Hunter S. Thompson: The Art of Journalism No. 1
A 12-hour interview on career and craft.
Writers On Writing
Politics and the English Language
“Modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug.”
Money
The economics of being a young writer.
The Ghost Writes Back
Confessions of a Sweet Valley High ghostwriter.
David McCullough: The Art of Biography No. 2
An interview on craft.
George Saunders Has Written the Best Book You’ll Read This Year
“For people who pay close attention to the state of American fiction, he has become a kind of superhero.”
Joan Didion: The Art of Nonfiction No. 1
I can’t ask anything. Once in a while if I’m forced into it I will conduct an interview, but it’s usually pro forma, just to establish my credentials as somebody who’s allowed to hang around for a while. It doesn’t matter to me what people say to me in the interview because I don’t trust it.
Kurt Vonnegut: The Art of Fiction No. 64
This interview with Kurt Vonnegut was originally a composite of four interviews done with the author over the past decade. The composite has gone through an extensive working over by the subject himself, who looks upon his own spoken words on the page with considerable misgivings . . . indeed, what follows can be considered an interview conducted with himself, by himself.
The George Saunders Interview
"For example, I remember reading Hemingway and loving his work so much—but then at some point, realizing that my then-current life (or parts of it) would not be representable via his prose style. Living in Amarillo, Texas, working as a groundsman at an apartment complex, with strippers for pals around the complex, goofball drunks recently laid off from the nuclear plant accosting me at night when I played in our comical country band, a certain quality of West Texas lunatic-speak I was hearing, full of way off-base dreams and aspirations—I just couldn’t hear that American in Hem-speak. And that kind of moment is gold for a young writer: the door starts to open, just a crack."
Jack Kerouac: The Art of Fiction No. 41
An interview on craft:
Writing The Subs in three nights was really a fantastic athletic feat as well as mental, you shoulda seen me after I was done...I was pale as a sheet and had lost fifteen pounds and looked strange in the mirror.
Envy
She is an unknown struggling writer. Her boyfriend is Jonathan Franzen.
The Hardy Boys: The Final Chapter...
On writing what you loathe. Leslie McFarlane, ghostwriter of the early Hardy Boys novels, was so ashamed of the work he couldn’t even bring himself to name the books in his diary. “June 9, 1933: Tried to get at the juvenile again today but the ghastly job appalls me.”
Gay Talese, The Art of Nonfiction No. 2
The original new journalist on his start at the Times, his daily writing routine, and why he’s always taken notes on shirt boards.
The Story Behind a Nonfiction Novel
In January 1966–the same month In Cold Blood was first published–Truman Capote sat down with George Plimpton to discuss the new art form he liked to call “creative journalism.”
