Here’s the basically unsolvable problem I have with writing nonfiction.
I have a big, sprawling, way overheated imagination, but you aren’t supposed to make stuff up in nonfiction. Of course, writers do it all the time. If you have any doubts about that, listen to this: There are over two hundred books about William Shakespeare. Here’s the interesting plot twist that Bill Bryson points out in Shakespeare: The World As Stage. Other than the plays that Shakespeare wrote, virtually nothing is known about the Bard. Nothing. And yet there have been all of these scholarly works about Shakespeare’s life. So what are they—fiction?
When I decided to write more nonfiction, I wanted to do it differently than most of the weighty tomes I read and then use as doorstops. I suspect that a lot of people don’t read much nonfiction because so many of these books tell more than we want to know. A whole lot more. Nine hundred fifty-nine pages on Ulysses S. Grant? (Now, I happened to love Ron Chernow’s book on Grant, but for some readers there might be too many facts, too much information, and, maybe, not enough story.)
I wanted to write nonfiction as involving stories. More like fiction. Books that would be hard to put down rather than difficult to finish. Closer to Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken than William Manchester’s The Last Lion.
After I finished Filthy Rich, I started All-American Murder, about the homicidal pro football player Aaron Hernandez. It was another complex, twisted story I couldn’t resist. I even did the on-camera interviews for the special about Hernandez that ran on 48 Hours. I got to work with the great Susan Zirinsky on the project, as well as the talented producer Jamie Stolz.
When I was doing the interviews for 48 Hours, I knew I was supposed to act like Anderson Cooper or Lesley Stahl or Scott Pelley. But I just couldn’t do it.
At one point, I’m up in Boston talking with Ursula Ward, the mother of Odin Lloyd, who was murdered by Hernandez. And as I listened to Ursula’s sad story, I’m crying. I’m crying on camera.
So much for my budding career as a serious, objective TV journalist. And yet Susan Zirinsky said I could work on 48 Hours anytime I needed a little extra cash.
I cowrote The House of Kennedy because I felt the Kennedy saga was the most powerful family story in American history. The Kennedys are America’s royal family. This is America’s Crown, except that several of the Kennedys are more rounded and interesting characters than Queen Elizabeth was in The Crown.
I decided to do The Last Days of John Lennon for a lot of very personal reasons. I was living on Central Park West, just a few blocks from the Dakota, when John Lennon was shot and murdered there. I was part of the crowd that gathered outside the Dakota after Lennon died. The famous photo that my friend Harry Benson took—the grieving crowd in Central Park with someone holding a sign that says WHY?—is hanging right here in my office. Maybe the weirdest thing: our home in Palm Beach is connected by a twenty-foot-long bridge to the house Yoko Ono and John Lennon bought in 1980, the last year of his life.
But most important, I loved Lennon’s music, during and after his time as a Beatle, and the way he tried to use it to make the world a little better place.
Imagine that.
I decided on The Defense Lawyer because I felt Barry Slotnick’s story was wonderfully perverse and controversial but most of all because Slotnick was always honest about his personal beliefs. He defended John Gotti, Joe Colombo, the subway shooter Bernie Goetz—and during one twelve-year stretch in his career, Barry Slotnick never lost a case. As a storyteller, I was in. Barry is a great character who believes that everybody has a right to be represented in court.
So now I’m hooked on writing nonfiction. And I haven’t gone over five hundred pages yet. I just tell stories and I don’t even have to make anything up. Almost seems too easy.