Before turning to narrative nonfiction with “City of Scoundrels” and “The White Cascade,” Gary Krist published three novels and two short-story collections. He has written reviews for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Salon and the Washington Post, and his articles and stories have appeared in National Geographic Traveler, GQ, Esquire and on NPR.
Where do you find inspiration?
Although the world keeps changing, history tends to rhyme, and it’s in those rhyming patterns that I find my inspiration. Few if any situations we encounter today are without precedent in the long experience of humanity, and I think it’s my job as a narrative historian to uncover stories from our past that parallel, or at least speak to, our current condition. It’s always eye-opening—and a little humbling—to realize that we have to learn the same lessons of history over and over again.
What advice do you have for aspiring authors?
Close your browser and open your word-processing program. Tweets and Facebook posts, no matter how well turned, don’t really count as writing—at least not yet… [EDITOR'S NOTE: What about blog posts?]
What are you reading right now?
Most of my reading at any given time is research for my own books, but I do try to save some time each day for extracurricular fiction and nonfiction. Right now I’m reading Gore Vidal’s novel “Hollywood” and Chris Rose’s “1 Dead in Attic” (about post-Katrina New Orleans).
What’s your favorite opening line from a book?
It’s hard to pick just one, but I’ll go with the first line from the 1852 edition of “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds,” Charles MacKay’s classic history of communal folly: “In reading the history of nations, we find that, like individuals, they have their whims and their peculiarities; their seasons of excitement and recklessness, when they care not what they do.” I like MacKay’s idea of nations as prey to the same kinds of irrationality and self-delusion that individuals succumb to. In my research I’ve certainly encountered enough adolescent tantrums and mid-life crises among nations to know he’s probably right.
What book has inspired or affected you in some way?
Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America” gets most of the attention, but for me the most insightful portrait of the American character is James Bryce’s 1888 book, “The American Commonwealth.” Bryce, a British polymath who eventually became England’s ambassador to the U.S., was an amazingly astute and acerbic observer, and an elegant prose stylist as well. It would be hard to imagine understanding American history without his book.
If you could sit down at dinner with three other authors, living or dead, which three authors would you choose, and why?
Jonathan Swift, Mark Twain, and Evelyn Waugh, because I’ve found that those with the grimmest view of human nature tend to make the most entertaining dinner companions.
