Columbia journalism review. The wave runner at the New York Times says he writes winningly about his regrets and evokes the magazine world payday of lavishv offices, drink in the evening and hedonism. Nism. Mcdonnell, the accidental life is the saddest fact of the team from the. He help when an amazon i spoke alloys and 2610. Please give a warm stefania oldschool welcome to terry mcdonell. [applause] thank you. This is my first boat. I cant imagine a better place to be right now in this Beautiful Church in this fine, fine city. My book is about writers and their work and working with them. It is an editors notes on writing and writers in the subhead. When i am honest about this book, and i say that out of a a kind of vanity, i want to show myself as a writer. I thought the best way to dote t that with the too bright about the great writers that i edited and what i learned editing them. Not just about writing, but thet writing life. Dating site couch and salts attacked about being a fighter pilot, but he loves play touch the wall and he kept meticulous records of these meaningless the all games, and these meaningless pickup games, but they became so not our fun of course and how he and Peter Mathieson would dive into the freezing serve on the first day of november every year and have i. C. E. Martinis on the each with their lives. I wrote about how jim harrison used to hang up on me when we were working on the phone over editing this i had made. Hang up relentlessly on me. But how mostly we talked about what he was going to make for dinner where he would write about the last 12 course meal he had with mario vitali. He was a great admirer of his beard i read about working with p. J. Orourke, which was like a window for anthropology field notes. This reporting was so intricate. Richard price would rip like many cruise when he was pitching movies or tv shows like we sometimes set together. But in the end, it was all practice for his novels. Tom huang used to call it having a long reach, which in his case may be nominated for a National Book award in fiction the same year that he won the team roping at the small rodeo in montana. So the book is full of stories like that. There are also the 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 you are making magazine says these to say or websites or swimsuit issues as i did for 10 years. Hoe and the things that you learn in those exercises, like if you can rewrite headlines on deadline, if you can get good at that, it is a kick like this looney tunes characters who produced a stick of dynamite from behind their back. Nothing more fun than that. One tool that i use in the book as i left at the top of each chapter enough to word count so you know how many words are in that chapter. I did this because when i was an editor i always wanted to know how much it is going to read. O this allowed me to judge the pacing of the peace or the lack of peace and that helped me evaluate how the piece moved. Re i am told by people who read the book that i liked it, and but i would add right now that in the spirit of transparency, im going to speak for probably another 22 minutes. [laughter] back to the writers. They found out that i edited this way. It spooked them a little. They were all very tuned to length, even if they were being paid by the word, which some of them of courseware. And all the magazines that i edited, director tenet then. Rolling stone, esquire, outside newspeak at all, feature stories were assigned at a verys specific links coming usually 4000 words. Almost every writer would come in over 5000 words and say they were aware. A few others would come in under three and say the same thing. It was always mysterious to me why being direct it by the number of words they were finding it difficult. In the end im sure it had more to do with alchemy than with a lack of discipline. You remember that before microsoft word county your words if you are a writer could be very refreshing. It is like stopping to make a cup of tea or smoke a cigarette. Now, doing the word count can have a slot machine kick to it if you have the discipline, not to do that every time you can save. This is meaningless to me because i work in google talk spirit they think you will knowb what im talking about there. The point though is none of this matters if the piece is good. And that is determined by voice and narrative, never failing. Go in august by ambitious and more fun. This was true of lengthy pieces before they became creative nonfiction or journalism and it is true now that we finally debunked the web notion that will read anything longer than new skype so. But i also know that the best pieces seem to find their own links to match the alchemy. I wrote about that alchemy for many, many different aim rules in this book. For example, writing for many. The Media Business in general and specifically. More specifically what is happening to the Media Business from the crest of the nature analysts and get this is like the 70s. Writers like Norman Mailer and tom wolf, all three of them laid edited briefly, to the recent Digital Innovations like media lab at m. I. T. Which now offers a class in journalism as an engineering problem which is brilliant. T. But anyway, that is the timeline. T that timeline is the arc of my career in the arc of the book, too. But at its heart, this book is really about writers who becameb friends. Me its about that, too. Im speaking here about pakistan and sulzer and harrison and david carr and most especially Hunter Thompson and George Clinton who shared an unlikely begindoublequote friendship. I want to tell you about that. In the beginning, i would think that to edit them well i had to be somehow its interesting to them if they were to me. As if. But i recognize that is how hunter and george both work. Whether its but a hells angelsg commit Detroit Lions or politicians or circus midgets or whoever they were writing about. George of course invited everyone to his partys beard hunter and the other hand wrotee careful holy areas letters to his biggest subjects. Mohammed told the summit will claim. Very obvious. But then i also found it just paid hunter more money made the more interesting to him. With george with george, it had more to do with being a good audience. I remember once it was dusk and jordan and i were watching a wrench road in eastern new mexico. According to george, we weremexo hurting. We were on the track of the illicit or wind howl who lives in prairie dog coals. We were going about this in the deeply syllabi straight that allows you to bring your glass of wine or whatever on your expedition. In georges case it was always do worse with a little water. We had seen the owls, but he had pointed out a bat or two for the Second String from the ground, pulled his white tshirt over his head, phone it in the air. He shouted excluding the name of the bats as the shared peeking perhaps 20 feet per half a dozen, maybe 20 bats. Or 20 ba they tracked it to the ground like the dive bombers they are, squeaking their bat squeaks. A second road doubled the number of bad and so on until i lost count and was almost gone. The trip george explained pulling the tshirt over his head was to give these that something that but come floating up under solaris. Food. Like the gargantuan moth he said taking a set. It was predictable of george to pull Something Like that expertise out of no where because of course it wasnt out of nowhere at all. When george was 14, he spent his summer hunting bats inise out california, sierra, nevada and donating the specimens tends to. Museums. This was a kind of summer job that you had if you had George Clinton. Listening to his stories, bites as a teenage bat hunter was like listening to the adventures of a young prince. But it wasnt his privilege distract you. It was his curiosity always. Georgias questions were like trampolines. The technology he admired it away. They bounce you hire to the next question. This was particularly true when he was talking about writers and writing. Did you know that the great camus said old for the Football Club he asked me once we were walking past an algerian restaurant near 72nd street where he lived. I said i was unaware. Alas, george sighed. It was never moved to write about it. Imagine the existential goalkeeper. Alas i said and he gave me a look. But it was never a question forn george. What to do next is the question although existential imaginings were at the heart of all of his magazine pieces especially. He would develop innate yet and ideas, but would it be like and then find a way to put himself into the action. I asked if he had considered a communist soccer goalie. He had of course, that he had already read about guarding the hockey net for the boston bruins. So i said, are you going to write a memoir . I was dating him a little. A i knew several publishers interested in it offered in more than a Million Dollars for this. I dont want to write about my life church said. Thats what she do not. Shouldnt that be enough. That memoir came up all the time. People were always asking when he was going to write one. Just thinking about it or condemn. W he said its not vanity. They wound up having to do it for money, so be it, not yet. The publisher was that george knew everybody. Any less would be incomplete. Sinatra. Incomple late night drinking covert. Who have not offered church the editorship of playboy numerous times. Jacqueline kennedy. Umerous georges brothers said he dated her. Warren beatty would call, scream into the phone, is this the man has never tasted in all that . Lauren, is that you . It was a small inside joke like george had with everyone. No one ever knew what it was about. But no matter who you were, if you had george adjust to the same party, and his manners pulled u. N. Ami chief has somehow come to roll and maybe even in a time of the secrets. S he had a way of bowing his head split the money shipyard and when he met you, which was subtle, but very, very flattering. This happened all that because george met so many people. He couldnt remember names. But then that didnt matter. Theres the great man church as they see someone approaching him at a party he had met before but whose name he could not afford. Theres the great man. Of course theres the great bid was also how george wants greeted a kid delivering pizza. So we went down a lot. We went to the parties and sporting events at the guarded for all the security guys they george. Mostly we went to dinner. Macaroni and cheese he littered relentlessly. Of course there are the parties at his house, too. This is is the ed send mainebased noncelebrity splinters right instead to in the 60s and 70s, that the parties were crowded with goodlooking accomplished people. At least the kids working downstairs where goodlooking. Unbeknownst to george, the young woman were having a contest to see who could write the shortest skirt and get georges attention. George was always looking foroog expeditions. He had a scheme in christmas of 98 we were going to go green hunting elements. Oldfashioned hans, except we were going to use tranquilizers because we were going to tag elements or research. Hunter thompson would come, too. But all celebrate new years. We plan to play in this, but we never made a trip. We did however make many othersv involving hunter who as i said earlier shared this unlikely but infallible friendship with george. This was directly related to how they both felt more and more trapped by personas they had created for themselves, that theyre writing had made into the architecture of their success. So because of this in 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 france or to zaire to cover the opiate farming fight, thera socalled rumble in the jungle by kidney and 74. They received mates. George remembered that hunter was worried about not gettingorr paid her a lecture he delivered where hed run amok on what turkey. Hunter said very clearly she and george had compared boxing that like the professionals they wear. George remembered that hunter was talking about secret weapons, huge torpedoes constructed in the congo. Remember george e. Promoted as prince of the realm. George would remember and say that while he embarked on a week of serious root for name, hunter small cash in the hotel pool and wound up missing the site. Know what i remember is mohammed ali was extremely interested in both of them. So back in the states they talked about each other as if they were old friends which was easy because they have so much in common. For example, in their career establishing books, paper lion and half angels are published within months of each other over 96, 97. Both praise for immersive reporting an original voice. Hunter about what he called the wild power of the language in purity of madness that governs and yet makes its music. George would shrug and play the piano in short weeks when he was writing. They were the same height. Close to 6for. They loved drinking, but never wanted. Within, sports and they were evenly matched. George is a better athlete. Hunter was stronger. There is very competitive. At that point in 1989, george and i decided to visit hunterph after he sent me a photo of himself sinking a 40foot putt at the golf club and ask them. He sighed across the image and on the back there was a message does that come out and play golf sometime in the bid plus. Bring george. Another big plus. And money. I will be those of you like mules. So i had visited his form before and told george that this distractions, but we arrived hopeful about connected missions. My my plan was to get hunter to read the first issue of the magazine i was writing called smart. George was there to interview hunter for what he planned to be the first interview in the art of the journalism series for the paris review. Ive been hunter. But first we have to play golf. Acid caused to be more specific. Im going to read a little more here. This is the first evening in thv dying light of the aspen golfgolf club which was close. Hunter waved to a guy in the pro shop who brought us a bucket of and hunter had a 12 gauge shotgun in his bag. We had high make ends in a cooler. If it did show this, affect of jose cuervo, jurors for george and an extra cooler of i. C. E. And dear hunter said holding out freeway tubbs applauded papers that im familiar with symbol on them. Bbs. Put it on his tongue, stuck his tongue out at us. I took my tab, did the same. When george said he wanted to concentrate on its golf, he liked that and said last of the batch. I will tell you that george i would try anything, but he was also covered very, very serious about his work in this interview was important. So he was working here. But alas. Following his sleep we used thee first is the driving range of sorts to warm up. Hunters swing was explosive and despair drives with solid at all. T george had a fluid swing controls each of his ball successfully further. Ive never played but was not pathetic. Hunter accused me of sandbagging and i said it was time to get serious about the gambling events occur to his favoritete hole, the fort saint. This is a short par three straight shot over a large pond. The asking course is a certified audubons century in the pond was full of peace. He said hunter, youd think church to doing. I said no. We are gambling. Alas, made himself the doers of water. Each of us would hit five in a row off the tee and then proceed to the greens to putt. On their best ball account and we are in for a pass in. George put all five of his ball some agreed. We close enough for birdies. Hunter but three of the wider. Didnt matter. We got to the green, he put to him for birdies. Hunter madison had one left to tie if he could think a 30foot putt like the one hed been theo celebrating in the photo he had sent. He walked back and forth between the ball and the whole several had times. Alnd i was on the other side of the cup holding the flag. It was dark now. At least as dark as it gets an asinine summer night in the sky still had that close. I could barely see hunters ball. George is by the cards make in himself another of water. Silent hunter shouted that i know your tricks. He took at least two minutes lineup this putt and struck quickly and missed by about a foot. Charging after it, he let out a howl and winged his putter into the pond. The key started talking. Hunter turned back to the cart, pulled the 12 gauge, fired overr the keys and they lifted off the pond like a sparkling crowd of grated white feathers. It occurred to me as i watched the glitter blend into the fading sky that having a storyat to tell about acid golf with hunter and george was probably good for my career. But im still not sure about that. In any case, we got to the interview the next afternoon and it went through the night. Finally it ended with george asking hunter about writing under the influence of boos orn drugs, noting that every writer had ever interviewed over all those years have said they could not do that. It wouldnt work. They lie is how hunter began his answer, which ended who do yousw think that the book of revelations a bunch of stonene sober clerics . It was leaving the next afternoon, he pulled me aside and said we need to get george better drugs. It was a great interview and what it was about to appear in the paris review, george sent hunter and advanced copy and we didnt hear anything. Then hunter sent back a page from the bible, revelations is a big black spot on it. You remember, this is just like the page that Long John Silver sent to the dogs to pronouncece him guilty of stealing captain flints treasure for the rest of the pirate. Love my problem was watching that youre less than 200,000 dependent not just a this new Desktop Technology that i was using, but also convincing writers to work for shares in fr the magazine, more or less for free. Their names were the only collateral i had to raise more money and everyone i asked kind on starting with george. Hunter loves the idea of having shares, stock, only slightly less than he hated the idea of working for free. He eventually agreed after george told him it was a solid investment. Anyway, hunter agreed to write a column called the year of the wolf. But no coffee was forthcoming. I complain. He offered patience and encouragement. When a bus but agassi to a japanese investor, i went to esquire. Here at the wolf came with me but was still plagued with deadline misunderstandings asta hunter called them. He would often call in the middle of the night, promising to draft