Here & Now

In Focus with David Maraniss: Covering News, Writing History

Murv Seymour:
David Maraniss, welcome to “In Focus.”

David Maraniss:
Thanks, Murv, great to be with you.

Murv Seymour:
Yeah, it’s good to see you. I know we worked on putting this together here over the last couple of months, so I appreciate you making time. And a lot of us have something in common. One of my friends said that to me years ago. Do you know what you and I have in common?

David Maraniss:
I don’t.

Murv Seymour:
We both went to the same high school.

David Maraniss:
Madison West.

Murv Seymour:
Madison West.

David Maraniss:
You’re a Regent.

Murv Seymour:
I’m a Regent; from ’80 to ’82, I was there.

David Maraniss:
All right, I was a lot older than you, but ’67 or… Yeah, I graduated in ’67.

Murv Seymour:
Okay, just a tad before I got there. But you know, as we get older, it all kind of comes in the same little pot, right?

David Maraniss:
Yeah, that’s for sure, yep.

Murv Seymour:
Yeah, good stuff. I’d love to get a little bit, to talk a little bit just journalism for you.

David Maraniss:
Sure.

Murv Seymour:
How did you find journalism? How did you fall into journalism?

David Maraniss:
Well, I was the dumb kid in my family. My mother and my three siblings were all scholars. My dad was a newspaper man, and luckily, I followed him into that profession. He eventually became the editor of “The Capital Times” here in Madison.

Murv Seymour:
Oh, wow, okay.

David Maraniss:
So I grew up, you know, going to the old “Cap Times” building and loving everything about it, you know, the linoleum floors with the cigarette butts on it, and, you know, the pneumatic tubes sending the stories to the back room. All of that stuff was sort of what I grew up with. Long gone now, but that’s what drew me to journalism.

Murv Seymour:
So, like in high school, were you, did you know, early on, that that was kind of–

David Maraniss:
No, I thought I was going to be shortstop for the Milwaukee Braves. [laughing] But that dream faded fast.

Murv Seymour:
I think we all had those kinds of things we thought we’d be doing, right?

David Maraniss:
Yep, but I did know that I loved writing, and the wonderful thing about it is it was something that I loved that I could do, you know? So it just fell in place for me.

Murv Seymour:
What do you like about it?

David Maraniss:
Everything. I love-I mean, I’m a nonfiction writer, so a journalist and a writer of nonfiction books. And I love the process of meeting people, of going places, finding out the cultural geography of a place, why people are the way they are. I love all of that research. And then writing itself is a joy for me. For some reason, I don’t tend to get writer’s block. And if I do, it’s only because I haven’t really done the research right.

Murv Seymour:
We need to get you on board here at PBS Wisconsin. [both laughing] Now, you mentioned nonfiction being your genre. Why nonfiction and not fiction?

David Maraniss:
Well, it’s something I can do. I tried to write a novel once, you know, like 35 years ago, and it was pathetic. But I love the reality. I love to-I write in a way that’s novelistic, but it’s all totally rooted in fact. I love to tell stories, but I need the gist of fact to do it right. And it seems, you know, I mean, there are a lot of, I mean, novels are wonderful, but it’s not what I do. And I tend to read nonfiction more because I want to learn more about the real world. Not to say that you can’t do that from great fiction as well, but it’s just sort of my… It’s my genre, it’s what I do. I’m rooted in journalism, rooted in the search for truth. And so, you know, that’s what led me there.

Murv Seymour:
Yeah, I heard you mention too that you kind of describe yourself as a journalist/historian. Why is that?

David Maraniss:
Well, my books are history. You know, whether they’re about politicians, or a city of Detroit, or about sports figures, what I’m doing is using some place or some person to illuminate history. And that’s, you know, so I’m a member, a fellow of the Society of American Historians. I love history. And so my journalism led me in that direction.

Murv Seymour:
And one of the things we talk about, brands and branding. You know, we think of Nike, “Just Do It.” [David laughing] BMW, “The Ultimate Driving Machine.” What’s your brand? What’s your mission statement about who you are as a writer?

David Maraniss:
Boy, I try to avoid brands because what I try to do is develop a voice that’s universal enough that I can write about anything. So I’m not a snarky writer. I’m not looking for a specific niche. I’m trying to look at the whole world. So I would say if I have a brand, it’s “go there and search for the truth.”

Murv Seymour:
Yeah, and speaking of writing about everything you’ve seen, like you have, I mean, lots of things on politics. You’ve written things on sports, the Olympics.

David Maraniss:
Yep.

Murv Seymour:
How do you choose your subjects? How do you go there?

David Maraniss:
I choose the subjects by things that I’m obsessed with. I’ll spend three or four years on each book. I’m not going to do it on something that I don’t really care about. So luckily, I’ve been able to find enough subjects that draw me to it. So, for instance, the sports books, I’ve written three, and it’ll become four, books about sports figures. Vince Lombardi, the great football coach of the Green Bay Packers, Roberto Clemente, the beautiful ball player, and Jim Thorpe, the Native American all-around athlete. So they’re all great athletes, or sports figures, but that’s not why I wrote about them. I wrote about them because there’s something in each story that illuminates American history. With Lombardi, it’s not just leadership, but sort of the American obsession, mythology of competition and success in American life, what it takes and what it costs. With Clemente, not just this beautiful ball player, but a way to write about that rare athlete who was growing as a human being as his talents, as he was getting older. So that his motto was, “If you have a chance to help others and fail to do so, you’re wasting your time on this earth.” And that’s how he tried to live his life, and how he died, you know, delivering humanitarian aid in Nicaragua after an earthquake in 1972. With Jim Thorpe, you know, arguably the greatest athlete in history, someone who did things that no one else has ever done. But I wrote about it as a way to illuminate the Native American experience. ‘Cause he was a Native American from Indian territory of what became Oklahoma.

Murv Seymour:
And how many books do you have under your belt now?

David Maraniss:
I have 13, going on 14.

Murv Seymour:
13 going on 14.

David Maraniss:
Yeah.

Murv Seymour:
And I’ll ask you the question that people ask when they have a lot of kids, or a few kids. Which one is your favorite? [David laughing] Do we have a favorite?

David Maraniss:
Well, I… Every book has meant something else important to me. So I’m not going to say that I have a favorite, but I will say that the two that have the most deeply psychological impact on me and the people I wrote about were “They Marched into Sunlight,” my book on the Vietnam War, and my more personal book, “A Good American Family,” about my father dealing with the McCarthy era and the Red Scare.

Murv Seymour:
Yeah, and you got your chops covering politics. That’s where you won your Pulitzer.

David Maraniss:
Yes, I mean, I’ve been at “The Washington Post” for 47 years.

Murv Seymour:
Wow.

David Maraniss:
Started there as a kid, you know, and over the many decades there, I mostly covered politics. Not entirely, but politics not in the sense of the horse race. I’m not interested really in that. Although, I mean, personally I am on who wins, but as a writer, I’m more interested in the sociological forces that shape America and the forces that shape individual politicians. So that’s what led me to the biographies of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, for instance.

Murv Seymour:
And you’ve written about Al Gore as well, correct?

David Maraniss:
Yeah, I did. That was a little different. I mean, I would say, of my 13 books, that one was really rooted in my journalism at “The Washington Post.” So I spent maybe a year on that one as opposed to three or four years. And it came out before the election, and he didn’t become president, so, you know, a little bit of a different story.

Murv Seymour:
Now, do you see yourself potentially writing about, you know…

David Maraniss:
Kamala?

Murv Seymour:
Kamala, or President Trump?

David Maraniss:
Not Trump; I could never write about Trump. I don’t find him interesting. I find everything around him interesting, but he’s a one-dimensional human being, and I’m not interested in that. So I’d never write about him. Kamala, I wrote one piece based at the convention in Chicago on sort of her early roots in Berkeley, which I found fascinating. I don’t know if I’ll write a book about her, but it’s a possibility.

Murv Seymour:
Yeah. I want to talk a little bit about your Wisconsin life in terms of what, if any, impact has that had on how you write and how you tell your stories.

David Maraniss:
Sure, I think absolutely it does. First of all, because Madison and “The Capital Times” saved my family. My father was hounded by the House Un-American Activities Committee, and we were sort of on, you know, he was blacklisted. We got to Madison in 1957 and “The Capital Times” hired him, and that saved us. So I’ve always felt that this city is, and that newspaper, a place of a sort of welcoming the “other,” quote, unquote.

Murv Seymour:
You must’ve been a teen during that time, or?

David Maraniss:
I was eight years old when we got here.

Murv Seymour:
Oh, wow, okay.

David Maraniss:
So three to eight. And then, furthermore, if you look at the Wisconsin Idea and the statement of “sifting and winnowing” in the search for truth, that’s always resonated with me. And the motto of “The Capital Times,” I mean, you can never live up to great mottos, but there’s something to strive for. So the motto of “The Cap Times” was, “Give the people the truth and the freedom to discuss it, and all will go well.” So I’ve always sort of been rooted in trying to find the truth. And I think that Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Idea, that the “sifting and winnowing,” and “The Capital Times,” all have greatly influenced my career and life.

Murv Seymour:
I’ve heard you talk about truth, trust, two things that are kind of front and center these days, especially politically.

David Maraniss:
Yeah.

Murv Seymour:
What does it take to get trust? What do you have to do to earn it?

David Maraniss:
Well, in my case, my whole– The way I work as a reporter, journalist, author, is to not play games with people, not try to manipulate them, tell them exactly what I’m looking for, and that I will be honest with them about what I’m finding. So I’ve often told this story involving my book on Vietnam, which was, dealt with the protest here at Wisconsin, the Dow protest against the Dow Chemical Company, and a battle in Vietnam where there was a horrible ambush, and 60 men were killed, and many wounded out of a battalion of 140. And one of the key figures in that was a company commander named Clark Welch, who fought valiantly, tried to talk his superiors out of walking into this ambush, but afterwards was so discouraged and demoralized that he basically was hiding in the hills of Colorado for decades afterwards, fearful that some loved one of one of his boys, as he called them, would say, “You’re responsible for his death,” when he wasn’t. So he finally agreed to meet with me after a couple years of my research. He was one of the last key people. And when we met in a hotel in Denver, he sat down and said, “David, I’ll talk to you if you promise to be good to my boys.” And I said to him straight up, “I can’t make that promise. “If I make that promise and find something else, “I’ll either be betraying you if I report it, or betraying the truth if I don’t.” And he got up from the table and said, “No, you got to promise to be good to my boys.” And I repeated again and said, “Colonel Welch, what I can promise you is that “I will not play games, “that I’ll try to search for the truth. “But again, I can’t betray the truth, or you, if I make that promise.” And he finally agreed and understood what I was saying. And that built a level of trust for the rest of my research for that book, where he gave me 60 letters that he wrote home from Vietnam. He went to Vietnam with me. And it’s all based on just being straightforward with people and not trying to manipulate them.

Murv Seymour:
Is there a lot of tension when you’re trying to get there?

David Maraniss:
There can be, sure. But I try to ease that tension. Again, by not being confrontational, but by being honest.

Murv Seymour:
And how does it affect the story when you finally tell that story?

David Maraniss:
Well, I hope it gets closer to the reality. It’s certainly, in this case, but because of some other factors too, had a very profound psychological effect on me as well as on the soldiers I wrote about because I finally wrote the truth for them, and that really was important to them. The American government had lied about the battle, said that it was a victory for the United States, that it wasn’t an ambush. They made up a body count. And the soldiers who endured it and survived knew that the government was lying. But it wasn’t until I reported it many decades later that they finally felt sort of whole about what had happened. But in doing that, in talking to 40 or 50 of those survivors, I carried the baggage of what they had endured as well. So it had an impact on me.

Murv Seymour:
It brings me to an interesting question about the trauma of being a journalist and the storytelling. I know for that project, you went to Vietnam. You took a lot of the folks that were involved in the story there, and I imagine that had to be some emotional, you know, trauma that had to come with that. How did you see that? Well, back then, I don’t even know if the word trauma even existed in terms of how we see it today.

David Maraniss:
PTSD, I mean, several of the soldiers I dealt with did suffer from it, some didn’t. I mean, it’s not a universal thing.

Murv Seymour:
But did it do anything to you as a journalist being up close to all that?

David Maraniss:
Yeah, it did. And you know, I’ve covered a lot. As a journalist, you sort of get, I don’t want to say inured to trauma, but you certainly deal with it a lot. I mean, I covered 9/11 for the “Post.” You know, I spent a month and a half up in New York City during that. I covered the Virginia Tech shooting for “The Washington Post.”

Murv Seymour:
Wow.

David Maraniss:
So I’ve dealt with a lot of mass trauma. But in those cases, even though I really went deeply, this is spending years with these men. And so that was a different level of trauma that I was, you know, both sort of taking some of their trauma onto my shoulders, helping them out. But in the end, Murv, I think that what released it for me was that I saw that I actually accomplished something for these guys. That they felt, they came together based around my book, and they felt that I told the truth finally, and that helped them. Sadly, many of them have died since the book came out 20 years ago. A lot of them, you might say too soon from, ironically, the chemicals that the United States dumped onto Vietnam. The Agent Orange, you know, gave them some bladder cancers that they may not have gotten otherwise. And it was the students at Wisconsin from these very different worlds, you know, and the soldiers certainly didn’t like the protesters for the most part, but the protesters were protesting against Dow Chemical Company, the makers of Agent Orange, which ended up killing a lot of these soldiers.

Murv Seymour:
Wow, and you bring up protest. I read that that project started with you going to your first protest when you were here at the University of Wisconsin. I’m curious to get your perspective on how you see protests then, you know, in the anti-war movement compared to the protests we see now that are going on about the war in the Middle East.

David Maraniss:
Yeah, some similarities and some differences. The major similarity is the idealistic motivation of the protestors. Whether they’re… Whether they fully understand the situation or not, they’re motivated by trying to prevent something, death basically, from happening. I mean, you know, it was death in Vietnam, death in Gaza, right? And the horrors of that. And so the idealistic inspiration to get to a place of peace. But in Vietnam, it was more direct because every male of my age possibly could fight in that war, whether we were drafted or we had to decide what to do, go to Canada, go to prison, join the ROTC, enlist. It affected every one of us because of the draft. It affected our girlfriends, and parents, and everyone else. This war in Gaza is one level removed from that. So every movement is a combination of self-interest and idealism. And in this one, with the exception of Arab Americans who have relatives in Gaza, there’s no self-interest really, except for the idealism could be there. But it also can go in dangerous directions. You know, peaceful protest is wonderful. Antisemitism is not. You can hate Netanyahu and not hate Israel, or Jewish people. So I think, you know, it’s very complicated. And the Middle East is complicated in a way almost that nothing else in our world is. And that’s why it’s been so unresolved and so difficult for so long.

Murv Seymour:
Yeah, and in a broader sense, do you feel like protesting makes a difference?

David Maraniss:
Well, it’s certainly, that’s a great question. It makes a difference in different ways. It makes a difference to the people who are doing it. It changes their lives often. Whether it moves governments or not is… Even in Vietnam, that’s a good question because, you know, this protest, for instance, at Dow happened in 1967, and the war went on for another seven years, right? So… But, you know, on the other hand, you can look at protests that did make a huge difference. The civil rights movement certainly changed America. We still have problems, but boy, did that, you know, it changed the laws. Eventually, the Congress did vote to get out of Vietnam, you know, to stop the funding. But it took a long time. And I’m not sure that the protests themselves were the only factor in that.

Murv Seymour:
Yeah, and for someone who’s been writing as long as you have been, I’d be curious to know what you think makes a good story.

David Maraniss:
Well, I mean, I try to look at it like the whole world’s a good story. You just got to find it. You know, every human being has a good story. Every city has a story. Every, you know, so I’m not… Some that I prefer to others, but I don’t like journalists who are cynical and saying, “Oh, this is the same old story.” Because it’s never the same old story. There’s always something new you can find.

Murv Seymour:
It’s perspective, right?

David Maraniss:
Yeah, it is.

Murv Seymour:
Looking at things a little differently, maybe?
David Maraniss:
Looking at things differently and opening your eyes to the possibilities.

Murv Seymour:
I’d love to ask you a little bit about your influences in terms of what influenced you as a writer.

David Maraniss:
Sure, well, first of all, my father, who was an old-school journalist, who was a really good writer, and had an ability to write in a way that was accessible, but never wrote down to people. So it was intelligent, but accessible. And so he was my first influence. And, you know, the truth is that because of the dynamics of my family, and I really was the dumb kid in the family. My two older siblings both got 1600s on the SATs and went to Harvard and Swarthmore. And my younger sister was a classical pianist. So I was really, in that group, the one, you know, sort of the screwup.

Murv Seymour:
I think there’s a note here that a dumb person can write 15 books. [David laughing] That should inspire us all.

David Maraniss:
So in any case, when I was 15 years old, I’ll never forget this. I was walking into “The Capital Times” with my dad, and he introduced me to someone and said, “This is Dave, my youngest son. He’s going to be the best writer of all of us.” I don’t know why he said it, but it stuck. And so that little bit of inspiration was, I mean, that’s not the only reason, but that’s what got me going. And so I’m forever grateful for him saying that at a time when I was not, you know, I thought I couldn’t do anything.

Murv Seymour:
Yeah, so let’s say now you’ve got an idea for a project you want to do. What’s your process from that point?

David Maraniss:
Well, it’s about a year and a half just of research.

Murv Seymour:
Wow.

David Maraniss:
So my next book is on Jack Johnson, the boxer, who was Muhammad Ali 100 years before Ali. And it’s sort of, it fills out what became a quartet: Lombardi, Clemente, Thorpe, Johnson. And he takes it in a different direction, but, again, it’s American history. I mean, you know, there were riots all over the country when he won the heavyweight crown. The government went after him and convicted him on violating the Mann Act, transporting white women across state lines. He went into exile for eight years. James Earl Jones played Jack Johnson on Broadway in “The Great White Hope.” You know, it has a lot of, Miles Davis wrote an album called “Jack Johnson.” You know, it has a lot of afterlife to it as well. So right now, I’ve gone to several archives. On my way back to Washington, we’ll stop in Notre Dame, which, for some reason, has the greatest boxing archive in the country.

Murv Seymour:
Wow.
David Maraniss:
The papers of Nat Fleischer, who wrote, who was “The Ring” magazine owner, and also just other great stuff, so, and I’ve been at the National Archives a lot in Washington because there’s a huge FBI file on Jack Johnson, and it’s all there. I filed Freedom of Information Act requests for all of the documents related to his pardon, which came 100 years later. And so it’s about a year and a half of all of this research. He died in 1946. So there’s no one around that I can interview about him, except for other historians or boxing experts who have looked at his fights, and stuff like that. And, you know, I don’t even like boxing. I grew up a block from the Field House here in Madison, where the University of Wisconsin had a terrific boxing team in the ’50s and early, into about ’60 or ’61, when they got rid of it because one of the, Charlie Mohr, a boxer on the UW team, was killed in the ring, or, you know, knocked unconscious and died a day later. And that affected me profoundly. You know, so I’m not a boxing fan per se, but I see that I can use this boxer as a way to illuminate American history. So a year and a half of just research. “Go there” is part of my philosophy, so…

Murv Seymour:
Now, for him, where would that be?

David Maraniss:
Well, he was born in Galveston. He grew up in Galveston, Texas. Spent his childhood there. Through, by the way, the great Galveston flood and hurricane of 1900, the largest natural disaster in American history. He was there for that. Then he spent most of his adult life in Chicago. That’s where he’s buried. That’s where the government went after him. Then he was in exile in Paris and Barcelona, not bad places for me to have to go, and lost his title. He won it in Australia in 1908. Lost it in Havana, Cuba in 1915. So I’ll probably go there as well.

Murv Seymour:
Now, without getting too deep into the story ’cause you’ve got me on the hook now. What was he the target, why was he the target of government?

David Maraniss:
Because he basically said, “I don’t care what white society thinks.” He said, you know, he dated white women, he drove fast cars, he was fearless, proud, big, Black, everything that threatened the white supremacy of this country.

Murv Seymour:
And what time period are we talking here? Just for those that don’t know.

David Maraniss:
Basically, 1900 to 1920. 1920 is when he came out of exile and went to Leavenworth for a year, served in prison.

Murv Seymour:
Wow.

David Maraniss:
But his brilliance as a boxer was about 1908 to 1915.

Murv Seymour:
So you’ve done a year and a half of research, you’ve gone to visit, you’ve pulled all of the different things you can find. Now you get to the writing part. How long does that take?

David Maraniss:
That takes another year and a half at least. But while I’m writing, I’m also still reporting, because it’s only when you start writing that, or only when I start writing that I see where the holes are and what I want to fill in. So I’ll never stop researching. But the writing starts about a year and a half in, or two years, and then takes another year and a half or two years.

Murv Seymour:
And I read your wife is your first editor.

David Maraniss:
Yes, she is.

Murv Seymour:
How does that work? “Honey, I don’t like that. Get rid of it.”

David Maraniss:
Well, no, I mean, [Murv laughing] there’s a very sexist sort of trope that goes along with this, which is my wife Linda, who’s a really good editor, will say, “David, I don’t get this part.” And I will say something awful like, “Well, that’s because…” I don’t even want to say it, but basically I’ll say, “That’s because you’re too stupid to get it.” But that’s a joke because every time, I will go back and change it the way she suggests.

Murv Seymour:
You do not say that to her [David laughing] ’cause you’re eating Hot Pockets for two weeks saying something like that.

David Maraniss:
Well, I don’t say it anymore ’cause I don’t even have to. We just sort of know what’s, it’s like a kabuki play almost, you know? [laughing]

Murv Seymour:
That’s awesome.

David Maraniss:
But the truth is, it’s very helpful.

Murv Seymour:
Yeah, I was going to ask you why does it take so long to write a book, but I think I kind of know that now. When it comes to writing, anything in particular drive you crazy?

David Maraniss:
You know, the only things that drive me crazy are the little things, like the technology of my computer, and the printer, and stuff like that. You know, I’m a techno idiot.

Murv Seymour:
Well, you probably came up on a typewriter.

David Maraniss:
I did, yeah.

Murv Seymour:
And then you went to a word processor.

David Maraniss:
Yeah, for a typewriter, electric typewriter. When I started at the “Post,” they had these huge, tubed… They were made by Raytheon, you know, and that was a first sort of computer.

Murv Seymour:
I love these back-in-my-day stories. [David laughing]

David Maraniss:
And then there was something where you’d, you know, I can’t even remember, some kind of machine where it’d roll it out for you, just a lot of stupid stuff.

Murv Seymour:
So does that mean you’ve evolved to where now you’re dictating them through a headset?

David Maraniss:
No, I’m not.

Murv Seymour:
You still get down and fingers to the keys?

David Maraniss:
Oh, yeah. And a matter of fact, it’s funny, we have a house in Washington, and my daughter was there for something, and we were here, and she asked if she could use my computer. And she got to the keyboard and said, “Dad, none of the letters are there anymore.” ‘Cause I’ve typed on it so much, you can’t even see what letters are. But I’m a, you know, I’m a QWERTY typist. I can do it without even looking. But she couldn’t tell where the letters were.

Murv Seymour:
That’s hilarious. I know for me, when I write, there’s something about, well, I personally like to write by hand because there’s something about that connection to that pen and that paper that kind of gets into my, I say, soul and spirit that helps me connect to what I’m doing.

David Maraniss:
Oh, I agree with that. So, I mean, I have several steps to the process. When I’m organizing the chapters, I’ll take out these big sort of art notebooks and use them to figure out what I call the Stations of the Cross of that chapter are, and where I can find it in my material. And then I will usually write out by hand the leads, the first page of something because it helps me feel it. And then, when I have the combination of that written, and what I see is where the chapter will go, then I go to the computer.

Murv Seymour:
Yeah, so I started on my memoir, and this wouldn’t be the first time that I’ve started on my memoir. I’m a good chapter into the process. What is it that makes it so difficult for us folks to write our story, I guess?

David Maraniss:
Most writers get in their own way. And I’ve always… There was a phrase I’ve used to myself, which is, “David, stop writing.” In other words, “Just tell the story.” You know, “Get out of your way.” You know, even when you do that, writing will come, but it won’t be forced. So, you know, it just… That’s how I overcome whatever block I might have. Just remember that the chronology is your friend and get out of the way.

Murv Seymour:
That’d be your advice to the folks that are out there that would like to write?

David Maraniss:
Yep.

Murv Seymour:
Just do it, get it done, don’t think about it. [David laughing]

David Maraniss:
Well, you have to think about it, but don’t overthink it.

Murv Seymour:
Right.

David Maraniss:
And don’t think that you have to do any flourishes. Those will come naturally. Just use your normal language.

Murv Seymour:
Yeah, and since you’ve been at this a while now, do you get a sense that you’re running out of time to tell stories?

David Maraniss:
Well, geez, that’s kind of a tough question. [David laughing] I am getting older.

Murv Seymour:
That’s what we do here at “In Focus.” The tough questions only.

David Maraniss:
So what my answer will be, what I love about what I do is that I think I can do it for my whole life. So that’s it. So, yeah, I mean, I obviously will run out of time.

Murv Seymour:
We all will, right?

David Maraniss:
We all will. But I don’t think I’ll run out of stories.

Murv Seymour:
What haven’t you gotten to?

David Maraniss:
Well, I haven’t written a full biography of a woman. I almost wrote one about Billie Jean King, but she wanted to control the story, and I couldn’t allow, I mean, that’s not the way I do things. And I don’t know. I mean, I’m deep into Jack Johnson. I haven’t thought about what comes next, but something will.

Murv Seymour:
Yeah. Writing superpower. Do you have one? [David laughing]

David Maraniss:
I think if I have a superpower, it is what I said, which is, for some reason, I don’t get writer’s block. I love to write as long as I have the material. And, you know, I was trained as a newspaper guy, so I love to write on deadline. I mean, you know, even though I mostly just write books now, I came back this year to the “Post” to cover both conventions. And I came up with my own ideas, and what, you know. They wanted me to write a story about Bill Clinton ’cause I’d written the biography of him. I said, “No, I’m sick of Clinton. I don’t really want to write about it again.” But then I was in Chicago, and it was one beautiful morning, and I was sitting down by the Chicago River on an Adirondack chair, just chilling after a long night. And the lead of a story about Clinton came to me. So that’s my superpower. Things come to me in my subconscious. Often I’ll resolve issues of writing in my sleep. This time, I was just sitting there looking at the river and a lead came to me because it was a sunny morning, and I was thinking about, you know, Clinton as an old lion lounging in the sun, you know, and that’s sort of where he is now in his life. So I wrote the story.

Murv Seymour:
Yeah. What are your thoughts about AI and how it’s affecting writing?

David Maraniss:
Oh, gosh. Well, you know, I also teach at Vanderbilt a political biography course every other year. And I’m worried about AI for a lot of reasons. One is on the internet now, the first search thing will be something generated by AI. You know, if you want to search any of the subjects that I write about, AI will come up first. Secondly, so it’s… You know, I don’t really like anything about it, except that I think that AI, for some purposes, like for medicine and science might be incredibly helpful. But for writing, man, no, no thanks.

Murv Seymour:
Yeah, and do you think, like, we’re just staring at our phones too much, and that sort of thing to, does that have an impact on storytelling, and people’s ability to tell stories?

David Maraniss:
Certainly. Well, it has an impact on how they tell stories, and on the patience of people. You know, everybody wants something in little tidbits now, whether it’s TikTok, or whatever. But I don’t know, I don’t think you can stop that.

Murv Seymour:
Are you doing any of that, David? Are you out there TikToking it?

David Maraniss:
I don’t TikTok. I keep trying to get off of X, Twitter because of my distaste for the owner of that particular social media. But it’s a good place to curate news. And so I don’t post there much, but…

Murv Seymour:
Yeah.

David Maraniss:
And Facebook, I’m on, and that’s a largely benign way to keep in contact with friends and people. But my wife would say, “Get off the damn phone.”

Murv Seymour:
And get to writing? [David laughing]

David Maraniss:
Or talk to her. So, yeah, I mean, I think that addiction is universal, and, you know, not so great.

Murv Seymour:
Yeah. I was going to ask you about your maturity as a writer in terms of how do you think you’ve evolved over the years? How have you changed as a writer over the years? And are you still evolving?

David Maraniss:
I hope so. I mean, I want to evolve, you know, constantly. I mean, the more you read, the more… And then the more you know in life, the richer your understanding of the human experience is. So I think that both in terms of the knowledge base and the writing, I think, you know, I mean, I look at some of my early journalism and wince, but I look at my first book, the biography of Bill Clinton, and don’t wince. So I don’t know. You know, I think by the, I was in my mid-40s when I wrote my first book. I had learned all of the fundamentals. I knew what I was doing, and I was ready for it. I always sort of compare that with Vince Lombardi, you know, who talks about freedom through discipline. And he was in the vineyards for 20 years before he got his shot to be a head coach in little Green Bay. And he was ready. And he was brilliant, you know, for that short period of time, 10 years in Green Bay. So I felt that I’d spent enough time learning the fundamentals that I had the freedom from then on to do what I wanted.

Murv Seymour:
What have you learned about yourself from writing about the people who you’ve written about?

David Maraniss:
Well, I’d say, you know, one way I can answer that is when I was writing the biographies of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama in particular, there was a lot of mythology built up around them that they had propagated largely because they’d heard it from their parents and grandparents and so on, and that’s what we all do. And it was only after sort of studying that that I decided there’s probably a lot of mythology around my own family, and that’s when I went back to do the story on my father. And in doing that story about my father, I understood more about myself. I understood what my motivations were. I mean, my dad, you know, was hounded by the House Un-American Activities Committee. The head of that committee was a racist from Georgia. My father had been the commander of an all-Black unit in World War II. He had a very deep sense of racial justice, and he inculcated that in his children. And so I sort of had a deeper understanding of why I am the way I am through that story.

Murv Seymour:
Yeah; now, have you ever had to step away from a story ’cause you got too close, or you had to remove yourself because you couldn’t be impartial, that sort of thing?

David Maraniss:
I’m starting to feel that way right now. I don’t think I could write directly about Donald Trump because of that.

Murv Seymour:
Because of your own political beliefs? Or just…

David Maraniss:
A combination of my political beliefs and my fears of what will happen to our democracy. I can write about other things around that, but I don’t really want to write about him. I don’t feel that I can do it.

Murv Seymour:
Yeah, and you just step away from that, I guess?

David Maraniss:
I have.

Murv Seymour:
Yeah.

David Maraniss:
Yeah, I mean, I even covered the Republican convention without writing about him, so…

Murv Seymour:
Yeah, and what’s your thoughts on the future? These young folks that are coming up? Are we in good hands? Yes or no?

David Maraniss:
Yes, definitely. I love this generation. I mean, I have two granddaughters who are, one’s in college, and one’s a junior in high school, and they’re fabulous. And they’re smarter than we were. They’re more idealistic, more committed. And, you know, I just, my only concern is the world we left them with, not with them.

Murv Seymour:
Yeah, and what do you tell them when it comes to storytelling, and what they need to focus on?

David Maraniss:
Just what I tell everybody else. You know, tell the story and search for the truth.

Murv Seymour:
Yeah. David Maraniss, thank you for joining us on “In Focus” today.

David Maraniss:
Great to talk with you, Murv.