William Dietrich Interview
Since he has yet to be interviewed by Oprah, William Dietrich decided to
interview himself:
Q: How did you decide to be a writer?
A: My mother encouraged my reading and, as an only child, I had the time and
privacy to make up stories. I wrote my first short story in the second grade,
won creative writing awards in high school, and dreamed of being a novelist. But
by college I had decided journalism was a more realistic way of making a living.
Besides, the fact you could get paid for doing interesting things, going to
interesting places, and meeting interesting people was a revelation to me.
Q: You've had success as a newspaper reporter. So why write fiction now?
A: It's liberating. Fiction can tell truths in ways barred from journalists,
who can't pretend to know the inner thoughts of their subjects. It's satisfying.
You can control your characters and plot (even though they assert perky
independence at times) in ways you can't control the news. It's flexible,
allowing me to live at some distance from a newsroom and be in more control of my
time. And it's fun, providing an excuse to research and visit exciting times and
places. Imagination is the best way to travel.
Q: Your non-fiction is chiefly about the environment and history of the
Pacific Northwest, but your fiction includes a World War II thriller, a
futuristic survival tale, a polar murder mystery and an historical novel set in
Roman times. Is there any connection?
A: They are all good stories that touch on similar themes of community,
freedom, security, the opportunity to change and grow, and love. All of them
also depend on their characters' reaction to exotic or new environments. At the
same time, I'm not the kind of writer content to write the same book over and
over. Ice Reich was inspired in part by my own experiences in Antarctica,
Getting Back by my concerns about stultifying globalization, Dark
Winter by my intrigue about the social communities that field scientists
create, and Hadrian's Wall by how the Roman quest for security echoes our
own.
Q: Is fiction easier because there is less research?
A: In some ways there is more because of the need to make the novel
convincing. I visit the places I write about and do a lot of reading and
interviewing. Infusing my books with interesting information while not letting
it weight down the story is one of the most persistent challenges. I was pleased
when a pilot insisted, after he read Ice Reich, that I must know how to
fly. I don't.
Q: Do you consider yourself a journalist first, or an author?
A: Both. I lead a double life, which is not particularly unusual: many
authors are present or former journalists. The skills involved are very
different and yet journalistic experience has helped me research my books. In
turn my fiction, strangely, has improved my journalism. I look at things in a
broader, more holistic way. One thing I like about writing is that you never
know it all. You're constantly learning and trying to improve.
Q: If I haven't read you, which book should I try first?
A: The latest one, because any sales track record is important to my career!
Seriously, asking an author to name his favorite book is like asking a parent to
name his favorite child. Each book consumes you when writing it. Still,
Hadrian's Wall and Ice Reich are perhaps the most mainstream of my
novels, while Getting Back and Dark Winter took some chances that
delighted some readers and baffled others. The Final Forest has an easy
style people find very accessible, while Northwest Passage is a better
book but longer and denser with information. Natural Grace is a
collection of breezy natural history essays meant to be enjoyed anywhere. My
advice is to try them all.
Q: What authors do you read?
A: First, a great deal of non-fiction, some for pleasure and some for
research. Bruce Catton, Barbara Tuchman, John Keegan and Stephen Ambrose are
among the many historians I've enjoyed, and Carl Sagan, E.O. Wilson, Timothy
Ferris and Peter Ward are examples of good science writers. Other non-fiction impresarios including Jon Krakauer, Tom Wolfe, Bruce
Chatwin, Tony Horwitz, Jonathan Raban, Rick Atkinson�dang � there are a lot of
good writers out there, aren't there? In fiction my taste runs to what I'd call
"intelligent popular" fiction, authors like Follett, King, Clancy, Chriton,
Tolkein, Alan Furst, Martin Cruz Smith, Nelson DeMille, Steven Pressfield,
George MacDonald Fraser, Wilbur Smith, Barbara Kingsolver, Anita Shreeve, John
Irving, Michael Curtis Ford, Kenneth Roberts�gosh, that's just one bookcase.
This is hard. Let's just say I admire and read the literary greats but don't
gravitate to them in the airport bookstore: I've started War and Peace
half a dozen times, without success, and am frightened of Ulysses. Twain,
Steinbeck, Mailer and Hemingway are fine, but James, Faulkner, Dickens and
Melville? Tough going. Favorite Northwest authors include Ken Kesey, Craig
Lesley, Tim Egan, Ivan Doig, Murray Morgan and Robert Michael Pyle. But I've
left out so many . . .
Q: Isn't 'intelligent' and 'popular' an oxymoron?
A: Not at all! This is snobbery put forth by a minority of critics and
literature professors who claim the interior mind is the only thing worth
writing about and that pretension, obscurity and dullness is somehow a mark of
seriousness, instead of a mask. Dickens was the Stephen King of his day.
Melville wrote the 19th Century equivalent of "Jaws." Tolstoy wrote really good
melodrama. Twain got em' laughing, then thinking. Yes, there are differences in
quality but the greats first became great by becoming popular. Some had to wait
until they were dead. But a good book is a good book if it reaches you.
Q: I'll bet being an author is glamorous.
A: You've got to be kidding. Long stretches of tedium broken by short bursts
of acute disappointment, criticism or embarrassment. Okay, there is periodic
encouragement and we all have our fantasies of "success," but mostly you do it
because you have to. It's a disease.
Q: Oh, come on.
A: All right, it's also fun, and a cushy job in many ways. I commute down a
staircase and have a spare-bedroom office with a view of islands. But I'm lucky,
and that's after a lot of years. It's hard, lonely, painstaking work. If you
want to be famous, go into TV.
Q: How much of your fiction is based on real life?
A: All of it, of course. Stories only work if they seem real, and they all
seem acutely real to me when I'm writing them. None of my characters are carbons
of real people, but many people I meet contribute to my imaginary friends and
enemies. Long-ago experiences, snatches of conversation, things I've read, and
the random thoughts generated find their way into my novels. What's surprising
is how difficult it is to "get real," to expose yourself. The best fiction is
honest in a way that shocks us with recognition. That's hard.
Q: Tell us about your latest book. Why Roman Britain?
A: This is a novel that started, as my others have, with place. I stumbled on
Hadrian's Wall during a tourist visit to Britain and immediately wanted to write
a novel about its evocative setting and stirring history, even though I'd yet to
write fiction. Circumstances intervened to make a novel of Antarctica my first
book, but I never forgot my fascination with the wall. Almost immediately I had
the notion of a young Roman woman coming there to get married, and the blood and
thunder followed from that. It's a war story, a love story, and an adventure
story. It's also a story about clashing cultures, the competing lure of freedom
and security, and an exploration of why the Roman Empire fell. Our current
insecure times make it timely, I think.
Q: Can you tell us the ending?
A: You have to read the book.
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