An Interview with Pulitzer Prize-Winner David McCullough on the Art of Writing Non-Fiction
David McCullough is one of America’s greatest historical writers; his work, honored twice with the Pulitzer Prize, has included deep examinations of John Adams, Theodore Roosevelt, the American Revolutionary War, and the Brooklyn Bridge. In this interview, he speaks about his approach to writing, research, and thinking about the historical world.
This is going to be easy. Iāve only got one question.
Good!
How do you tell a story?
I donāt know. I grew up with stories in my family. My father was a wonderful storyteller, and I grew up with grandmothers who read aloud to us when we were children.
What made your father a wonderful storyteller?
I think he enjoyed the people he was telling the story about, some character he knew, somebody who did something odd, or had figures of speech, and he was a salesman and he met all kinds of people, from going down into coal mines to calling on the executives of the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company or something. I grew up with three brothers and we all loved the stories of days past when there had been floods or fires or some adventure that heād been on or knew about. And I always loved the movies, and I loved to come home after having been to a movie and tell the story of the movie to the point where they would all groan at the table that I was starting to tell it, because I would tell the whole thing, and take longer to tell the story, it seemed, than the movie had lasted. E.M. Forster, in a book that he did about the art of fiction, has a passage in there which I canāt quote exactly but he spoke of the difference between a sequence of events and a story. āIf I tell you that the king died and then the queen died, thatās a sequence of events. If I tell you that the king died and the queen died of grief, thatās a story.ā So itās understanding the human equations involved, and I particularly have always liked stories, plays, movies, novels, where plot derives from character rather than outside forces. Now, the outside forces of course do happen, but all my books are about a journey. They all are about a journey. And I like books about accomplishment.
I was going to cite an exception to that but I guess even your book The Johnstown Flood is a journey. You start with the water where itās supposed to be, in the dam at the top of the hill, and then itās all about the journey to the bottom, and you tell it in slow motion, and the peopleā¦
Yeah, but itās also about their journey, how do they come out of this catastrophe, what do they do.
Of course.
Right after that book was published I had two different publishers come to me offering me an advance. One wanted me to do the Chicago fire, and the other wanted me to do the San Francisco earthquake. I was hardly out of the gate as a writer and being typecast as Bad News McCullough — I didnāt want that. In fact, I was searching for a symbol of affirmation, because I know that we human beings can be very short-sighted, irresponsible, stupid, but that we arenāt always, so I wanted as an antidote for having been through the Johnstown story to do something that was admirable, noble, and that has stood the test of time. And it took me quite a while to come up with my subject, and it only happened because of a chance remark that somebody made at lunch one day in New York, and thatās when I decided to write about the Brooklyn Bridge.
In many ways The Bridge has stayed with me as a subject longer than almost anything Iāve written about. Some books, I write it and itās out of my system and I can move on, but I go back to that subject. I go back about once a year just to walk across, just to visit the old neighbourhood where Rosalie and I lived when we were first married. They built it right, and against horrific odds, and all manner of unexpected problems, and human frailty, human greed, human deceit. I hope very much that the movie on that subject will eventually be made, because we need to be reminded of things that turn out right.
Weāre living in a kind of gilded age now. Iāve been re-reading Trollopeās great novel The Way We Live Now, and itās exactly what weāre living with now, the corruption of greed, money, amoral behaviour in high places. But out of the earlier gilded age rose this magnificent bridge, which is still the primary symbol for the City of New York. When 9/11 happened, the very next morning, front page photographs in the New York Times, towers in flames, in the foreground is one of the towers of the Brooklyn Bridge, people fleeing out of the city by way of the bridge. So the bridge was not only saving lives but it was also reminding us some things still stand. Weāre not cathedral builders in the literal sense, but thatās about as close as we ever came to nineteenth-century cathedral.
When you sat down to write the story of the Brooklyn Bridge, to write about that particular journey — everyone knows the bridge gets built.
Right. How do you keep them guessing?
Yeah.
Thatās the big challenge. How could I make you wonder are they possibly going to do this, how are they going to do it, will they live to do it, all of that. And itās how you unfold it, and what you hold back, without trickery or anything. Put yourself in their shoes, put yourself in their time. Remember they donāt know how itās going to turn out. I like to talk about the hinge of history. It could have gone either way. And very often, as often as not, it goes one way or the other because of a person, or because of a group of people and how they respond, what they believe, what they are willing to endure, what ingenuity they have, all the rest.
I love making something. Iām not a sports fan, and there are probably all kinds of reason for that, but when the gameās over what have you accomplished? Iām happiest when Iām making something, and I think Iām happiest when Iām making something about the lives or life of people who made something, who accomplished something, and I think thatās why Iāve loved every subject Iāve undertaken, every book.
You talk about the uplifting quality of a story like the Brooklyn Bridge, and Iāve heard you say the same about John Adams. Could you write a story about a man who was ultimately a failure?
It would depend in what realm he was a failure, or who considered him a failure. One can make a very good case that John Adams was a failure as a president. That isnāt what interests me, itās the life, what a life he lived.
President Truman?
Same thing. Truman is a journey. Heās representative of not just middle America or middle-brow America but the experience of that generation that went off to fight in France and came back changed it. Thereās an old writerās adage of keep your hero in trouble. You asked how do you tell a story: keep your hero in trouble. But Truman, I never had to worry about that. He was in trouble all the time! Itās Joseph and his coat of many colours, he gets put down the hole, how is he going to get out of that hole?
So when you start a story like that, do you need to know that all those elements are going to be there, or do you trust youāll find them along the way?
No, I have to have the form, first, before I can proceed. When I first started out, Iād been an English major and Iād never written history but I knew how to find things out from my years in publishing and journalism. So I thought, āWell, you do all the research and then you write the book.ā I very soon realized thatās not the way to do it, youāve got to do enough research to get started, then start writing, because when you start writing then it really becomes clear how much you donāt know, or what you need to know, and you can target your research far more efficiently that way. Many people spend years and years researching and they never start writing. You gotta start writing. Iām often surprised at the turns the book will take.
So you donāt have a sense of an ending when you start out?
No, I have no outline. I donāt want an outline. I donāt want a paint-by-the-numbers.
So if weāre dealing, say, with one of your biographies, you would start at the beginning of the life without really knowing what happened in the last half?
Yes. Right. I very often donāt know whatās in for my subject, and thatās one of the reasons I keep the reader in suspense. I donāt know either! I havenāt read those letters yet, where he reveals the true secret of whatever.
So you move chronologically.
Yeah, I move forward with the character. I also feel I have to be able to see it, smell it, feel it, hear it, Iāve gotta walk the walk, Iāve gotta visit the places, Iāve gotta be in the jungle at night, Iāve got to get up and walk by the Seine in the morning, or whatever, climb the stairs, climb the steeple. Adams climbed a steeple down at Christchurch in Philadelphia. I said, āI gotta climb that steeple, I gotta know what that was like.ā And also thatās what I enjoy doing. And talk to people. I tell students, āTalk to people. Tell people what youāre working on. You never know who knows something, or someone.ā
That goes against the grain for a lot of writers.
Oh, entirely.
Some people are writers because theyāre solitary. For you, writing a book seems to be like a communal event.
Oh, it is. People talk about, āOh, it must be a lonely profession.ā Far from it.
You obviously have no anxiety about showing…
Somebody stealing my terrific idea? Baloney, thatās not going to happen.
Or showing something thatās not finished?
Oh, I donāt show them what Iāve written, but I tell students when you go into a library itās not just the treasures of letters and manuscripts and rare books that are in there, itās the people that work there who are often the more important source for you than what youāre going to read, because they know so much, they can direct you to books you would never know about, or tell you the batch of letters that no oneās ever looked at over here. Itās often the secondary characters who are going to give you the most insight.
Into your primary characterā¦
Yes, or deliver lines that are more important than the main character.
Iām impressed by a lot of things in the way your write, and sometimes Iām impressed less for what you do than for what you donāt do. There are no tangents in your approach to story-telling, no arguing with other experts, not a lot of speculating or armchair psychologizing about your charactersā motives. That must be deliberate.
It is, and I can tell you some other things I donāt do. These are my own house rules, so to speak. No contractions. I donāt use ācanātā or ādonātā and so forth. No quoting of present-day historians to substantiate my point. Leave them out. Thatās off-stage. Donāt need that. And all my training as a writer emphasized the old adage, āDonāt tell me: show me.ā Donāt tell me heās a miser, show him being a miser.
I donāt flail away about my own particular take on history. I donāt like to write history as viewed from the mountaintop, thatās not my business. If I couldnāt write narrative history, if I couldnāt make what really happened as compelling as a made-up version of what happened, then I wouldnāt want to write it. Thatās not my line. And if critics are bothered by it, thatās fine, doesnāt bother me. This is what I do and I try to do it as best I can. And I donāt feel Iām in competition with anybody. If Iām praised by an academic historian I love it, but what pleases me most is when, on the one hand, somebody learned or well-read praises what Iāve written, and then a guy jumps out of a Brinks truck on Michigan Avenue in Chicago on a bright sunny morning and tells me he loves my books. That really pleases me, because I donāt think history ought to be reserved for the initiates, the high priests of academe, and I think thatās one of the reasons that our children are so inadequately educated in history.
So you donāt feel, when youāre writing about a John Adams, whoās been written about by a lot of academics, historians, political scientists, you donāt feel youāre arguing with their takes?
Oh, no.
Or that you have to state your case on whether Truman was right to use the bomb or not?
No. There are all kinds of still lives of peaches, but that doesnāt stymie me to sit down and do a water-color of a plate of peaches on my kitchen table. I once worked for an editor who had a big rubber stamp, about that big, that said, āDull,ā and if you handed in something and he didnāt like it heād go āboomā and hand it back. Wouldnāt tell you why it was dull, just said, āDull.ā Made a big impression. How do you keep the lumber out of it? How do you keep the tedious patronizing flim-flam out of it? Move it along. When I read for pleasure I read mostly fiction, and I admire most those people who could turn it around in a page or two.
For instance?
Oh, everybody from Trollope to Elmore Leonard to Ruth Rendell. You every read Penelope Lively?
Never.
Whoa. Read her. Sheās an English writer and she wrote a novel called Moon Tiger, one of the best novels Iāve read in years. I was just told about her recently. Sheās wonderful. Itās about a love affair that takes place between a female correspondent ā newspaper writer ā and an officer in the British Army during the Second World War in North Africa. Terrific book.
Whatās the story youāre proudest of, the story you think youāve told best, your greatest narrative?
Huh. I donāt know. A lot of it has to do with scale. I did an essay in my book, Brave Companions, on Louis Agassiz that I feel very good about. I just reread it recently. I think a lot of the Panama book is some of my best writing ever.
I am a writer. I think I want to emphasize that. I consider myself a writer, not a historian. Iām called a historian, fine, but I donāt think of myself that way. Iām a writer who happens to write about what happened in other days, and I try to get as close as I can to those people in every way possible, and to tell their story truthfully, and faithful not just to what happened but to them.
That was enjoyable. Thank you.
Youāre welcome.
Ā
(A version of this interview previously appeared in Macleanās magazine)