Why We Write (6 page)

Winning the Pulitzer: dangerous

The attention and approval I’ve been getting for
Goon Squad—
the very public moments of winning the Pulitzer and the other prizes—is exactly the opposite of the very private pleasure of writing. And it’s dangerous. Thinking that I’ll get this kind of
love again, that getting it should be my goal, would lead me to creative decisions that would undermine me and my work. I’ve never sought that approval, which is all the more reason that I don’t want to start now.

I’m curious to find out what influence this will have on my writing. I won’t know until I start another book. A scenario I could easily envision is the following: I start the book, feel it’s not going well, and start to freak. My rational side says, “Let’s get one thing straight. You’re going to hate the next one. The whole world’s going to hate the next one.” I have no idea why this one got so much love.

But part of me thinks, They liked my last book. Hurray. Now we move on. That moving on will undoubtedly involve massive disappointment on the part of others. It never happens this way twice. In a way, I find that sort of freeing. My whole creative endeavor is the repudiation of my last work with the new one. If I start craving approval, trying to replicate what I did with
Goon Squad
, it’s never going to lead to anything good. I know that. Stop getting better? There’s no excuse for that.

I hope I can just start the next novel, engage in that alternate world, enjoy myself, and accept and internalize the expectation that the book will not be perceived as being as good as
Goon Squad
, and who cares. It’s lucky to have a book the world loves this much. Most people never have that experience.

We all have such a tendency to think the present moment will last forever. Maybe when I’m not the flavor of the month anymore I’ll be devastated and shocked, and I’ll forget everything I’m saying this minute. But my hope is that I have the tools to handle it.

I
n January 2006, the world—or at least, Oprah Winfrey’s world—watched as Oprah chastised James Frey, the author of
A Million Little Pieces
, her famous book club’s most recent pick. Oprah accused Frey of having misrepresented himself and several events in the book.

“Did you cling to that image because that’s how you wanted to see yourself?” Oprah asked Frey. “Or did you cling to that image because that would make a better book?”

“Probably both,” Frey replied.

“I feel really duped,” Oprah concluded. “I feel that you betrayed millions of readers.”

The Frey debacle hit the pause button on the memoir genre,
putting many memoirists out of work. Those lucky enough to find publishers were obliged to write what became known as “a Frey disclaimer,” in hopes of avoiding the lawsuits that Frey’s book spawned—one of which forced his publisher to offer a refund to those who had bought a copy.

The investigation continued; new facts emerged. It turned out that Frey had initially shopped his book as a work of fiction. His publisher, seeking greater sales, had positioned it as a true story. Frey had proposed a disclaimer explaining the difference; his request was denied. But 2006 was an American moment rife with deception and outrage. Think Iraq War. Think “weapons of mass destruction.” Think Stephen Colbert’s new noun, “truthiness.” As
New York Times
columnist Maureen Dowd wrote, following Frey’s 2006
Oprah
appearance, “It was a huge relief, after our long national slide into untruth and no consequences, into swiftboating and swift bucks, into W’s delusion and denial, to see the Empress of Empathy icily hold someone accountable for lying.”

Five years later, during
Oprah
’s final season, she invited James Frey onto her show again—twice. “Most writers of memoirs do what I did,” Frey said. “I apologize for my lack of compassion,” Oprah replied. And then the two of them hugged and made up.

Meet James Frey. Judge for yourself. Or better yet, learn from his experience what you can, and don’t judge him at all.

James Frey

Why I write

I’m really not qualified to do anything else. At this point it’s so much a part of my life that I can’t not do it. If I don’t work I go crazy. And frankly, I have a family, and I need the money.

When I was a little boy I loved to get lost in books. I never thought about becoming a writer until I was twenty-one and I read
Tropic of Cancer
. Very few things in my life have spoken to me the way that book did. I had never encountered something that spoke to me so purely and so directly and so profoundly. Half of it was rage and half of it was joy, and it was exactly how I felt about the world.

The only other place I’d seen an articulation so beautiful and so bold was in a Jackson Pollock painting. Those paintings
speak to me the same way because they’re made by an artist who said, “I don’t give a fuck, this is what I do, this is how I’m going to do it, this is what it is. You can love it or hate it. This is not about you.”

I was like, That’s what I’m going to do. And six months later I moved to Paris because
Tropic of Cancer
was about Henry Miller living there. Moving to Paris was about searching and looking and living and trying to become a writer and trying to figure out what that meant, if it was even possible. To live boldly, recklessly, stupidly, and beautifully.

The historical impulse

I try to write books I wish other people had written, books I wish I’d read. People always say I’m arrogant when I talk about this, but I think I’m one of the few people who’s honest about what Orwell called “the historical impulse.” I want to write historically important books, books that matter, books that change the world, that change writing and change publishing.

I look over the course of literary history, and I think, yeah, I can place myself—I have the potential to place myself—among these people: the writers I love, the writers who have made history. I want to place myself within the canon.

Certainly a lot of it is ego. To say it’s not is bullshit. I’m competitive about it. I’m sitting at my desk right now, and the only picture on my wall, other than drawings made by my children, is a
Sports Illustrated
cover of Marvelous Marvin Hagler, who was the middleweight boxing champ through the 1980s. The headline is “The Best and the Baddest.” That speaks to me. I want to be the best and the baddest.

Earlier in my career it was about making the mark. Now it’s about trying to deepen the mark and make it permanent. I said it in the first interview I ever gave years ago. I want to be the most widely read, most controversial, most influential writer of my time.

Getting lost

The thing I love most about the act of writing is that I disappear. I get lost in trying to make every word the right word, in trying to tell the story.

When I’m writing I have total control. Nothing’s going on the page unless I put it there. It’s not going to stay there unless I want it to stay there. When you sit down at the machine, you create that world, you live in that world, you control that world, it’s only whatever you want it to be. There’s no time when I’m more content, more at ease, than when it’s just me alone in a room for eight hours.

It took me years to get to that place where I sit down and I know I’m going to write the way I want to write, and it’s going to be good. I don’t write normally. I don’t use standard grammar or punctuation. I don’t do anything right. That’s all deliberate, but it took me a long time to find the confidence to violate every rule that exists.

A lot of the games writers play with themselves, especially young writers, are games of confidence. “Can I do this? Oh, it’s so hard, it’s not coming out the way I want it to come out.” A lot of writers get lost trying to find their way. A lot of writers never find it.

When I sit down at the machine there’s no doubt for me.
When I’m away from it, thinking about it, I have great fears. But when I’m at the computer I always believe I can do what I want to do. It might take me a long time, it might be hard, it might be lonely. But I always believe the book I’m starting is going to be what I want it to be. Why? Because I fucking control it. Once you have that in your life you can’t let it go, ever.

I work a lot in the movies and in TV, and that’s one of the frustrations. You have to have a totally different mind-set, because you’re not in control anymore.

Getting found

After I read
Tropic of Cancer
I kept trying to find a way to write that made sense to me. I couldn’t do it. I kept writing all kinds of crap. Garbage.

Then I sat down and I wrote the first thirty pages of
A Million Little Pieces
in one sitting. It took me about four hours. I’ve never written that fast before or since. After I had that short burst I sat back and looked at what I’d written and I was like, yup, yup.

On the first page of
Tropic of Cancer
, Miller says, “I no longer think I am an artist. I am one.” I saw those thirty pages and I was like, There it is, man, there it is.

Rich beats poor

I’d been poor, and it sucked, and I didn’t want a shit job in a bar or a clothing store. So I started writing movies when I was twenty-five. The end game was always writing books, but there
were plenty of dudes making dough writing bad movies. I thought, I can do that.

I wrote the corniest, most commercial romantic comedy I could, in a pure, mercenary way, and I moved from Chicago to Los Angeles and I sold it. Between twenty-five and thirty-one I was a journeyman screenwriter. I had a job as a writer, but that’s different from being a writer.

After I wrote that little burst of
A Million Little Pieces
, I knew I could do what I wanted to do. I just needed time. I took a second mortgage on my house. I had enough money for eighteen months. It took me about a year to write
A Million Little Pieces
, and then I sold it. And that’s what I’ve been doing since.