{"id":664,"date":"2010-10-22T17:04:32","date_gmt":"2010-10-22T17:04:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/2010\/10\/22\/tracy-kidder-narrative-nonfiction-darcy-frey-harvard-writers-at-work-part-2\/"},"modified":"2024-03-04T18:53:28","modified_gmt":"2024-03-04T18:53:28","slug":"tracy-kidder-narrative-nonfiction-darcy-frey-harvard-writers-at-work-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/2010\/10\/22\/tracy-kidder-narrative-nonfiction-darcy-frey-harvard-writers-at-work-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Tracy Kidder in conversation with Darcy Frey, part 2: "I write as fast as I can to prevent remorse for having written badly.""},"content":{"rendered":" \n
\n
\n Today we offer part 2 of last week\u2019s discussion of narrative nonfiction between Tracy Kidder and Nieman Fellow Darcy Frey. (Check out the first installment<\/a>,<\/em> if you haven\u2019t read it yet.) Part of the Harvard Writers at Work<\/a> series, their talk was co-sponsored by the university’s Shorenstein Center<\/a>, where Kidder is a fellow this fall. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, Kidder has written most recently about humanitarian Paul Farmer<\/a>, as well as the life story of a refugee from Burundi<\/a>. <\/em>Frey, who interviewed Kidder, won a National Magazine Award for his own narrative writing and is also the author of \u201cThe Last Shot: City Streets, Basketball Dreams<\/a>.\u201d<\/em> <\/em> <\/em> These excerpts from their discussion have been lightly edited for clarity.<\/em>

Frey:<\/strong> You told me some of the figures of how many notebooks you had for \u201cAmong Schoolchildren<\/a>.\u201d

\"\"
Tracy Kidder<\/figcaption><\/figure>

Kidder:<\/strong> For \u201cAmong Schoolchildren\u201d I had 150 steno books filled. And I don\u2019t know how many typed pages that would have been. A lot of pages \u2013 enough that I used to think, sort of like IBM, when they were sued by the government, they delivered three semi trailer trucks full of documents. You could hide the evidence for about 20 murders in there and never have it discovered.

In those days, the computer was still a pretty new thing, and I made these elaborate indices \u2013 I usually had the help of somebody. And it was arduous, and they didn\u2019t work very well, because I could never find the things I wanted. But going through that process, I\u2019d start to get those notes into my head.

Lately, starting with \u201cMountains Beyond Mountains<\/a>,\u201d I\u2019d just type all the notes into the computer. I\u2019d just bite the bullet and spend a month or two months, I think it was in that case. Because then I\u2019d do them chronologically, and then I really can find things much more easily, because of the wonderful \u201cfind\u201d function \u2013 as long as my spelling holds up, you know, that can be an issue.

I don\u2019t know that there\u2019s anything to replace it. You could, I suppose, have someone else do this for you. In the case of my last book, there were written notes, but Deo didn\u2019t want me taking notes openly, particularly in Rwanda and Burundi, so I had to use a recording device, and then I transcribed all that later. But every night, every time I was in a place I was alone, I would write out notes. I don\u2019t like that as much, but in all cases, beginning to get those notes into my head seems really crucial. You get good at your book after a while. And it is amazing. I can get into the car meaning to go to the grocery store, I actually do that once in a while, and halfway there, I forget where I was going. But while I\u2019m working on a book, I can remember enormous amounts of stuff, dialogue and so on. I don\u2019t know why that is, but I can. I used to.

Frey:<\/strong> At some point, though, you have the chronology of the story that you\u2019re telling, and as you were mentioning before, you also have the linear progression of the way in which you receive the information as a reporter. And that\u2019s in your notebooks, and I\u2019m assuming those are numbered \u2013

Kidder:<\/strong> Yeah.

Frey:<\/strong> One through 178, but there\u2019s a process I would think, because all of your books have a different structure, and you tell stories in many different ways, that while sifting through your notes, a kind of architecture for your stories begins to emerge, some sort of process in which you\u2019re metabolizing this information and something other than chronology or other than the order in which you receive it starts to announce itself as a possible way of telling the story.

Kidder:<\/strong> I wish it were so. For me, it\u2019s very important to find out what the actual chronology is, the absolute chronology of the story. As my editor, Dick Todd, likes to say it\u2019s surprising how often writers that he\u2019s worked with don\u2019t actually know the chronology. He believes, we have a rule, he and I, which is if you\u2019re going to break chronology, you have to have a good reason for doing it. …<\/span>

But to go back to this step-by-step thing. With one exception, I\u2019m very impatient. I get my notes all done, I sit down, and I write up the merest outline. It really just usually says, \u201cElements.\u201d But I make up a kind of outline, and then I just start writing. I try to write really<\/em> fast, and I write often at inordinate length. Dick Todd reminded me that the first draft of \u201cAmong Schoolchildren\u201d was about 1,500 pages, and not only that, it started out in a kind of distant third person, then it was written in the first person, then it was written \u2013 I forget the other way it ended. The last hundreds of pages ended in something like the form of a play, but it didn\u2019t matter. In part, I think it is sort of true that I write as fast as I can to prevent remorse for having written badly.

I did hear \u2013 my beloved editor didn\u2019t say this to my face, but someone said to me, \u201cTodd was talking about you the other day at the University of Massachusetts, and he said, \u2018Kidder\u2019s great gift is that he\u2019s not afraid of writing badly.\u2019 \u201d

I didn\u2019t know what to think about that, but for me, writing is a form of thinking, maybe the only kind of thinking I\u2019m capable of. And often, because I have to be lonely and alone to write, I need a room where I can close the door and no one can see me. But at the same time, I get lonely and sorry for myself, and this guy is so long-suffering, but I give him big chunks of rough draft, and he\u2019ll say \u2013 he always says, \u201cIt\u2019s fine. Keep going.\u201d

He\u2019ll wait a week or something, but I\u2019ve become pretty sure that he doesn\u2019t actually read them anymore. The reason is because when the time comes to start putting this into something a little more palatable, you wonder what he thought was fine. But for me, and again, nobody does things the same way or ought to, and it doesn\u2019t really matter. What really matters is what comes out at the end. I love to rewrite. I think it\u2019s one of the great gifts that is given to a writer, to be able to rewrite, to take back what you\u2019ve written and write it better before anyone else has to see it, except, in my case, for Dick Todd.

\"\"
Darcy Frey<\/figcaption><\/figure>

So I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve written a book that didn\u2019t have at least 10 drafts. They are successive approximations, like that foolish game golf that I once tried to learn to play, where you get closer and closer to the hole. So there might be a sentence that survives from the rough draft, or maybe a little more or maybe nothing, but each draft there\u2019s more that survives, and at some point some big problem identifies itself. That\u2019s another matter. …<\/span>

Frey:<\/strong> One of the interesting things about the structure [of \u201cStrength in What Remains\u201d] is not only does it break up time, but each element of the story kind of has its own form of tension, so we have Deo in Burundi, and the reader is asking him- or herself, \u201cWhat happened to this young man?\u201dAnd then we have Deo in New York trying to survive, and the question the reader has is \u201cWhat\u2019s going to happen to this young man?\u201d With you introducing yourself in the prologue and then going away for a long stretch, there\u2019s a sort of implicit question or tension \u2013 \u201cWhen will the narrator come back, and how does he know all of this?\u201d \u2013 which is sort of the second half of the book.

It\u2019s kind of a risky or unusual thing to do to tell a story in a semi-omniscient or third-person voice and then break that strategy halfway through, and in the second half, peel back the curtain and really show the Wizard of Oz, the writer at work, and show the choices you\u2019re actually making. How difficult was it to make that decision?

Kidder: <\/strong>I resisted it to some degree. In theory I don\u2019t like the sound of that all. That doesn\u2019t sound risky, it\u2019s sounds stupid. But I think when I\u2019m working on a book, after a while, I just want something that works. And one is aware that there might be for all practical purposes an infinite number of ways to structure a book, but you\u2019re not going to have lived long enough to find them all. Although I do an awful lot of writing by experiment, this seemed to work, and then it began to suggest something else.

Usually, all the justifications for doing what I\u2019ve done come after everything is done and the book is in print, but in this case, I remember saying, or thinking, \u201cSo, we have the first part of the story: We get these memories, these harsh and wild memories. So we hear about what had happened with this guy from his memories, and in the second part we see him in the throes of those memories.\u201d\u00a0And it seemed to work \u2013 I hope it did. I\u2019m sure it didn\u2019t work for everyone.

Frey:<\/strong> It reminded me \u2013 it\u2019s done rarely, because it\u2019s so hard to pull off \u2013 it reminded me a little of Joseph Mitchell\u2019s wonderful book \u201cJoe Gould\u2019s Secret<\/a>,\u201d where he tells the story of his character, and then he tells the story of how he told the story of his character and how he did the reporting, but makes it not an act of self-aggrandizement on the part of the writer. It\u2019s intrinsic to the portrait he\u2019s drawing of Joe Gould.

Kidder:<\/strong> I was not trying to be self-revelatory. I mean, that was not the point of it. Should we go on with this, or talk about \u201cMountains Beyond Mountains\u201d and point of view there?

Frey:<\/strong> Sure.

Kidder:<\/strong> Point of view is crucial. I forget what Henry James said about it, but he basically said it\u2019s the most important thing. It does affect every other piece of a book, and indeed, these wonderful terms we use to talk about narrative are wonderful precisely because they allow strangers to talk about a piece of writing and understand each other, but I don\u2019t think about them while I\u2019m writing, God knows. It\u2019s a little like dissecting the muscles of a back, you can cut away and learn quite a bit about those muscles, but once you\u2019ve done that, they no longer function as muscles. So I don\u2019t think about those things, but I think point of view is a crucial term.

But what often happens when we\u2019re working together \u2013\u00a0I was about five drafts into \u201cMountains Beyond Mountains,\u201d and my editor, Todd, said, \u201cThere\u2019s a problem here. It\u2019s called the problem of goodness.\u201d I knew, \u201cOK, here we are. He\u2019s speaking in koans again.\u201d I kind of understood what he meant, because I had written a profile of Paul Farmer<\/a> for the New Yorker before I launched into this book. And one particularly nasty letter had come to the editor full of venom for Farmer, and also I had at least one woman friend, maybe a couple who told me \u2013 I remember the line one of them said was, \u201cHe sounds like a great guy, but I wouldn\u2019t want to be married to him.\u201d I started thinking, \u201cWell, I wasn\u2019t aware he had proposed,\u201d but then I realized I was feeling defensive, and I had to admit there was probably a problem with tone in this book.

Where a problem surfaces, these things are related. Everything is tied together. Tone as I understand it is the attitude of the author, not necessarily the narrator, to the events and the characters in a story, the perceived attitude. The worst thing that can happen to a writer, I think, is for a reader to think that he or she has discovered something about the characters or the events, or both, that the author hasn\u2019t understood. So, what Todd was actually saying to me, I think, was, \u201cThere is a problem of tone here.\u201d It was a funny kind of problem, this problem of goodness, as he called it, because it was several problems, really. I had structural problems in that book, and so on, but I guess the two big problems would have been believability and palatability.

You have a character like this guy, and how do you make the reader know he\u2019s for real? And then, if you can get past that, how do you make your reader \u2013 we all tend to push away evidence of a virtuousness that exceeds our own, and that is certainly the case with Paul Farmer. This is a guy who keeps nothing for himself. It\u2019s psychological discomfort that we were really talking about, that you\u2019re almost certain to feel in the presence of someone so gifted and so self-sacrificing and so passionate about a cause. So what we needed and finally decided was \u2013 we didn\u2019t say it this way, I just started writing it \u2013 acknowledgement of that fact. And that led to the idea that there would be a little sub-narrative told in the first person of my own struggle with Paul\u2019s outsized virtue.

If I did this right, I\u2019d be saying to a reader, in effect, at various times, \u201cLook, I know this guy is beginning to make you feel uncomfortable. He\u2019s making me feel uncomfortable, too.\u201d [I’d] be an everymantaking you along on this journey: \u201cHere\u2019s what I think about my discomfort and its causes.\u201d We looked for places to do this, both openly and in veiled ways. The hope was that in the end, I could free the reader from the kind of irritating self-reflection and so on that I experienced myself, and then you could see him clearly and in the round.

Of course, I tried to deal with some other things, too. Any less than fully virtuous that thing he\u2019d ever done was precious to me. I have to tell you a funny little story: When I was doing my profile for the New Yorker, I was assigned one of their estimable fact-checkers. I love these guys, by the way, because private embarrassment is always better than public embarrassment. I gave her everything I had: all the phone numbers and all the people I talked to. After a couple weeks, I spoke with her on the phone and asked her how her research was going, and she said, \u201cEverybody loves him,\u201d and I thought she sounded a little disappointed, and so that made me feel a little better.

[For more, read part 1 of this conversation<\/a>, in which Frey asks Kidder to define their art, and Kidder talks about how he finds subjects for his stories.]<\/em>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today we offer part 2 of last week\u2019s discussion of narrative nonfiction between Tracy Kidder and Nieman Fellow Darcy Frey. (Check out the first installment, if you haven\u2019t read it yet.) Part of the Harvard Writers at Work series, their talk was co-sponsored by the university’s Shorenstein Center, where Kidder is a fellow this fall. 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