Repost: The Importance of the Other Guys

[NOTE: This is a holiday repost of one of my earliest comments on writing biography. Happy New Year.]

This photograph shows Cornelius Vanderbilt, seated on the right with crossed legs and top hat, on the veranda of the Congress Hall hotel in Saratoga Springs in the 1870s. I like this image. It nicely illustrates life in Saratoga, the most famous resort town of the nineteenth century. It also shows what a celebrity Vanderbilt was.

In broader terms, it raises an essential question for the biographer: Who are all those other guys?

Secondary characters are as important to a biography as they are to a novel, but they are often overlooked and underused. Over the course of years of research and writing, the biographer can begin to grow a bit Ahab-like, ignoring all the other whales in the ocean. And, of course, when we pick up a biography, we expect it to tell a specific individual's story, and we can grow frustrated when a book wanders off topic for too long.

Secondary characters, though, serve valuable purposes in both research and narrative. By digging into the lives of those who surround the main character, a biographer often discovers new dimensions of the primary subject, uncovering fresh sources and facts. To take just one example from my study of Vanderbilt, I dug into the life of his second son, Corneil (as Cornelius Jeremiah was called). Epileptic and addicted to gambling, Corneil might not seem like a worthwhile target for research; in fact, he was a prolific letter-writer whose correspondence dwelled on his family troubles. His very weaknesses made him the perfect light for illuminating the long-overlooked emotional life of his father, who struggled with contradictory feelings for Corneil.

Secondary characters are invaluable in crafting a narrative as well. For one thing, subplots and diversions from the main narrative line enrich a biography, just as they do in a novel, offering relief from a monotonous focus on just one character. Zeroing in on secondary characters also illuminates how events take place through the intersection of the intentions of multiple individuals, the collision of sometimes conflicting agendas. By following the purposes and actions of those who surround the main character, a biographer offers a fuller understanding of how that life unfolded—and can provide some dramatic tension.

Lest I sound like I believe I am a great craftsman in the use of secondary characters, I should note that I had little choice. Vanderbilt left no collection of papers. The letters by and about him are scattered in multiple archives, and do not amount to the kind of treasure trove that draws biographers back to a well-documented subject again and again. In pursuit of more information, I was forced to delve into the lives of those who surrounded him. Generally speaking, necessity proved to be a virtue—though only after assiduous editing. I got carried away with my fascination with some minor characters, and had to cut a great deal from the manuscript. In general, however, my advice is to keep asking who those other guys are; the answers are bound to be illuminating.

Talking Vanderbilt on "Morning Edition"

Today NPR's "Morning Edition" ran an interview with me about Cornelius Vanderbilt.

You can listen to it here.

Speaking of Cornelius Vanderbilt

T.J. Stiles on "Forum," on San Francisco's public radio station, KQED, December 23, 2009:

Speaking of Robber Barons

Today on the Leonard Lopate Show, WNYC Radio, New York. Also on the show: David Nasaw, author of Andrew Carnegie, and David Cannadine, author of Mellon.

San Francisco Chronicle Profile

On Monday, December 21, 2009, the San Francisco Chronicle runs a nice profile of me. You can find it here.

Apart from the fact that the publicity helps sales of my book (The First Tycoon, in stores everywhere), the profile is in keeping with the theme of this particular blog, which is largely about the problems involved in writing biography.

As the writer correctly reports, we discussed finding the complexities in a character, research, and the importance of disciplining your writing so that your research doesn't way down your narrative.

And (online, at least), it includes this nice picture of me.

Best Books of the Year Lists, Updated (Thrice)

Update: The First Tycoon continues to appear on best-books-of-2009 lists—and I'm grateful for every one. Here's a revised list, with the addition of the San Francisco Chronicle and Vanity Fair. I might also note that Parade listed it as a last-minute gift idea.

Recommended by both The New Yorker and Parade: That's a nice place to be. I try to combine scholarship with storytelling, and this list of lists suggests I'm not blowing it entirely.

New York Times Book Critic Dwight Garner's 10 Best of the Year

New York Times Book Review's 100 Notable Books of the Year

Financial Times's Best Books of the Year

Barnes & Noble Review's Best Lives of 2009

Amazon.com's 10 Best Biographies and Memoirs

Christian Science Monitor's Best Books of the Year

Boston Globe's 8 Best Nonfiction Books of the Year

The New Yorker's Reviewers' Favorites from 2009

Washington Post's Best Books of 2009
Philadelphia Inquirer's Editors' Picks for Best of the Year
Barnes & Noble's Best Nonfiction of 2009

Bloomberg's Best Business Books of the Year

San Francisco Chronicle Book Review's Best Books of 2009

Vanity Fair's 2009's 10 Best Books for Holiday Reading

The Past as Property

As a biographer, I have concentrated on the nineteenth century. Everyone in my books is long since dead. If they published anything, it's public domain now. But my books aren't.

Laying claim to the past is a tricky thing. The subject himself belongs to no one. Anyone could release a book or movie or television series about Cornelius Vanderbilt or Jesse James without asking my permission. But there's a distinct line between what is public domain, and what belongs to the biographer. There's a great deal of authorship involved in any biography, no matter how old or well known the subject. The greater the originality and depth of work, the greater the author's claim to intellectual property rights.

That work can loosely be broken down into three overlapping categories: research, analysis, and narrative. First, research. Let's take the hypothetical case of a biography of Bill Clinton—a very public figure, whose public acts (and many private ones) were reported by multiple news outlets. If a biographer were to base a book on these easily available and highly redundant sources, then the information presented would not be the author's property. A director could release a film depicting the same events, without buying the movie rights to that biography. But once the author starts to conduct original, unique research—say, by uncovering a stash of letters Clinton had written to a college girlfriend—then the information derived from that research becomes the property of that author. Want to make a movie about Clinton and his college flame? You've got to pay for the rights.

In the case of The First Tycoon, my subject was famous, even iconic. Yet I discovered entire continents of new information in every period of his life, by carrying out research that no one had ever performed before. The broad shape of Vanderbilt's life was well known long before I took up work. But once you get into any kind of detail, then you either rely on my original research or you'll likely get it wrong. And by "detail," I don't mean microscopic stuff. Some of it is big, from businesses he started that no one knew about before, to his relationship with various U.S. presidents.

But it's important to stress that research isn't that simple. You don't just discover self-contained facts in the archives, anymore than you mine for diamonds, and dig up pre-cut stones ready for the ring. Usually multiple discoveries have to be pieced together and analyzed, based on a deep understanding of the historical context.

For example, I found a letter showing that Thomas Gibbons hired Vanderbilt as his steamboat captain entirely by accident (overturning existing ideas of how they started to work together). A clean, self-contained discovery, right? Wrong. To make any sense out of it, I had to dig into his other business operations, and found that Vanderbilt never fully sacrificed his independence while working for Gibbons. He was more a junior partner, or perhaps a senior executive, with great authority and independent investments of his own.

More than that, my research, reading, and thinking about the episode convinced me that Vanderbilt and Gibbons were involved in far more than a business battle. The conflict they waged represented an attack on the eighteenth-century culture of deference, and was part of the emergence of a more competitive, individualistic society. New knowledge emerged through my original research; but its full meaning only exists because of how I analyzed its significance. On both counts, this is the sort of thing that makes my account of Vanderbilt's story intellectual property, rather than general knowledge.

So much for research and analysis; there remains narrative. A story never tells itself. I had tens of thousands of sources and notes. I deliberately crafted them into a narrative, consciously attending to pacing, the creation of expectations, the various subplots, and the development of characters.

Take, for example, Vanderbilt's relationship with his son-in-law, Horace F. Clark. Clark was one of the Commodore's most important assistants for much of his career, rising from struggling attorney, handling tedious minor cases, to Vanderbilt's representative in Congress, to chief of the Lake Shore Railway, which he ran on the Commodore's behalf. Some of these facts I discovered; others were previously known. But I developed Clark's personality, his close relationship with two other Vanderbilt assistants (Augustus Schell and James H. Banker), his growing ambition, and his ultimate betrayal of Vanderbilt into a major part of my book. Clark emerges as a real person—and drives the action along—only because of my deliberate efforts. I not only dug up new facts, I made choices as a writer that make my treatment of Clark fuller, more complex, and more integral to the narrative momentum than in any previous book about Commodore Vanderbilt.

Well, some readers might disagree that I succeeded in my efforts. My point is not to praise myself, but to emphasize that Clark, in my book, is very much the product of my creative efforts as a writer. Just because my portrait is nonfiction does not diminish my intellectual property rights to that portrait.

I've just explained at length how a nonfiction historical account is still the writer's property. But what if an author does sell the rights for an adaptation? My message to writers is hands off. You haven't bought the rights to control the film, TV series, or play; you've sold the right for the adapter to use your book as the starting point. The purpose of an adaptation is not to be as faithful as possible; it should succeed on its own terms, as a work of art and entertainment. It's an irony that some of the most accurate adaptations of books have made lousy movies, while some films that have taken great liberties with a book have been spectacular.

Best Books of the Year Lists, Updated (Twice)

And now a moment for self-promotion: The First Tycoon continues to make best-of-the-year lists. Not all, of course, and that's fine. It's a very good sign for the state of book publishing when there are so many good books that no two critics can agree on the very best. But it's a very good sign for my book that so many critics have selected it. Here's the updated list:

New York Times Book Critic Dwight Garner's 10 Best of the Year

New York Times Book Review's 100 Notable Books of the Year

Financial Times's Best Books of the Year

Barnes & Noble Review's Best Lives of 2009

Amazon.com's 10 Best Biographies and Memoirs

Christian Science Monitor's Best Books of the Year

Boston Globe's 8 Best Nonfiction Books of the Year

The New Yorker's Reviewers' Favorites from 2009

Washington Post's Best Books of 2009
Philadelphia Inquirer's Editors' Picks for Best of the Year
Barnes & Noble's Best Nonfiction of 2009

Bloomberg's Best Business Books of the Year

The Research Iceberg

I often learn something about my own thinking when I have a good conversation about my work. In the course of a recent interview with a writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, I mentioned a large amount of material that I had cut out of The First Tycoon before it was published. The interviewer said something along the lines of, "Months of work wasted, eh?"

No, I said, it wasn't wasted. All the work I performed on the deleted pages added to the weight of what was published. Much of the research in a really solid book never appears in the narrative or the endnotes. Research is like the proverbial iceberg, with much of it lying out of sight, yet supporting what the reader does see.

By marinating oneself in a time and a subject, a writer learns to judge which sources are significant, or the true meaning of a seemingly tangential piece of evidence. A good writer develops a richly detailed, comprehensive understanding of the characters, culture, physical environment, and much more.

I have occasionally seen a reviewer harp on a writer for making too much of a particular source. But a good writer, unlike even the best reviewer, spends years reviewing countless sources, developing an understanding of the full implications of the evidence. A voice with real authority resonates on the page—and it emerges from all the research that is never cited in a book.

The moral? As my editor likes to say, there are no shortcuts. It's usually painfully obvious when a book has been written on the cheap, when it comes to research. Simply put, do the work.

The Biographer: Angry Scold or Cheerleader?

I just received my issue of The Nation that features my reply to Steve Fraser's review of my book, and Fraser's weird response. You can read it (if you're a subscriber) here.

I've blogged about Fraser's review before, but I bring it up again because it speaks to an important dilemma for every biographer: The tone of the book, or its attitude toward the subject. Probably every biographer has felt the tug between being a cheerleader and being a scold. Only rarely is either role appropriate for a serious account. Writing about Hitler? Please, condemn! Writing about Nelson Mandela? I wouldn't mind a little cheering. But most subjects fall well within the extremes of good and evil. They are human beings who need to be understood in all their complexity.

Fraser's response to my comments makes it clear that his primary objection to my book is that I do not condemn Cornelius Vanderbilt as a bad man. It's clear because his criticisms are almost all factually false. If you only read his review, and his further comments, you would think that I never mention attacks on Vanderbilt by radical groups, or the making of a class of wage workers (and their travails), or the rise of the labor movement. In fact, I discuss all these issues and more at length. (The only accurate criticism he makes is that I ignore the air brake, a technical matter that the subject of my biography never dealt with.)

Why does Fraser pretend that I ignore these issues? Because I do not use them to scold Vanderbilt, or to celebrate his critics; therefore, to Fraser's mind, my comments on them do not count, or perhaps did not even register as he read my book. What I did try to do is what every historian or biographer should do: Put these issues in the context of all of my subject's life, and examine them honestly, dispassionately, with an understanding of their complications and nuances.

A biographer should always look for complexities and contradictions, and try to understand them. In my case, Vanderbilt's career bestowed great good on the nation, and it also posed great conundrums. His railroad empire, for example, made transportation enormously efficient and far cheaper than ever before; yet as Americans became more and more dependent on his lines, they became hostages to his pursuit of private interests and disputes. In one case, he cut off the city of New York from the rest of the nation in the midst of a severe winter storm, to win a fight with a rival railroad. He employed tens of thousands of workers, yet their wages were a cost to him that he tried to keep as low as possible. He attained a degree of wealth and power that shattered the old assumptions about equality in a democratic society.

But it's a mistake to merely ask if he was a force for good or evil. The very question reduces my subject to either black or white, whereas human beings are complicated, contradictory, and rarely emerge from a cloud of gray. And Vanderbilt was no exception.

When we fall into the mode of either cheering on or condemning our subjects, we become blind to the critical issues illustrated by their lives. Fraser, for example, admits he does not understand my discussion of the emergence of the modern debate over government regulation, which centered on Vanderbilt. As I write, liberal intellectuals criticized Vanderbilt for his self-serving power, but failed to come up with any means of restraining that power, because they distrusted democracy. Fearing government corruption, they condemned any regulatory power. My point was not to dismiss the liberals' criticisms of Vanderbilt, but to show how they bankrupted themselves of any means of solving the very problems they identified. Their influence helped to postpone federal regulation for decades. Fraser responded to my discussion by saying he didn't get it, and attacked me for not simply cheering on the liberals' criticism of Vanderbilt.

Getting too enthusiastic about your subject can lead to similar problems. When I was writing The First Tycoon, I found myself admiring Vanderbilt at times, just as I sometimes despaired at his ruthlessness and disregard of innocent bystanders. In the end, I did my best to remove the emotion, and be clear-eyed and honest.

Perhaps I should not have bothered to respond to Fraser's review. But, as a blogger about the art of writing biography, Fraser's muddle-headed critique helps to identify a critical issue. My advice to my fellow writers is to think broadly, explore the complexities, and avoid a tone of either anger or celebration.

Talking Biography with the STrib

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune (the STrib, as it's known) ran a nice interview with me on December 5 about the work that went into writing The First Tycoon. You can find it here..

It's a shame the paper didn't have space for the entire interview. I had a great conversation about writing biography with Laurie Hertzel, the books editor. It's too bad that it takes a major award for a discussion like this to run in a paper.

* Update *

Laurie Hertzel was kind enough to comment, below. I just want to clarify: I didn't mean to slam the STrib! What I meant to say is that I find such conversations about writing so interesting, I wish they were in newspapers every week.

Video: National Book Award Speech

Posting my National Book Award speech certainly falls into the category of self-promotion, but I think my remarks are relevant to the purpose of this blog: to explore the art and craft of writing biography. Take a look for yourself, and I think you'll see what I mean.

T. J. Stiles at the 2009 National Book Awards, Nonfiction Winner from National Book Foundation on Vimeo.

The Best Best Lists

There's one sure thing about winning the National Book Award: After that, you can't complain about anything that happens to your book. Which wouldn't seem to be such a problem, except that writers love to complain. Well, for once I don't really want to.

It's that time of year when the annual best-books lists being to appear. My book appears on some, but hardly all. No shocker there: The least surprising thing about such lists is that no two are alike. In fact, that's a very good thing. It means there are a lot of excellent books being published every year, too many for any two critics to agree upon which handful are the best.

So you won't find me complaining about the lists that have left me out. In fact, I'm as pleased as Dan Rather with a handbook of folksy metaphors to have been picked for the lists I did make. Here they are, so far:

New York Times Book Critic Dwight Garner's 10 Best of the Year

New York Times Book Review's 100 Notable Books of the Year

Financial Times's Best Books of the Year

Barnes & Noble Review's Best Lives of 2009

Amazon.com's 10 Best Biographies and Memoirs

Christian Science Monitor's Best Books of the Year

Boston Globe's 8 Best Nonfiction Books of the Year

Book Cover Angst

Today's post begins with Ethan Watters. He's a founder of the Grotto, San Francisco's writers' center, and author of Urban Tribes and the brand-new Crazy Like Us. I'm acquainted with Ethan; he's a hell of a nice (and smart) guy, and he hooked me up with my accountant. A good accountant is worth his weight in royalty checks for a writer. More than that, Crazy Like Us sounds like a terrific book, exploring how America's mental-health establishment has exported its thinking about mental illness and treatment to the rest of the world.

But Ethan endured a bout with an ailment suffered by most authors: Book Cover Angst (or BCA). I dare say every person who has ever had a book published has agonized over the jacket design. Ethan blogged about his BCA here.

As Ethan's post makes clear, the very first design truly did not work. The designer came back with a second, based on a map of the world. This design was outstanding—but Ethan was now worried. He sought opinions, got new designs from a friend, and generally struggled over it. In the end, though, he came back to just a slightly different version of the map design. To be honest, I like the original map design a little better than the altered version, which adds in arrows extending from the United States to the rest of the world. A little too on-the-nose, I think, though it's still a very good cover.

I thoroughly empathize with Ethan's feelings. I felt enormous stress over each jacket design of my books. I even shot down the original paperback design of Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War. I worried that the cover design of The First Tycoon wasn't modern enough.

But, in general terms, my thinking about this issue is shaped by my ten years inside publishing, working alongside graphic designers. Simply put, the people who design book jackets are professionals. They work with hundreds of books. They live on a daily basis with the experience and judgment of countless other people who sell or buy books for a living.

You, the author, deal with one book every few years. If you have a productive career, maybe ten in total. You are only briefly (if ever) exposed to the many people who actually market books, from your publisher's sales force and publicists to bookstore managers. Your judgment about your cover is that of an amateur.

So why are jacket designs so stressful for an author? Because a writer works for years on a book, living with it every day. Then, all of a sudden, someone you've never met sends you a visual representation of your work. Some stranger has distilled your thoughts, your beloved work, into a single-frame image. It's always shocking, and almost never feels right.

Of course, sometimes it isn't right. When I successfully shot down the first paperback design of Jesse James, I had a good argument: it was an old-West image, one that would appeal only to a narrow slice of the market, whereas I was taking Jesse James out of the frontier context and reexamining him in ways that spoke to a much larger audience. Ethan Watters was right to shoot down the first design of Crazy Like Us, because he, too, had a solid argument about its effectiveness. But I was way off to worry about The First Tycoon, which has repeatedly been praised for its beautiful cover. And Ethan's designer got it right on the second try.

A jacket is a marketing tool, plain and simple. The author is indeed the undisputed master of the content of a book; you have total control, and are the absolute expert on it. But content is very different from the jacket. That's a tough fact to accept. Very tough. I can talk a good game, as I polish my National Book Award statue, but I guarantee that I'll get worked up over the cover of my next book, and probably for no good reason.

As an author, you must try to separate your gut reaction from concrete thinking about how to best represent the book in the marketplace. If you've got a solid argument about marketing, make it, and a good publisher will see your point. But you should recognize when you just feel funny about it, and let it go. Because the worst thing is when the publisher simply placates you, and then the rest of the world scratches its head about your inexplicable cover.