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Susan Orlean has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1992. There, she’s published a plethora of in-depth features and profiles on subjects you didn’t know would fascinate you, until her boundless curiosity pins you to the page.
Orlean is the author of eight books. Most recently, she’s published a memoir, Joyride, in which she goes behind the scenes of her books and magazine articles to tell us the stories behind how they came to be. (It’s a five-star read worth your time.) She recently sat down with Brendan O’Meara, host of the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, to talk about the surprising reader response she’s seen to Joyride, the importance of resilience and curiosity, and what she views as her mission as a writer.
This conversation was lightly edited for pacing and flow.
—Krista Stevens
Brendan: Your new memoir, Joyride, has been out for a little while now. What’s surprised you most about how readers have responded?
Susan: It’s really been interesting how many nonwriters have responded to it. It certainly is a book that I assumed writers would most respond to, but it’s been really interesting to see that it’s much more. It can be applied to many different lives in a way that I hadn’t expected, and that’s really been great. I think a lot of the response has been to the idea of resilience, of making your own way and bouncing back when discouragement has been there, and that’s a universal that doesn’t require being a writer to respond to. I’ve definitely had people react to that aspect of the book.
Brendan: Yeah, and something that stuck out to me, just in previous conversations we’ve had, and certainly in Joyride, is that you primarily refer to yourself as a writer, but rarely a journalist or a reporter. Where is the identity for you?
Susan: That’s a tough one. On one hand, I feel like it’s sort of almost irrelevant. It’s just a title that you pick. I certainly am a journalist, technically speaking. I’m writing factual stories about the real world, and I guess if you were to define journalism, you would say that that is one definition of it. Am I a reporter? Absolutely. I consider reporting to be 50% of what my job entails, but I think the title that I gravitate toward more is writer, because being a journalist, being a reporter, those seem like the tools and the outcome is the writing, and so to me that is a more holistic description of what I do.
Brendan: The Colin Duffy piece is something that you talk about early in Joyride. [Ed: “The American Man at Age 10” is reprinted in its entirety in the memoir’s appendix.] There are writers who have a story they’re known for. For example, Gay Talese is associated with “Frank Sinatra as a Cold.” Tom Junod is known for “The Falling Man.” Would you say that “The American Man at Age 10” is this story that people most associate with you?
Susan: “American Man?” Yes, I would say—which is funny—because it’s one of the few pieces I didn’t do for The New Yorker, but that was just a coincidence of timing and so forth. That’s why I really highlighted it in the book, because I know that people associate me with it. It’s in the syllabus of many journalism classes and many nonfiction classes, so I know people read it as part of their education. It’s been included in collections, so that has further expanded its exposure, but I think it exemplifies what I try to do with my work, which is to take something quite ordinary and elevate it in a way that you wouldn’t have considered, so in that sense that story is a perfect example of what I think I do as a writer.
Brendan: Over your career, you’ve worked with several editors, or “heads of state” at The New Yorker, be it Tina Brown or David Remnick. Who have you gelled with the most in your arc at The New Yorker?
Susan: I’ve had really good relationships. I’ve been there under three different regimes, which is now sort of remarkable, because people at The New Yorker run it for a long time, as a rule. I started in the [Robert] Gottlieb era, and there are not many of us around at this point who started when he was running it. I’ve had a really different relationship with each of them, and luckily, very good. The single most important thing in each of the three editors in chief that I’ve worked for is that they’ve trusted me, and they’ve trusted me when I’ve come to them with a story that didn’t sound initially all that promising, and they’ve said, all right, you’re passionate about it, give it a shot, and that’s been true for all of them, even in the case of Tina Brown, because that’s not the way she normally works. She tends to prefer controlling the story ideas, and assigning people stories, but she was comfortable enough to say, “Oh, trust your instinct if you think this is a good idea.”
Brendan: Yeah, and she would say that this is going to take an extraordinary feat of writing to pull this idea off. So then the ball’s in your lap, and so you’ve got to write this thing somehow.
Susan: Right? And we would talk about the fact that these stories—and maybe that’s why I gravitate to the term writer, as opposed to reporter—are very much crafted pieces of work. It requires a real commitment to the idea that this is an important story, even when it’s something very slight. The reader is relying on the writer a lot more in that case to say, okay, show me why I should care about a 10-year-old boy, show me why I should care about a guy who invented an umbrella. I mean, my life was full before I read this story, so why is this something I should spend my time on? That requires the writer to be much more dominant in the role of storyteller.
I think it kind of exemplifies what I try to do with my work, which is to take something quite ordinary and elevate it in a way that you wouldn’t have considered, so in that sense that story is a perfect example of what I think I do as a writer.
Brendan: You write early in chapter one of Joyride, like: I picture a battle unfolding in those first sentences between me and the reader, me waving my hands and insisting the piece is worth reading, and the reader grumpily resisting.
Susan: Yeah, and I think that, while that may sound dramatic, I feel that absolutely, that I’m in the position of saying “No, no, give me a minute, give me a sentence, let me read one more sentence. I promise I’m going to make this worth your while!” And you know, I’ve had so many people over the years say to me, oh, I never thought I’d read a book about orchids, I never thought I’d read a story about a 10-year-old kid. I totally understand why you didn’t think you would read this story. I have become convinced this is a story you should read, and I’m willing to argue with you about why you should read it, and that requires me paying off that investment you’re willing to make.
Brendan: In the introduction to Joyride, you say that writing is a job, but for me it’s always felt like a mission, so in what ways has it felt like a mission for you?
Susan: I think at the bottom of what motivates me is a very optimistic, very joyful commitment to the idea that the more you learn of the world the better, whether it’s subjects that disturb you, something that surprises you, delights you. Learning about the world is a net positive, and my sense of most of us, is that we tend to draw the boundaries of our lives closer and closer as we age, or that natural human tendency, which is, if it’s not familiar to me, I don’t want to learn about it. If it’s not familiar to me, I don’t want to be exposed to it. Or I already have my opinion, I don’t need to learn about this thing. And I have the exact opposite feeling, which is, life is all about learning. I’m not trying to change your mind about the subject. I’m fine if you continue to feel that children’s beauty pageants are not a good thing, but isn’t it better to learn about them? Then you can have your opinion and feel that you’ve earned your opinion, and you’re coming to it aware of what you’re talking about. That learning is absolute in its value. My impulse is to say, “I’m going to go out and learn about the world, and then teach you what I’ve learned, and that that has its absolute value, and it really does feel like a mission to say to people, the more you open yourself up to learning about the world, the better it is.” You’re here living on Planet Earth, and the more you know, and the more you’re exposed to, the better.
Brendan: For sure. It’s like the growth plates of our brain ossify, and now that the algorithm feeds us things that reinforce our worldview and opinions, it’s almost more incumbent upon the meaning makers to go out and find these things and create the empathy we need to learn about the world through these stories.
Susan: Well, that’s really well said. I think that if there’s one human characteristic that is always a positive, that is curiosity, and I believe that curiosity is a form of compassion. It’s a way of saying, I care about the people and things and animals and plants and circumstances that I co-inhabit the world with. I don’t have to like them all, I don’t have to sympathize with them all, but I have to have a fundamental compassion, which is expressed in saying, let me learn about you. It becomes easier and easier to say, here’s my slice of life, and I don’t really need to know anything beyond that. But I would argue that you do, and that your life is always better for it. That’s my mission. You don’t have to be the one to go to the children’s beauty pageants, but I’m willing to go on your behalf and tell you what I found. You don’t have to go to the far ends of the earth, but I’m willing to do that for you, and tell you what I found. And this is the basic construct of storytelling. Not everybody anoints themselves a storyteller, but those of us who do are saying to the rest of the public I’m taking on this task of learning about the world and then sharing it with you, because not everyone has the time or desire means of doing so. That way, you can share in the consumption of the world more fully.
Listen to the full conversation below.
