Interview: Steve Martin

How Steve Martin transitioned from comedy to writing, and how celebrity affected his day-to-day life:

SM: You know, there’s a moment when you’re famous when it’s unbearable to go out because you’re too famous. And then there’s a moment when you’re famous just right. [Laughs] And then there’s kind of a respect or distance or something, but you have a little bit more grease.

BLVR: When did the “just right” occur for you?

SM: I would say mid-eighties. There’s a kind of heat fever that just dissipates. You’re not someone who’s constantly being followed.

Source: The Believer
Published: May 1, 2005
Length: 19 minutes (4,776 words)

Destroy All Monsters

What may remain obscure, even now, is why people would choose to play D&D, all night, night after night, for years.[4] Why intelligent human beings would find the actions of imaginary fighters, thieves, dwarves, elves, etc., as they move through a space that exists only notionally, and consists more often than not of dimly lit corridors, ruined halls, and big, damp caves, more compelling than books or movies or television, or sleep, or social acceptance, or sex. In short, what’s so great about Dungeons & Dragons?

Source: The Believer
Published: Sep 1, 2006
Length: 52 minutes (13,186 words)

Funworld: The Business of Writing About the Business of Roller Coasters

I answered an ad that asked, “Like amusement parks? Want to write about them?” and was called for an interview. Bill, editor-in-chief of Funworld, was enthusiastic about the magazine, the amusement industry, and, particularly, Funworld’s new computers—he called them machines—which were apparently very fast. When the interview was over, he told me the job was mine if I was interested. I was. At the time I knew almost nothing about amusement parks and attractions. Publications assistant was the sort of entry-level position that would give me a chance to learn. I’d file contracts and send copies of Funworld to anybody who requested them. I’d edit articles that no one else wanted to edit, like the twenty-six-page case study on the effects of G-forces on roller-coaster passengers (negligible), which had awaited revision for two years. And the article about shuttle coasters, which began with the sentence “Whooooooosh!”

Source: The Believer
Published: Nov 1, 2004
Length: 31 minutes (7,890 words)

Invasion of the Minnesota Normals

An anxious hush fell over the room as the exams were passed out. Within minutes, however, the silence was breached by a stir of astonishment. “People were looking around at each other with this expression of ‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’” Staples recalls. The questions in front of them had nothing to do with renting furniture, or managing employees, or keeping the books. “My sex life is satisfactory.” “I have diarrhea once a month or more.” “I would like to be a florist.” “Everything tastes the same.” “My mother was a good woman.” “I am a special agent of God.”

Source: The Believer
Published: Aug 1, 2004
Length: 30 minutes (7,523 words)

Interview with Trey Anastasio

“Today what I do is—I do this every night we play—I have a little quiet moment where I picture some guy having a fight with his girlfriend, getting into his car—the battery’s dead—then he gets to the parking lot and it’s full. Meets up with his friends. Comes into the show. I try to picture this one person having their own experience, and I picture them way in the back of the room. And I try to remember how insignificant my experience is, and how people’s experiences with music are their own thing.”

Source: The Believer
Published: Jul 1, 2011
Length: 24 minutes (6,012 words)

The Molecatcher’s Daughter

James Curtis was part of the first generation of reporters to work what we now think of as the crime beat. Of course, criminal proceedings had always held a fascination for readers: ever since the 1600s there’d been a roaring market in broadsheets that relished the details of a crime and a malefactor’s bloody end, usually with a crude accompanying woodcut showing them dangling from a gallows.

Source: The Believer
Published: Nov 1, 2006
Length: 40 minutes (10,128 words)

The Race That Is Not About Winning

I say “he” because my subject is the specific kind of boy who takes up running, and he is very different from the girl who is his counterpart. This boy, whom I know well, is just not good at any other sport. He may have tried baseball, but could not throw; he may have tried soccer, but could not kick. He is not coordinated or strong or big. So he runs. No American eight-year-old thinks it would be cool to be a distance runner someday. If he becomes one, it is not the realization of a dream, but the acceptance of reality.

Source: The Believer
Published: Mar 28, 2011
Length: 14 minutes (3,721 words)

Gary Francione, Animal Advocate

“We all condemn Michael Vick for sitting around a pit and watching dogs fight because he derives pleasure from doing so. The rest of us sit around the barbecue pit and roast the bodies of animals who have been tortured as badly as—if not worse than—Vick’s fighting dogs, because we enjoy the taste. That’s moral schizophrenia. We treat some animals as members of our family, and we stick forks into other animals who are no different from our nonhuman family members. That’s moral schizophrenia”.

Source: The Believer
Published: Feb 1, 2011
Length: 15 minutes (3,975 words)

Like Cormac McCarthy, But Funny

Charles Portis, author of True Grit, got John Wayne his only Oscar. He once had Karl Marx’s old gig (as the London bureau chief for the New York Herald-Tribune). He’s written four other novels, three of them masterpieces, though which three is up for debate. Here’s 7,000 words about a guy you’ve never heard of. But should, we say.

Author: Ed Park
Source: The Believer
Published: Mar 1, 2003
Length: 26 minutes (6,711 words)

Barry Hannah in Conversation with Wells Tower

“Barry Hannah is America’s greatest living writer” is something I started saying when I first read Hannah’s work in the late 1990s. I’m sad I had to stop saying it on March 1 of this year, when Barry passed away. … “HANNAH: The alcohol had the code and mystery about it as a writer’s drug, but I’m glad that’s been debunked. But the trouble with the drinking, much as I hate to admit it, is it helped the work. The first two drinks were always wonderfully liberating. You think better. You’re braver, and you’ll say anything. If you could just hang in there with two or three, it’d be beautiful. The trouble was I couldn’t.”

Source: The Believer
Published: Oct 1, 2010
Length: 17 minutes (4,488 words)