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and Walter Cronkite. How do you report a story somewhere you don’t speak the language? The closest I’ve come was when I did a story about truck drivers who travel along the so-called “AIDS highway” in Africa, for The New Yorker. When I got the assignment I asked whether the magazine would pay for some language instruction in KiSwahili, the African trade language. They said yes, and I took twice-weekly lessons from a Tanzanian diplomat, because no language school in New York taught it. It didn’t make me fluent, but at least I would know the general subject area of a conversation the guys I was with were saying. And what I couldn’t get from that language, someone could usually explain to me in English. How do you decide which project to start when you’ve finished your last one? When I finish a book, I sometimes seem unable to start anything big for months or years—much to the frustration of my agent and editor. I have to clear out the massive piles of books, folders, notes, and articles I’ve accumulated before I can make mental room for whatever is next. Do you keep files of possible story ideas? Yes, I have many files. I look through them when I’m starting to think about my next project. I recently came across a drawer I hadn’t seen for years. It was filled with dead ends, with ideas that never went anywhere. I couldn’t bring myself to throw them out because my ideas are my stock-intrade. These files were dear to me, even if they had failed. They were like the kid who didn’t do so well in school. Do his parents just chuck him out? Of course not! What were some of your bad ideas? Well, in the early 1990s, when everyone was getting online, I thought of doing a travel book about the Internet. My cyber-travel itself would structure the narrative. At the time it sounded good, but eventually I concluded it was more interesting as a sentence than a book. How do you determine how much time to devote to a project? For Newjack, I wanted to complete at least the seven weeks of training at the corrections academy. If nothing else, I knew I’d have a good New Yorker article. Once I got to Sing Sing, I thought four months would be enough. Working at that prison is a pretty intense experience, and I didn’t think I could take much more. Four months later, I didn’t really have the story yet. Two months after that, and then I was within four months of Christmas and New Year’s. There’s a natural, conclusory aspect to the holiday season, so I stuck it out. It is an emotional time that I knew would show me something new about the prison. You didn’t know precisely what you’d end up writing when you started the project? There were a lot of things I didn’t know at the start of this project. I didn’t know until the last day
of the academy that I’d be assigned to Sing Sing. That was crucial because Sing Sing was close enough to my home that I could conceive of working there for a while. And it was famous, had so much history: what if I’d been assigned to, say, Midstate Correctional Facility? How would you put that in a title? Would it have made a good book? I don’t know. Could I have gotten a transfer to Sing Sing? I didn’t know. I didn’t even have a contract for Newjack until after I left my guard job. Is that level of financial uncertainty—no contract—typical of your work? No, but the project was so speculative that I didn’t want to be on the hook to a publisher for thousands of dollars and then discover that I couldn’t write a book based on the experience. What were you afraid might keep you from writing the book? I worried that I could be discovered and fired. Or, worse, that the other guards would suspect me of some kind of treachery and beat me up in the parking lot. I could have gotten injured by a prisoner and had to quit. Any number of things could have gone wrong. So I lived on my salary as a guard, and hoped that at the very least I’d get an article or two out of it. The other reason I didn’t want a book contract was so that it wouldn’t look like I was serving two masters. After the book appeared, I didn’t want New York State officials to be able to accuse me of pretending to be a guard, while actually working on a book for my publisher. When I was a guard, I wanted to be 100 percent a guard. How do you pace your reporting when you are using the participant-observer method? Well, patience is a huge part of it. Being able to live “without knowing” is crucial to the method. Not knowing what? All sorts of things: what the hobo will say to you, what the coyote will look like, what it will feel like to be threatened by an inmate. These are all experiences I anticipate—even hope for—when I begin. And yet, I know I’m going to have to wait and wait . . . And it may not happen at all. All that waiting can be pretty unnerving. How do you deal with this uncertainty? I try to let my instincts guide me. I conduct a bunch of interviews and then I digest them for a while and think, “What was most interesting about that? What did I learn that was new?” How does this thought process influence your reporting? As I’ve done more projects, I’ve gotten better at doing the two things at once, the participating and the observing. I can fully presence myself in the experience, while periodically stepping back and asking, “Now, how will that look on the page? Where would this fit into my story?”
- Page 3 and 4: Table of Contents Title Page Dedica
- Page 5 and 6: To Helen
- Page 7 and 8: Acclaim for The New New Journalism
- Page 9 and 10: Preface I had neither studied nor t
- Page 11 and 12: perceived as bizarre tribes one stu
- Page 13 and 14: work is the spirit with which he pr
- Page 15 and 16: for a movement than an advertisemen
- Page 17 and 18: and reporting (the latter developme
- Page 19 and 20: Crane did before them—bridge the
- Page 21 and 22: Journalists have revived the tradit
- Page 23 and 24: Sims, Norman, and Mark Kramer, eds.
- Page 25 and 26: infantrymen in the army of homeless
- Page 27 and 28: a marginal or strange subculture—
- Page 29: “Disdain” is too strong a word.
- Page 33 and 34: Well, not really. I was never comfo
- Page 35 and 36: sacred to me. I know that if I were
- Page 37 and 38: expand on brief notes, transcribe q
- Page 39 and 40: experienced Denver as a member of a
- Page 41 and 42: history or policy. Or than when I
- Page 43 and 44: Bruce Chatwin, anything by J. M. Co
- Page 45 and 46: Freed from the constraints of newsp
- Page 47 and 48: For his most recent book, How Israe
- Page 49 and 50: Now I’ve known a lot of politicia
- Page 51 and 52: gathering information. So the first
- Page 53 and 54: I learned it in Baltimore when I wa
- Page 55 and 56: How did they respond? They were won
- Page 57 and 58: write anything down, but the conver
- Page 59 and 60: What kind of a presence do you like
- Page 61 and 62: earned him the moniker of “staff
- Page 63 and 64: I want to understand the lives of p
- Page 65 and 66: You haven’t done any celebrity jo
- Page 67 and 68: I never know. I do know that I don
- Page 69 and 70: When Children Want Children, I rent
- Page 71 and 72: I like doing interviews over meals
- Page 73 and 74: Do you believe journalism can lead
- Page 75 and 76: Supporting himself through odd jobs
- Page 77 and 78: the editor’s house, but it had a
- Page 79 and 80: their activities, takes precedence,
of the academy that I’d be assigned to Sing Sing. That was crucial because Sing Sing was close<br />
enough to my home that I could conceive of working there for a while. And it was famous, had so<br />
much history: what if I’d been assigned to, say, Midstate Correctional Facility? How would you put<br />
that in a title? Would it have made a good book? I don’t know. Could I have gotten a transfer to Sing<br />
Sing? I didn’t know. I didn’t even have a contract for Newjack until after I left my guard job.<br />
Is that level of financial uncertainty—no contract—typical of your work?<br />
No, but the project was so speculative that I didn’t want to be on the hook to a publisher for<br />
thousands of dollars and then discover that I couldn’t write a book based on the experience.<br />
What were you afraid might keep you from writing the book?<br />
I worried that I could be discovered and fired. Or, worse, that the other guards would suspect me<br />
of some kind of treachery and beat me up in the parking lot. I could have gotten injured by a prisoner<br />
and had to quit. Any number of things could have gone wrong. So I lived on my salary as a guard, and<br />
hoped that at the very least I’d get an article or two out of it.<br />
The other reason I didn’t want a book contract was so that it wouldn’t look like I was serving two<br />
masters. After the book appeared, I didn’t want New York State officials to be able to accuse me of<br />
pretending to be a guard, while actually working on a book for my publisher. When I was a guard, I<br />
wanted to be 100 percent a guard.<br />
How do you pace your reporting when you are using the participant-observer method?<br />
Well, patience is a huge part of it. Being able to live “without knowing” is crucial to the method.<br />
Not knowing what?<br />
All sorts of things: what the hobo will say to you, what the coyote will look like, what it will feel<br />
like to be threatened by an inmate. These are all experiences I anticipate—even hope for—when I<br />
begin. And yet, I know I’m going to have to wait and wait . . . And it may not happen at all. All that<br />
waiting can be pretty unnerving.<br />
How do you deal with this uncertainty?<br />
I try to let my instincts guide me. I conduct a bunch of interviews and then I digest them for a while<br />
and think, “What was most interesting about that? What did I learn that was new?”<br />
How does this thought process influence your reporting?<br />
As I’ve done more projects, I’ve gotten better at doing the two things at once, the participating and<br />
the observing. I can fully presence myself in the experience, while periodically stepping back and<br />
asking, “Now, how will that look on the page? Where would this fit into my story?”
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