Anderson. Wed like to extend a special thanks to our literatety members and individual donors who have made and continue to make Saturdays Free festival events possible. Before we get started, theres always housekeeping. Immediately following the presentation, Terry Mcdonnell will be signing festivalpurchased copies of his book in the square. We have a new policy this year. If youre planning to stay for the next author presentation, please move forward into the venue so that the ushers can count the number of Seats Available for people coming in for it. Please, please take a moment to turn off your cell phones, and we also ask that you do not use flash photography. And for the questionandanswer portion of todays session, its a little bit different than its been in years past. Please raise your hands, and an usher will bring a microphone to you. Terry mcdonnell is with us today courtesy of robert and diane levy and bill and nina wheel. Terry mcdonnell has won numerous awards for his editorial work at various magazines and web sites. He also is a novelist and poet and has written and produced for film and television. In 2012 he was inducted into the American Society of magazine editors hall of fame. He is president of the board of the Paris Review Foundation and serves on the board of overseers of the columbia journalism review are. Dwight barner, of the new york times, says that he quote writes winningly about his regrets and evokes the magazine worlds heyday of lavish offices, drink carts in the evening and expense accounts he donism. Mcdonnells the accidental life is a savvy fact from a dean of the old school. Also he won an amazon best book award in 2016. Please give a warm savannah, old School Welcome to Terry Mcdonnell. [applause] [laughter] thank you. This is my first book festival, so [laughter] but i cant imagine a better place to be right now in this beautiful, Beautiful Church in this fine, fine city. My book is about writers and their work and working with them. Its an editors notes on writing and writers, as it says in the subhead. But when im honest about this book, i say that out of a kind of vanity, i wanted to show myself as a writer. And i thought the best way to do that would be to write about the great writers that i edited and what i learned editing them. Not just about writing, but about the writing life. Things like how jim salter never talked about being a fighter pilot, but he loved to play touch football, and he kept meticulous records of these meaningless football games, these meaningless pickup games which made the games a lot more fun, of course. And and and how he and Peter Matheson would dive into the freezing surf on the first day of november every year and have ice martinis on the beach with their wives. [laughter] i have about how jim harrison used to hang up on me when we were working on the phone over editing moves id made, hang up relentlessly on me. [laughter] but how mostly we talked about what he was going to make for dinner, or he would brag about the last 12course meal hed had with mario batali who was a great admirer of his. I read about working with p. J. Orourke which was like going over anthropology field notes, his reporting was so intry candidate and intry candidate. And Richard Price would riff Like Lenny Bruce when he was pitching movies or tv shows like we sometimes did together. But in the end, it was all practice for his novels. Tom aguayne used to call it having a long reach which in his case meant being nominated for a National Book award in fiction the same year he won the team roping at the small rodeo in gardner, montana. So the book is full of stories like that, but there are also interstitial chapters that are about the tricks of editing. Editing is about ideas, of course, but its mechanical as well, and you have to get under the hood, so to speak, if youre making magazines as we used to say or web sites or swim suit issues as i did for ten years. And the things that you learn this those exercises in those exercises, like if you can rewrite headlines on deadline, if you can get good at that, its a kick like those loony tune characters who produce a stick of dynamite from behind their back. Theres nothing more fun than that. One tool that i used in the book is i left at the top of each chapter, i left a word count so you know how many words are in that chapter. [laughter] i did this because when i was an editor, i always wanted to know how much i was going to read. This was, this allowed me to judge the pacing of the piece or the lack of pacing, and it helped me evaluate, you know, how the piece moved. Im told by people who have read the book that they like it that i put those there for their own reasons, but i would add right now that in the spirit of transparency, im going to speak for probably another 22 minutes. [laughter] all right. But back to the writers. They found out that i edited this way, it spooked them a little. Because they were all very attuned to length, even if they werent being paid by the word which some of them, of course, were. At all the magazines that i edited there were 13 of them Rolling Stone,s squire, sports ill streeted, outside newsweek, feature stories were assigned at a very specific length, usually 4,000 words. And almost every writer would come in over 5,000 words and say they were at four. [laughter] a few others would come in under three and say the same thing. [laughter] it was always mysterious to me why being direct about the number of words they were filing was so difficult. But in the end, im sure it had more to do with alchemy than with a lack of discipline. Youll remember that before microsoft word, stopping to count your words if you were a writer could be very refreshing. It was like stopping to make a cup of tea or perhaps smoke a cigarette. Now doing a word count can have, like, a slot machine kick to it if you have the discipline not to do that every time you hit save. S this is meaningless to me now because i work in google docs, but i think you all know what im talking about there. The point though is that none of this matters if the piece is good. And thats determined by voice is and narrative. Never by length. Going long is always more ambitious and usually more fun. This was true of lengthy pieces before they became creative nonfiction or narrative journalism, and it is true now that we finally debunked the simpleminded web notion that no one will screen read thinking longer than a news capsule. But nobody wanted to go short anyway, and neither do i. But i also know that the best pieces seem to find their own lengths, and thats thal can keymy the alchemy. And i wrote about that alchemy from many, many different angles in this book. For example, writing for money, heart. Now offers a class in journalism which is brilliant. Anyway, that is the timeline, the arc of my career and the arc of the book too. But at its heart, this book is really about writers who became friends. Some of the dead, so it is about that too. I am speaking about matheson and harrison and david carr and most especially Hunter Thompson and George Plimpton who shared an unlikely but indelible friendship when i was editing. To edit them well, it has to be as interesting to them as they were to me. That is how hunter and george both work whether it is with the hells angels or Detroit Lions or politicians or circus midgets and whoever they are writing about which hunter on the other hand wrote hilarious letters to the biggest substances, mohammed ali, it is very obvious and paying hunter more money, interesting to him. George having to do with a good audience. It was dusk and jordan driver driving a ranch road in new mexico, they were on the track of the elusive burrowing owl. They went about this in a deeply civilized way, and the after dinner expedition, it was always a little water. We had seen no burrowing owls but george pointeded out a bath or two when he set his drink on the ground, pulled his wifes tshirt over his head, flung it in the air. He shouted, explaining the name of the bats as the shirt, peaking 20 feet through half a dozen or 20 bats and they tracked it to the ground like dive bombers that they are squeaking their little bat squeaks and the second throw doubled the number of bats and so on until i lost count and my life was almost gone. The trick, george explained with his tshirt over his head, was to give these bats something floating on their sonars food, like a gargantuan mark, he said, it was predictable of george to pool Something Like that expertise out of nowhere because it wasnt out of nowhere at all. When george was 14 he had spent his summer hunting bats in california, Sierra Nevada and donating the specimen skins to museums. This was a kind of summer job that you had if you were George Plimpton. Listening to his stories of life as a teenage that hunter was like listening to the adventures of a young prince but it wasnt his privilege that struck you. It was his curiosity. His questions were like trampolines, technology he admired, by the way. They bounced you hire to the next question. This was particularly true when he was talking about writers and writing. Did you know the great camus played golf for the Football Club which he passed near 77th street where he lived. I said i was unaware. Was never moved to write about it. Imagine the existential goalkeeper. Glass. He gave me a look. To be or not to be was never a question for george. What to do next was the question although existential imaginings were at the heart of all his magazines. He would develop an idea or ideas. How to put himself into the action. I asked if he would consider becoming a holy. He had but have already written about guarding the hockey net for the boston bruins. So, i said, are you going to write a memoir . I was bating him a little. I knew several publishers were interested. I dont want to write about my life, he said, but that is what you do now, i said. Well, shouldnt that be enough . That memoir came up all the time. People were asking when he was going to write it and just thinking about it darkened. It smacked of vanity and if he did it for money, so be it, not yet. The lure the was the george knew everybody. Any list would be incomplete. Sinatra, latenight drinking, hugh hefner, offered george the editorship of playboy numerous times, jacqueline kennedy, brothers that george had dated, Warren Beatty would call. Scream into the phone is this a man who has never tasted an olive. Warren, is that you . A small inside joke, no one ever knew what it was about. No matter who you were, if you were with george or at the same party, his manners pulled you in and made you feel comfortable, maybe even in on some of the secrets and he had a shook hands when he met you which was subtle but very flattering. This happened all the time because george met so many people but the only problem is george couldnt remember names, especially mens names but that didnt matter. There is the great man, he would say to someone he could not remember. There is the great man is also how george once greeted a kid delivering pizza. We went out a lot. We went to book parties and sporting events, all the security guys new george, macaroni and cheese, relentlessly and there were the parties at his house too. This was the 80s and 90s. The parties were crowded with goodlooking, accomplished people, kids working downstairs would be looking and unbeknownst to george, the young women were having a contest to see the skirt to see if they could get georges attention. George was looking for expeditions, in christmas of 98, marine hunting elephants with ian douglas hamilton. Except we would use tranquilizers, Hunter Thompson will come too and have a great hunt and ill celebrate new years, we planned and planned this but never made the trip. There were others involving hunter, who shared this unlikely indelible friendship with george, related to how they both felt more and more trapped by the personas they created for themselves that they made into the architecture, their success. The way those things connected, they recognized each other as allies almost immediately although they did not agree on what happened when they first met except it was on the flight from frankfurt to zaire the socalled rumble in the jungle in 1974, they were seatmates. George remembered hunter was worried about not getting paid for a lecture he delivered at duke. Hunter said he and george compared boxing notes like the professionals they were. George remembered hunter was talking about secret weapons, huge torpedoes being constructed by revolutionaries in the congo to disrupt the fight. Hunter remembered george being greeted by don king as a prince of the realm when they landed and george would remember, a week of serious reporting, hunter smoked hash and wound up missing the fight. Now, what i remember is the that ali was extremely interested in both of them. Back in the states they talk about each other as if they were old friends which was easy because they had so which in the common. Their career establishing books and the hells angels, published within months of each other over 9697, both praise for immersive reporting. I am quoting here the wild power of language and purity of madness that governs it and makes it music and george shrugging, played the piano with short breaks. They were the same height, 6 foot 4. And they loved drinking but never wine, and women and sports and they were evenly matched. George was a better athlete, hunter was strong. They were very competitive. At that point, in 1989, george and i decided to visit hunter after he took a photograph of himself at the golf club in aspen. Across the imaged, on the back there is a message. He says come out here and play golf with me sometime and a big plus, bring george, another big plus, and money, i will beat both of you like mules. I had visited before and told george there would be distractions but we arrived hopeful of our connected missions. My plan was to get hunter to write for the first issue of the magazine i was starting called smart. George was there to interview hunter of what he plans to be the first interview in the art of journalism series. Fine, said hunter. First we have to play golf. Acid golf, to be more specific. We read a little bit here. We played the first evening in the dying light of the municipal Aspen Golf Club which is close. Hunter just waved to a guy in the pro shop and hunter had a 12gauge shotgun in his bag and heinekens, a fifth, lines for george and extra cooler of ice. Here, hunter said, holding out tabs of paper with an unfamiliar symbol on them. And stuck his tongue out at us, i took my tab and did the same. When george said he wanted to constant rate hunter licked that tab and said the last of the batch. Just as an aside i will tell you george will try everything but he is also very serious about his work and this interview is important. He is working here. Following their lead we years a driving range of sorts to warm up. Hunters swing with explosive if not smooth and his third drive was solid. George had a fluid swing, broke each of his balls further. I had never played. Hunter accused me of sandbagging. I said it was time to get serious about the gambling, wrote to his favorite bowl, the 14th. This was a short par 3 straight shot over a large par. The aspen course is a Certified Audubon sanctuary and the pond was full of geese. George he likes georges bad trick. No bats, hunter said. We are gambling. Each of us will hit five balls in a row off of the tea and proceed to the pot. Only our best ball would count and we are all in for 1000. George put all five of his balls on the green, three close enough, hunter put three in the water and two on. When we got to the green, george put two balls in the 30s and hunter missed and one ball left to tie if he could think of the 30 foot putt like the one he had been celebrating the photo he had sent and walked back and forth between the ball and the whole several times. I was on the other side with the flag. It was dark now, as dark as it gets in aspen on some nights and the sky, still had that glow, could barely see hunters ball. The ice tinkled in the glass, silence, hunter shouted, i know your tricks. Hunter took two minutes lining up and struck it quickly and missed the part by a foot. And charging after it let out a howl and swung into the pond, the keith started honking. Hunter turned back, pulled the 12gauge, fired over the geese and they lifted off of the pond like a sparkling crowd of gray and white feathers. It occurred to me as i watch the glitter blend into the fading sky that having a story to tell about acid golf was probably good for my career but i am still not sure about that. In any case we got to the interview the next afternoon and it went through the night finally ending with george, hunter, writing under the influence of booze noting that every writer he ever interviewed over all those years said they could not do that, they lie. That is how hunter began his answer which ended the do with who do you think wrote the book of revelations . A bunch of stone sober clerics . When we were leaving the next afternoon hunter took me aside and said we need to get george drunk. It was a great interview. When it was about to appear in the paris review george sent hunter an advanced copy. We didnt hear anything. Hunter sent back a page of the bible, revelations, with a big black spot on it. This is just like the page Long John Silver sent to billy bones in Treasure Island to pronounce him guilty of stealing captain flints treasure from the rest of the pirates. My problem was with less than 200,000 depended not just on the new Desktop Technology i was using but also convincing writers to work for shares in the magazine. More or less for free. Their names were the only collateral i had to raise more money but everyone i asked, starting with george, hunter loved the idea of having shares of stock less than he hated the idea of working for free but he eventually agreed after george told him it was a solid investment, hunter agreed to write a column called the year of the walls, but no copy was worth having. I complained, george advised patients. When i lost smart magazine to a japanese investo