Son of the Morning Star

"This is a historical book, and I chose it for the way Evan Connell handles historical material. With the other writers, I’ve talked about structure and voice and language, but I add Connell to the list because of the way he handles archival material, which is another thing you can do as a narrative nonfiction writer. He writes about Custer and the Battle of Little Bighorn, something deeply entrenched into the American psyche. It’s unique, and a masterful book. The structure of it is just unbelievable. Different voices and perspectives are braided throughout the book. You have Custer’s perspective, the soldiers’ perspective, and the Indian’s perspective – as well as background about the cultures that they came from. And when you read the book, you realise that history is the sum of all these perspectives. He’s not telling us, This is what happened. He’s showing us what different people believe happened. He’s quoting from letters and people who describe the events. So he’s not going into Custer’s head, as if seeing things through his eyes. He’s not fabricating things. That’s not necessary for vivid writing, and this book proves it. He’s able to take all these materials and give us all these perspectives. He spent four years on the research alone. One of reasons why it has developed in the US is not that Americans have any special genius, it’s just that there’s a big market. There are magazines like the New Yorker , the Atlantic and Harper’s , where they can support people doing this kind of research and writing, and there’s also a market for books. The market is a huge factor. Maybe living in China made me an economic determinist, but I think it has a big effect if you can support yourself by writing this kind of nonfiction. So I believe it’s a stronger form in America because of those reasons. England is too small, and Europe is broken up by different languages. There’s always a gap. That’s inevitable. But it’s not useful to obsess about it. I feel like you can be incredibly accurate, which has always been my goal. You can bring these places to life, and you can illuminate worlds that otherwise would be lost. Because Tracy Kidder wrote about that fifth grade school teacher, there are thousands of people who know about this teacher and what she did. If he hadn’t written that book, she wouldn’t exist in a public way. When I look back at [my first book] River Town , as a writer there are a lot of things that I would probably do differently now, and there are some small mistakes that were made unintentionally. But I feel like it’s accurate to what that moment in that place felt like. You have to have faith that you can tell it like it is, and that it will come together in the end."