Stranger than fiction: Q&A with David Grann

With the first big New Yorker event kicking off with tonight’s keynote address, I thought it about time we talked with regular
contributor and author of The Devil and Sherlock Holmes, David Grann on the trials and tribulations of writing nonfiction.

For those hanging on my every word, you’ll remember I reviewed David’s first book The Lost City of Z in a previous post.

In your latest book The Devil and Sherlock Holmes you tackle a collection of ‘fantastical’ true-to-life mysteries, many of which could easily qualify as fiction. What attracts you to the challenge of nonfiction writing?

I’m drawn to non-fiction because of its very nature—its quest to understand some hidden truth about characters or events. Many of the characters I write about are fabulists or imposters, but the crux of reporting is to separate facts from fiction. To me, the most interesting stories are those that may seem fantastical but are true.

The quote from Holmes “Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent.” has been used to describe the theme of the book. With advancements in modern technology bridging time and space between cultures and evaporating mysteries of the past, do you believe this sentiment will always ring true?

I do. Technology can never resolve the riddle of the human condition.

Have you ever had a situation where the truth eluded you such that you couldn’t complete a particular story?

That’s a great question. None of us have the powers of Sherlock Holmes. We cannot see everything and understand everything. There are details that elude me in any story I do. Yet rather than undermine a story I think these gaps, these doubts, can also deepen a story. It shows the way the world really is. And so instead of abandoning a story I try to incorporate that incompleteness into the narrative. Which is why many of the mysteries I write about end with a smidgen of doubt.

Through electronic distribution your writing (both in novel form and journalistic) has more global reach and exposure than ever before. How has your ‘ideal reader’ changed over time?

To me, the ideal reader is anyone who reads, who engages with a text. Technology hasn’t changed that. Yet it allows writers to reach more of them. And technological advancements have also enabled a reporter to no longer be as confined by geography and to find stories on the opposite end of the earth.

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Notice how my questions are longer than David’s answers? That is the sign of a interviewer at the top of his game…Those lucky enough to nab tickets to one of the New Yorker events (tickets are still available for tonight’s keynote) will certainly get much more David, and much less of me, this weekend.

Book Review: The Lost City of Z

Whilst writers festivals are mostly about promoting new books, they’re also a great chance to discover each author’s back catalogue of gems you never knew existed.

I’m a subscriber to The New Yorker, so the name David Grann has come up a few times in my reading list. Having previously been the senior editor at The New Republic, Grann’s written some of the best non-fiction The New Yorker has to offer, while also contributing to a host of other publications, including New York Magazine, The Atlantic and The Boston Globe.

Yet it wasn’t until I heard he was coming to town that I picked up Grann’s first book, The Lost City of Z.

Based on the Grann’s 2005 article of the same name, The Lost City of Z chronicles more than a century of exploration into the Amazon for a fabled lost civilisation, known mysteriously as the city of ‘Z’.

The book centers around real life explorer Percy Fawcett, a kind of early nineteenth century Alby Mangels with tighter morals, who pioneered the theory that an advanced civilisation had once flourished in the Amazon before European invaders wiped out much of the population through disease and brutality. Fawcett’s tale comes from a time where the world was less ‘known’ (from a certain perspective anyway) and being an explorer was a perfectly acceptable career choice.

Fawcett’s also long gone, having mysteriously disappeared with his twenty-one-year-old son whilst making a last ditch attempt to find the city in 1925. For over seventy years since, explorers, both professional and amateur, have attempted to pick up from where Fawcett left off, to discover ‘Z’ and uncover the fate of Fawcett’s last expedition.

Grann deftly weaves a tale of obsession and adventure, drawing on Fawcett’s personal correspondence to piece together the explorer’s incredible career, including numerous near fatal expeditions into the Amazon (otherwise known as the ‘green hell’) where his expedition crew often met with miserable ends:

Then his right hand developed, as he put it, a “very sick, deep suppurating wound,” which made it “agony” even to pitch his hammock. Then he was stricken with diarrhoea. Then he woke up to find what looked like worms in his knee and arm. He peered closer. They were maggots growing inside him. He counted fifty around his elbow alone.

As Fawcett enters the twentieth century, the golden age of exploration fades and technology replaces much of the on-the-ground exploration work. While scientists draw tighter circles around the Z myth, Fawcett’s search turns to obsession, and attaining his goal seems increasingly improbable.

Grann includes his own personal search together with Fawcett’s, and the narrative sustains a cracking pace as competing explorers enter the race to find Z.  The larger than life Fawcett has inspired generations of modern explorers, and his sense of adventure is gloriously infectious here. Like Grann and many others who have followed Fawcett to his fate, I found myself entranced by the lure of Z, fighting the urge to take a peek at the final chapter to see how it all ended.

Grann’s book pays homage to a time when things were just a little bit more mysterious, the edges of every map just a touch more unclear, providing the perfect catalyst for uncovering something new.

Reading it gave me a sense of what may have been Fawcett’s one and only fear; that he would someday discover Z, and have nothing left to look for.

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David Grann is appearing at the New Yorker events at MWF12, and will be speaking about The Lost City of Z and other tales of obsession on Sunday 26 August at 2.30pm.