The Chronicle of Higher Education recently posted a fascinating interview with two-time Pulitzer Prize winner T.J. Stiles, the biographer of Jesse James, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and George Armstrong Custer. The entire interview is well worth reading, but here are some excerpts especially helpful to lawyers and legal acdemics:
Why narrative history?
Stiles: Narrative begins with the intent to make the reader want to keep reading. That requires plot. In The Art of Fiction, David Lodge defines plot as raising questions in the mind of the reader and delaying the answers.
Academic writing usually lays out the questions and the answers at the outset, then proceeds to demonstrate. Again, that’s fine for its purpose. But it strands a reader alone, without the happy company of mystery and suspense, the crew who sail every plot forward.
Narrative generally centers on characters. Scholarship is concerned with the conditions of humans; literature is concerned with the human condition. Serious nonfiction narrative can be concerned with both, but it’s hard to pull off without individuals who have intentions, carry out actions, and face consequences.
There are other aspects of writing narrative, and of incorporating argument and interpretation, but we always begin with plot and character.
As to why, it’s that narrative is inherently part of the historical enterprise, thanks to the element of time. It’s one reason why many academic historians turn out to be very good writers. By centering on human beings, narrative adds a quality of understanding — a glimpse of the human condition, that central concern of literature. And history has always been considered a branch of literature. There’s no Pulitzer Prize for sociology, after all.
Stiles is an "independent scholar," meaning that he does not have an academic appointment although the rigor of his research would certainly justify one. Here is what he says about that:
You opted out of academe but have managed to make a life as an independent scholar. What advice do you have for folks who want to do that?
Stiles: Get a day job. Not too demanding, with benefits. Even after two Pulitzers, I am in a constant and stressful search for money to keep my work going.
In other words, professors should all be deeply grateful for their jobs.
Finally, here are some of his tips for writing narrative:
- Write the kind of book you enjoy reading. If you’re not a part of your own audience, you’ll be faking it. Readers are like children: They can always tell when adults are faking it.
- The reader must have a sense at all times that you are going someplace — that you will make revelations, that there will be results, that questions will be answered.
- Everything must serve to advance the story. Contextual material must be part of the propulsion mechanism. Of course, new arguments and research give significance to a book, but you must use them to make the story more compelling. Jill Leovy’s book Ghettoside, for example, is about the investigation and prosecution of murder in urban America, told through a specific case. She deftly uses the narrative to advance the argument and, in turn, uses the contextual information to heighten the suspense.
- Vary pace and point of view, though with care.
- In most cases, you are writing about human beings. Think of them as characters — complicated, contradictory, with needs and desires and agendas. The American historian, Debby Applegate, who won a Pulitzer for her biography of Henry Ward Beecher, says she likes to make the reader first care about her subjects, then worry about them. When they’re not so likable, make the reader interested in the characters, then wonder about them (e.g., How the hell will he get out of this disaster he created for himself?).
- Kill every cliché.
- Read your work aloud. You’ll catch a lot that you’ll otherwise miss.