those who could benefit from a fellowship to keep working and keep applying. This was not my first application.

So, no matter what previous recognition I've received, it's a matter of very good fortune to be picked for this fellowship, and I'm truly grateful to the Foundation. It's a marvelous thing that the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation exists, and does what it does.

In the Archives

Did you know the Archivist of the United States has a blog?

Yes, he does. His name is David Ferriero (rhymes with "stereo"). I met him when I had a fellowship at the Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, where he was (I'm going to mess up his title, so forgive me) executive director. Of course, this was before he was named Archivist of the United States. His appointment to run the National Archives is a fortunate thing for people like me, who make heavy use of the Archives. He's that rare person assigned to a post by a president simply because he was the right individual for the job, a professional rather than a political hack.

During my (still ongoing) research trip to Washington, D.C., I had a chance to have lunch with him and discuss what he's trying to do with the Archives. It's exciting. I know that sounds nerdy, but it is exciting. It's a big organization, with 44 facilities, I believe, around the country. He's shaking things up, but he's also trying to build lines of communication within the agency, to give voice to staff at all levels.  His blog is just one sign of how he's attuned to the digital age, in terms of record keeping, preservation, and access, and in the ways it can be used internally.

One of his concerns is to make better use of "citizen archivists." He notes, quite correctly, that when researchers dig through the vast holdings of the National Archives, the findings often fail to make their way back to the Archives staff. I completely agree with this. Much of my work on Cornelius Vanderbilt for The First Tycoon was conducted in the Manuscript Department of the New York Public Library. I wrote up a report of the material I found there, for use by future researchers. (I also included a bibliographical essay at the end of the book for the same reason.)

Here's to AOTUS: He's far from the only talented and dedicated employee at the National Archives, but all those staffers who care and work hard need someone at the top who is serious about the mission, and about making the place work better.