WORKING: RESEARCHING, INTERVIEWING, WRITING by Robert A. Caro

As a librarian, I enjoy matching books with people. People I know often receive books for birthday or holiday gifts, and library patrons often get recommendations from behind the reference desk. When I saw this book reviewed months ago I thought it was a good match for me. I knew I'd be fascinated bay Robert Caro's writing and research habits, but I doubted I would recommend the book to anyone other than my nonfiction writing friends. The truth is, the scope of the book is much wider than one man's research habits. He has written two Pulitzer-Prize-winning biographies, and the reader gets to learn about those subjects by way of reading about Caro's research and interviewing practices. I suspect curious readers other than my nonfiction crowd would enjoy this well-written book.

I didn't know Robert Moses's name, but I sure know his work: he was behind many of the bridges, expressways, and other projects in the New York area. Learning about him was fascinating, and learning about his use/abuse of power was disturbing! The fact is, though, that his projects are his legacy and we use them now without even thinking of how they came to be or what might have been on that land where a highway or bridge approach is now. Who had to lose their homes? Why does a particular highway have that strange curve in it? Robert Caro describes the meticulous research he engaged in for this book along with the many interviews he conducted. His wife, Ina, researched along with him, and in some cases smoothed the way into interviews with Moses's contacts and and those of the second prize-winning biography, Lyndon B. Johnson.

In order to write the book on LBJ, Robert Caro announced to his wife that they would be moving to LBJ's part of Texas to see what it felt like to live there. They got to know the land and interviewed many people who knew LBJ when he was younger. Lots of secrets came out that hadn't been in other Johnson biographies, making Caro's multi-volume work unique. I often encourage college students to dive deeper into their research for assignments (and I'm picturing an Olympic regulation swimming pool when I say that), but Caro here dove into the deepest, darkest, coldest ocean for his research!

I was captivated by this book, even more than I predicted I would be. I gleaned some ideas for my own writing, such as "dressing for work" when I sit down to a day of writing. It is work in the sense that writers need to shut out distractions for optimal productivity, but it is not grudge work. I might try "dressing for work" when I carve out writing days. Caro writes in longhand as I do, at least for research and interview notes and first drafts. I like knowing that. But the item I liked best from his description of his process is that each chapter of his books has its own notebook. I think Caro and I would have lots to talk about.

REALITY HUNGER: A MANIFESTO, by David Shields

Reality Hunger is a thought-provoking book. Nonfiction writers like me will probably come away from it thinking about where to draw the line between fiction and nonfiction. Should there be a line at all? Maybe a blurrier line? Do we need new forms or a new taxonomy? Are we obsessed with reality? (I think I am.) Non-writers will probably ponder how the books they read are put together. Did the author base this novel on facts, possibly autobiographical? Is this alleged nonfiction piece journalistically nonfiction? Consider the books you read, but the magazine articles, too, and the television you watch. (Reality TV!) True? Not true? Have you investigated? Are you skeptical?

Reality Hunger is made up of short, numbered entries that circle around a particular cryptically-named topic: Memory, Books for people who find television too slow, Contradiction, Thinking, Manifesto. Don't get too hung-up on the section titles, though, because the numbered entries are all interesting, even if the section titles are not inviting. Check this one out:

615 What actually happened is only raw material; what the writer makes of what happened is all that matters. 

This rings true for me, the creative nonfiction writer, because I take an experience, a thought, a place, or even the concert I'm watching on PBS right now, and create some analysis of it. It is a fact that I am watching the Vienna Philharmonic New Year's concert right now on my TV. You can't argue with that. To make this story my own, I have to provide some sort of analysis or reaction. You may disagree with me that this concert is an annual treat, but you can't disagree with me that I see it as an annual treat. Tonight's host, Hugh Bonneville (from Downton Abbey) was just standing in the Vienna Opera House!!! You may not be excited by Hugh Bonneville or the Vienna Opera, but I am because I am a Downton fan and I got to tour the Vienna Opera when I was there in 2015. I remember its opulence, and I remember being impressed at how important opera is to Viennese culture. While you may not agree with me or share my taste or travel history, but reading my thoughts, you understand why I enjoy watching this concert on TV. Maybe I haven't convinced you to watch it, but I have explained my music nerd-ness. Go back to #615 above and read it again.

The Vienna Opera on the Ringstrasse, 2015

573 To write only according to the rules laid down by masterpieces signifies that one is not a master but a pupil.

Think about Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms (staying in Austria) for example: if they hadn't broken the musical rules they were taught we probably wouldn't remember them today. They broke the rules and created new art that got attention. They were innovators! I chose this excerpt because it illustrates the concept in this book that got the biggest reaction out of me. At the end of the book is an Appendix. Here, the author, David Shields, explains that the numbered quotes were not all his original thought. Some are. Some, like #573 above, are not. Personally, I did not appreciate not knowing as I read the book that these were not all David Shields's thoughts. In fact, in the Appendix he writes, "However, Random House lawyers determined that it was necessary for me to provide a complete list of citations; the list follows (except of course for any sources I couldn't find or forgot along the way.)" He encourages the reader to tear these pages out and destroy them. WHAT?!?!?!?! I spend my life teaching college students how to cite their sources and why this is necessary. Unlike David Shields, I don't emphasize copyright. I tell students that it is important to cite borrowed material in case your reader or listener would like to follow up on some quote, and to read more. Here's a perfect example: #573 above is a quote from Prokofiev, a Twentieth-Century composer who will probably be included in one of my 2019 lectures. I'd love to know the context of this quote so that I can use it (and cite it), but I won't get that from Shields. I'll have to start from scratch to find where, when, and why Prokofiev said or wrote this sentence. All I find in the Appendix is that #573 came from Prokofiev. I'm not even sure if he's referring to Dmitri Prokofiev, the composer, or Fred Prokofiev, the barkeeper.

Aside from my disagreement with David Shields over the provenance of these quotes, I found this to be an intriguing, thought-provoking, and worthwhile book. I marked many of the quotes to re-visit when working on various upcoming projects, and some just to think about further. If you have an interest in writing, reading, truth, or fiction vs. nonfiction, get your hands on this book! (Just know that not all of the entries come from the same mind!)


 

In Other Words by Jhumpa Lahiri

The Italian text is on the left side and the English translation is on the facing page. The translations from Italian to English are not, however, by the author, who happens to be a native English speaker. She hired a translator to move her newly-acquired Italian text into her own native tongue. Huh?

The author is Pulitzer Prize-winning Jhumpa Lahiri who wrote Interpreter of Maladies and The Namesake and other books. She fell in love with the Italian language as a young traveler and twenty years after that decided to embark on a challenging experiment: she would learn Italian, really learn it, by immersing herself in Italian culture and speaking English only to her family. This involved moving her family to Rome

where she would begin to read and write only in Italian. This includes reading the classic literature in that language. Anyone who has attempted to learn a new language for a trip abroad will recognize the magnitude of this endeavor. I can get by in Germany or Austria with my limited German (mostly nouns, mostly food words), and in France with my simple French  sentences and phrases. That's only one side of it, though, making myself understood. I can order Schnitzel, and waffles with chocolate, and get the water without bubbles. I can find my way through the Paris Metro, ask for the check in a restaurant, and get the water without bubbles there, too, but what if a German or French speaker is trying to make themselves understood to me? They speak fast, use tenses I haven't studied, and know way more nouns than I do. Lahiri's project is admirable.

The reason she embarked upon this journey was to learn to express herself using new words and language. As writers would say, she wanted to find a new voice. The book has an open ending, one in which Lahiri ponders which language she will use when she returns to the United States. She leaves the door open for Italian, but I think I'm hearing a possible preference for English. Either way, she anticipates a feeling of loss for the Italian language once she is no longer immersed in it.

This book was recommended reading for a writing class I took, and I used it in my own class to illustrate the power of words and the arbitrariness of the sounds we put together to form language. Lahiri has found new words for everything and learned to string them together to make a fascinating book. I wish I had thought of this idea...well, maybe not.

The Pine Barrens by John McPhee

I was never a scientist. I was only briefly a science student because it was required. Nonetheless, one of the most critical life-changing events of my teenage life happened because of a research paper assigned by a high school Biology teacher. All of the students in the class were required to write a research paper about the Pine Barrens region of our home state of New Jersey. My friend and I did not know how to approach this, so upon arriving at the Hamilton Public Library we mustered up courage to ask the reference librarian. Of course we expected her to be mean, aren't all librarians? We were so young. That librarian took the time to show us how to look up newspaper articles in the New York Times Index (big red books) and The Reader's Guide to Periodic Literature (fat green books). I had no idea that the library saved old issues of magazines and newspapers and could retrieve them if you asked for them with the titles, dates, and volume numbers listed in the big red and green books. This was huge. "Not all of the newspapers and magazines will be in print," she probably said, and I can make an educated guess about this because I've been teaching library patrons about these mysteries of knowledge for 25+ years now. "The newspapers and magazines we don't have in print will likely be on microfilm, like The New York Times which we have back to its beginning." I remember being stunned. We looked up the Pine Barrens, found the dates and pages we needed, and the librarian taught us how to use the giant microfilm readers similar to the one Brick added to his family's living room decor on the TV show, "The Middle."

The librarian had helped other students with the Pine Barrens topic, so she was able to recommend a compelling read about the region by author John McPhee. The Pine Barrens (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1968) was the first nonfiction book that wowed me to the point of wanting to be a nonfiction

writer myself someday. First I had to study Music Theory and Library Science, and then I finally got around to advanced study in Creative Writing. (I received my MFA in July.) But anyway, THAT BOOK is so compelling that I bought my own copy with my allowance and savored it. McPhee told us about a certain treefrog that only lives in the Pine Barrens, and how the cranberries grow there in bogs where they are harvested by local residents called Pineys. Pineys work "the cycle" which is a string of jobs relating to the Pine Barrens environment including cranberry harvests, blueberry harvests, and sphagnum moss collecting. (Both berries grow well in the sandy soil of that region.) It was fascinating then and it is still fascinating now. The book might be somewhat dated, but it is still in print which should tell you something. McPhee's writing style includes interviews with experts on whatever topic, and I can imagine him asking at the conclusion of an interview, "Who should I talk to next?"

Read the book. I wouldn't steer you wrong, would I?

The reason The Pine Barrens is on my mind is that John McPhee, a Princeton native, has just released a book called Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process, (also Farrar, Straus and Giroux) in which he writes about writing. I love reading writing about writing. I'm savoring each essay, reading slow. Slow reading. Savoring. The second essay included, to my delight and fascination, a story about McPhee when he was preparing to write The Pine Barrens, and I hadn't formulated my nonfiction research organizing strategy yet, but oh how I wish we could have collaborated on that book!

that Pine Barrens book, and he didn't know how to go about it. There was so much information, coming from research, interviews, and observations, that he put himself flat on his back on a backyard picnic table and just thought about organization and about all that research. After a few days he figured out a strategy to mold all that information into a logical story, and he got up off the picnic table and went to his typewriter to write it. (Yes, he did leave the table to eat and sleep he assures us.) This fascinates me because it is a story about how a favorite author wrote one of my all-time favorite books. It delights me because I'm teaching an actual 3-credit nonfiction writing course next semester on how to organize research for nonfiction prose into a coherent story. I was 5 when McPhee was writing The Pine Barrens, and I hadn't formulated my strategy for organizing research for nonfiction yet. What an interesting conversation we would have had!

Ernie Pyle's War: America's Eyewitness to World War II

James Tobin. Ernie Pyle's War: America's Eyewitness to World War II. Free Press, 1997.

I thought the tip-of-the-iceberg perspective I would use for the World War II project I'm working on would be a comparison of what was going on overseas and how the home front coped with the results of the war and the absence of their loved ones. Unfortunately, that strategy is still too large for a ninety-minute lecture, so I contemplated and I brainstormed, I watched videos, and most importantly I kept reading. I learned about war correspondents, and Ernie Pyle in particular, and became fascinated with that writer who we don't hear much about anymore.

In his time he was wildly popular. He joined the guys on the front lines in Egypt, Italy, France, the Pacific theater, and places in-between. The violence he witnessed took its toll on his mental health but he soldiered on, only occasionally returning home to check on his wife, Jerry, who was also battling depression. This biography follows Pyle through his 44 years and supplies

samples of the war writing that made Pyle famous. Ernie Pyle described his columns as written from "a worm's eye view," meaning that he wrote about the experience of the infantry guys with whom he toured the war. There are occasional profiles of officers, but mostly he wrote about the enlisted men he knew well and shared their feelings and post-war aspirations with the world in his columns. He was everyone's friend and everyone's hero.

Ernie Pyle walked along the beaches in Normandy the day after D-Day and took in the sights as he stepped over bodies and parts of bodies. His resulting columns, though, described the equipment and vehicles damaged and left behind. This was for the benefit of the people at home who would soon find out that they had lost sons, brothers, and fathers and didn't need to know exactly, in gory detail, how they died. Learning about the broken vehicles and equipment littering the beach gave them an idea of the magnitude of this battle and how bravely their loved one fought.

This fantastic book pushed me over the edge of fascination with Ernie Pyle into obsession with this talented, original writer. Author James Tobin did his research and paints a complex portrait of Pyle the man, Pyle the innovative writer, and the phenomenon he created at home and on the front line. Oh, does this sound like a commercial for the book? I hope not, but it probably does. What I would like prospective readers to know is that this book is an effective and compelling way to learn about that huge war that affected almost everyone on the planet. I had a father and six uncles who served in various branches of the military. They all came home, but didn't talk much about the experience except, in the case of my father, to identify photographs and a few artifacts without much story. Even by the time I came along, twenty years after this war, my father wasn't sharing war stories. This book filled in some gaps for me. At the same time it enlightened me about the writers, photographers, videographers, and cartoonists who did their part by informing the troops and the public about the war in a time before Twitter, the World Wide Web, and even TV news.