Farnam Street Interviews David Quammen

Welcome to the Farnam Street Virtual Reading Group. Our goal is to enrich
the experience of reading.

In this edition, were going to be reading Song of the Dodo.

As part of the enriched experience for this book, I got to interview the books
author, David Quammen.

I first came across Song of the Dodo five years ago. At the time, it blew
me away. Not only was Quammen the first person who made me realize
that science writing can be magical, the book also changed the way that
I understood the world by improving my understanding of biology and
increasing my connection to the planet we live on and the species we coexist
with.

In the interview that follows, I ask David very deep and personal questions
about the book: why its structured the way it is, how he writes about science
without being a scientist, how we should go about reading the books, and how
he reads books himself, including when he literally throws them against the
wall. I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did.

***

David, thank you so much for doing this. I really appreciate it. I think this is
going to be such an amazing experience for the people that are reading along
with us. Lets get started. I want to commend you first for your recent work
writing about Yellowstone National Park. Its so engaging. You wrote a series
of long posts or long pieces and put out a big photo journalistic type book. I
really appreciate that.

Well, thank you. What we did was a special issue of National Geographic
Magazine entirely devoted to the greater Yellowstone ecosystem, in
connection with the 100th anniversary of the National Parks Service.
The editor in chief asked me to write the whole thing, which was a great
opportunity, also kind of a lot of pressure, but it seems to have worked out
very well. Then he also asked me if I would expand that special issue into a
short book to be published by National Geographic Books, along with a lot of
the great photography from my photographer colleagues.

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I didnt know that. Thats amazing.

Yeah, so the book is now out as of just about two weeks ago. Its called
Yellowstone: A Journey Through Americas Wild Heart.

I love that. Listen, Im so honored that youre here with us today talking about
this. Youre the first person who ever wrote, for me personally, science in such
an engaging way.

Well, great.

This is going to be a slightly more general interview, and well go into

deeper specifics after everybody has read the book. As far as I know, you
have no formal training as a scientist, but your work is so detailed. Its so
encompassing and engrossing and accurate. I had to actually look up that
you werent scientifically trained. You must spend a lot of time trying to keep
up with scientists, to keep yourself on their level. This means youve gone
through an extensive process of maybe self-education throughout your life.
Can you describe that process for us?

Yes, thats exactly right. Its been self-education. I did very little biology when
I was doing my academic work. I was focused on literature. I was an English
major, and I did a graduate degree on William Faulkner. I never had any
desire to be an English professor, but I was pointed toward being a fiction
writer, a novelist. The first thing I published was a novel, and then I shifted
into nonfiction writing, in particular nonfiction writing about the natural
world. Then more and more, not simply natural history but harder biological
sciences, ecology and evolutionary biology, etc. I had always been interested
in that, but I just hadnt focused on it academically.

Then, in about 1980, I started writing a column for Outside Magazine

on natural science. They had invited me to be their new natural science
columnist, based on one piece that I had written for them about the
redeeming merits, if any, of the mosquito. I started writing this column in late
1980; first one published in 1981. In the course of doing that column for 15
years, ecology and evolutionary biology became essentially my journalistic
beat. I learned whatever I know of it on the job over the years by reading a
I was never ton of journal articles and scientific books; both technical books and books
for the general public, in particular history of science books, and talking with
very interested scientists, preferably in the field.

in telephone While I was learning my way into this subject, I was never greatly one
journalism. I was for calling up scientists on the phone and saying, Id like to ask you a
few questions. Would you give me a quote on this subject that youve just
interested in doing published a journal paper on? I was never very interested in telephone
journalism. I was interested in doing the reading, doing the homework.
the reading, doing Occasionally then, I would contact a scientist, but ideally that was a doorway
the homework. to going into the field with that scientist, or at least visiting that scientist in
his or her lab.

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I didnt have a lot of time or a lot of budget to do that while I was doing the
column for Outside Magazine, but as soon as I started writing books, longer
pieces, feature stories and books about biological sciences, then I began
doing that, going into the field with biologists. Ive said elsewhere that some
people admire cowboys or astronauts or medical missionaries. I admire
field biologists greatly because theyre tough intellectually and theyre tough
physically. I love going out there with them.

I love reading your stories. Youve written a number of absolutely wonderful

books, like infectious viruses, Charles Darwin, man-eating Tigers. What
inspired you to write The Song of the Dodo, specifically? What led you down
that path? Theres a hundred different topics you could talk about. How did you
narrow it down? How did you focus your attention?

I was thinking about that overnight, How did that book get started? I was
remembering that it happened There were essentially two threads that I
picked up in the mid, late-1980s. While I was writing the column for Outside,
as I mentioned, I heard about the die-off of populations of birds on the island
of Guam. Some of them were endemic species. Some of them were endemic
subspecies, but these birds were unique to the island of Guam. They had
started disappearing. At first nobody knew why, and then they discovered that
there was this invasive species of snake, a bird-eating tree snake from New
Guinea and the Solomon Islands that had gotten on to the island of Guam;
this little, very isolated island in the middle of the Pacific. This exotic snake
had just devastated these birds, partly because they had evolved there on
Guam in the absence of any tree-climbing predators.

I thought, Well thats pretty interesting, kind of a unique situation. I wonder

if theres any science on the subject of evolution and extinction on islands.
Haha, little did I know. I looked into that, just for writing this column. I
discovered the literature of island biogeography. It was like poking your way
through a little crack on the side of a hill and squeezing through it, and then
coming out into this huge cavern filled with Neolithic cave paintings. That was
what the discovery of the literature of island biogeography was like for me.
That little hole that I went through was Guam, was the subject of the birds of
Guam.

I got through that hole, and then I discovered that Robert MacArthur and
Edward O. Wilson had written a very important short book called The
Theory of Island Biogeography, and that that book had triggered a very
intense decade or more of studies in island biogeography by scientists who
recognized that island biogeography doesnt apply just to islands. It applies
to whats going on all over the world, as wild landscapes get broken up into
fragments. Those fragments become island-like pieces in which island-like
effects take place.

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Now did you know that when you set out to write The Song of the Dodo, or did
you come to that conclusion as you were writing the book?

No, I learned that when I was researching this one little column on the
birds of Guam. Thats when I came through the hole and saw that island
biogeography was this vastly significant, global topic, not just confined to
literal islands. I had that. I had made that discovery. Then I wrote a couple
more pieces about island biogeography at the magazine feature scale. I wrote
a piece called The Flight of the Iguana for Outside Magazine, after a trip to
the Galapagos and maybe one other short piece.

Then it was time for me to think about doing a full length nonfiction book. In
the meantime, there was one other thread. So thats one thread.
Maybe I should The other thread is Alfred Wallace. I had discovered Alfred Russell Wallace,
write a book this wonderful, great, neglected character, this heroic field biologist who
co-discovered the idea of evolution by natural selection. Co-discovered it with
about island Darwin, and who essentially triggered a panic in Darwin when Wallace came
biogeography forward; contacted Darwin, and said, Gee, Mr. Darwin, Ive got this idea.
It might be crazy, but I think species might change, in a process thathe
and extinction described natural selection. This is in a letter to Darwin in 1858, after Darwin
of species. Or, had been working for twenty years in secret on this idea and not published it
yet.
maybe I should
I tell that story. Everybody knows that story now, but back in the early 1990s,
write a biography Wallace was not very well known. He had been an eclipse for most of a
of Alfred Russell century and people did not very well know this story. I thought, Thats a great
story. I thought about these two things, Maybe I should write a book about
Wallace, this great island biogeography and extinction of species. Or, maybe I should write a
biography of Alfred Russell Wallace, this great character. I was talking about
character. this with my agent, who is also a trusted friend. I think we were sitting in a
bar, and she was saying, What do you want to write a book about? I said,
Well, Ive got a couple of ideas. One of them is this Alfred Russell Wallace
character, and one of them is the subject of islands and extinction.

Then I thought about it, and I think as I was talking to her about it - and
maybe I was making a list or a diagram on a cocktail napkin, one of those
napkin diagram moments. It came to me that this was one book. This was not
two books. That Alfred Russell Wallace and the story of islands as sites not
just of evolution but of extinction, that that was one book. It was a bigger book
than either of those individually, but that if I put those things together it might
make for a great story that involves narrative and adventure and evolution,
but also this very, very important framework for thinking about why species
are going extinct all over the world. That was the origin of The Song of the
Dodo.

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Thats amazing. It was so encapsulating, the first time I read it. Not only did
island biogeography become incredibly important to me personally, but just
being immersed in the writing and the stories. The way that you weave them
Weaving is an and you take it from theory to the field, it was so fascinating.
important part Well thank you, Shane. Weaving is actually the term I use, too. Weaving is
of my structural an important part of my structural approach. I dont know if you want to talk
about that now or later, but if its later we should come back to the idea of
approach. weaving.

Lets do it now. Tell me a little bit about the structure that you came to with
The Song of the Dodo and how you arrived at that and what do you want the
experience for the reader to be like?

Although I talk in the opening section about tapestry and therefore suggest
weaving. I said that I use weaving, but actually I use a related word to think
about the way that I structure things, and that is braiding, the way you might
braid three or four strands into a rope. Thats the way I tend to think about
structuring, the way I thought about Dodo, and the way I tend to think about
structuring books, generally.

I tend to have three or four major cords that I want to put into the book. Those
tend to be things like the ideas of a field of science, the intellectual principles
of a field of science- that might be braid #1. Braid #2 might be the historical
dimension, the discovery of those principles and the growth of this field of
science. Those are two things that are not identical. Theyre not necessarily
paired together, but Im interested in the history of the science as well as
the science- so thats braid #2. Braid #3 is likely to be my own travels in
researching the book. Related to that might be braid #4- being the people
I meet, the living characters as well as the historical characters who are
working in this science.

Maybe if theres a 5th it would be- illustrating the principles of this science,
whatever it is, with living embodiments; in this case animals, and to some
degree, plants. If Im talking about the principle of dwarfism on islands; that
certain creatures on islands tend to evolve... Lets take a different example:
gigantism. Certain creatures on islands tend to evolve toward gigantic forms.
Giant flightless birds, giant reptiles, you find on islands. Thats a principle.

Now, theres a history to the discovery of that principle. Theres the dynamics
and the explanation of that principle itself, but then I also want to embody
that. I go see Komodo dragons, I go see Galapagos tortoises, and I go see
giant flightless birds somewhere. Those are my threads. Youve got the
scientific concepts and then the history of the science, then the people who
are doing the science and the living embodiments of the principles and my
own travels to do the research. I take those five cords, and I braid them
together rather than following one in a long section, explaining nothing but
the history of the science or explaining the principles of the science first. I
want an alternation of those different threads.

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Braiding them together allows me to move from one to the other and keep
changing things up for the reader. Im trying to keep the reader interested
by not following any single thread too long and yet showing how the different
threads are interrelated.

Right, it allows you to go from very high level down to low level and back again.

Another way of saying that is it allows me to go from the conceptual and the
abstract to the very concrete. It allows me to go from the serious to the funny,
I hope. It allows me to go from the taxing and intricate, to the adventuresome
and the narrative. Thats very important to me, to move between those
different modes, those different tones, those different flavors, as a way of
keeping the reader interested.

You definitely do a good job of that. Speaking of influences, youve talked a

lot about being influenced by William Faulkner in the past. I know you were
a student of Robert Penn Warren, who is the famous author of All the Kings
Men. I think a lot of people would be surprised by these influences, given the
nonfiction scientific subject matter of your work.

When I was an undergraduate, as I said, I was an English major. I started

reading Faulkner when I was a sophomore, this was at Yale, and discovered
Faulkner. He just exploded in my brain. I just became mesmerized and
obsessed with Faulkner. I loved his work. Then when I was a junior, I took a
seminar from Robert Penn Warren, who himself was a wonderful important
Southern novelist. Faulkner of course was a Southerner. Warren had been a
Southerner now teaching at Yale. He knew Faulkner. He knew the Southern
literature well. He was a wonderful teacher, and I studied Faulkner at his
elbow, under his wing.

In particular, I studied the structure of Faulkners novels. Warren was a very

good teacher of how to read a book and to see the mechanics, to see the
structure, to see the dynamics of what the author is doing in building the
book, in building the literary work. Warren and I spent time talking about
what Faulkner was doing, and I learned a whole lot about how to build a book
in the course of doing that.

Can you tell me specifically what you took away from Faulkner that influenced
how you wrote The Song of the Dodo?

Well, yes. We talked about overall structure. Faulkners structures, most

of them, are very unusual, some people would say experimental, counter-
intuitive, impressionistic, the sort of thing that you find in The Sound and the
Fury, in As I Lay Dying, in Absalom, Absalom!, where you have different voices
telling the story and you have to assemble the story in your own mind from
these different voices; some of which are very unreliable voices, some of
which are very subjective and peculiar voices.

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You read these voices, and the voices build the story in your mind.

Im not doing that specific sort of thing in my books, but a book like The Song
of the Dodo or Spillover, my book on infectious diseases, theyre longish,
complicated books. Theyre very carefully structured. Occasionally, a critic
has said, The Song of the Dodo is this long, woolly, unstructured thing. Im
not complaining about the reviewing. Generally, Ive been reviewed very well,
but when Ive had, very occasionally a review like that, I just sort of roll my
eyes and say, Well, you just dont get it. This book is actually very carefully
structured and, I believe, very successfully structured. Its not obviously
structured. Its a subtle structure, and occasionally a reviewer is a little bit too
obdurate and dull to see the reality of a very subtle structure.

I dont want to congratulate myself here, but thats what Im trying to do- is
create a structure thats organic, thats functional, that performs a lot of
different things in terms of telling the story, unfolding it gradually, keeping
Its easy to the reader interested, without doing it in an obvious way. Its easy to create
an obvious structure for a book. If youre going to write a book about islands,
create an obvious chapter one is one island, chapter two is another island, chapter three is
another island. Thats incredibly boring in my view. Likewise, with diseases,
structure for a one chapter for one disease. Thats the schematic, the orderly, the boring way
book. to structure a book. What Im after is something thats much more organic,
much more surprising, takes the reader a little bit off-balance, and supplies
the unexpected, but that, when you come to the end of it, has a great feel of
inevitability to it.

I think you exemplified that. Youve become an exemplar for other people
trying to do that.

Thank you.

I want to ask you if you read critics of your work and what you think as you
read them and youre going through it. It must be so interesting watching
somebody from the outside try to pierce into the veil of you as a person and
why youve done things the way you do. What goes through your mind when
you read these reviews?

I do read reviews. Im not going to say that Im immune to reviews, I never

look at them. Im interested to see what people see when they read my books.
I occasionally look at the reviews of readers on Amazon. If I get a review in
the New York Times, I certainly read it. I read, generally, the reviews that are
published. I dont let them get to me. If its a negative review, I dont stew
about it. I might be annoyed. If its negative review in an important place, I
might stay annoyed, but it doesnt affect my book. I mean, it doesnt affect my
work. Its just like, Well, damn. That was a missed opportunity. That was an
important place for that review.

For instance, the New York Times Book Review. Ive been very well reviewed
in the New York Times Book Review but not in every case.

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In some cases, for instance my Spillover book was not very well reviewed in
the New York Times. I thought, Dang it, that was a missed opportunity. They
gave it to Person X, and she didnt get it. She didnt see the book that I felt I
had written. She missed the point, and she gave me a mediocre review, and
thats too bad because thats an important place. Life goes on. On balance,
Ive been delighted with the kind of reviewing Ive got in the New York Times
Book Review.
You do not need
to march through Definitely. Coming back to the Dodo for a second here, what were the trickiest
parts for you to write about correctly?
the mathematical
Probably the complicated theoretical ecology of island biogeography. The
proofs in order to book that Ed Wilson and Robert MacArthur published, this little book The
understand the Theory of Island Biogeography, is filled with mathematics, mostly calculus,
working out things about the way populations of species and communities
resulting concepts. of species function on islands. MacArthur was a mathematician. Ed Wilson
admits that hes never been much of a mathematician, but hes a very smart
guy. He studied it up when they were doing that book. He told me all this in
interviews. Hes become a friend over the years, wonderful, wonderful man.

Ed Wilson and Robert MacArthur wrote this book, and its extremely
mathematical. Im not mathematical, and I didnt get most of the
mathematics. I got the essence of the book. I knew that I had the essence
of the book. Then I spent some time with a friend of mine, who is a very
mathematical ecologist; a brilliant guy named Mike Gilpin. Hes one of the
characters in the book. Hes one of the scientists who helped define the field
of island biogeography as part of theoretical ecology. I had his help in walking
through some of the mathematics. At a certain point, he said, You know
what? The rest of this is not important. You get the idea. You get the essential
concepts. There are a lot of mathematical proofs here, but you do not need to
march through the mathematical proofs in order to understand the resulting
concepts.

That was important when I was writing the section called Prestons Bell,
about a fellow named Frank Preston, who was a precursor to MacArthur and
Wilson, and who was also important when I was writing the section entitled
The Coming Thing. Robert MacArthur, with his mathematical ecology, was,
in the early 1960s, the coming thing. Theres one chapter on Preston, one
chapter on MacArthur, pretty seriously mathematical stuff, and I was not
going to make it mathematical for my readers. Ive heard somebody say, I
think it was Stephen Hawking, the great astrophysicist, who said ... When he
wrote A Brief History of Time, his publishers had warned him that for every
mathematical equation he included, his readership would be cut in half.

Yeah, thats probably true.

I bore that in mind. I was not going to march the readers through
mathematics that I didnt want to march through myself.

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At the same time, as I occasionally like to use a little bit of math as kind of a
nervous joke, to show the reader an equation. I think there is one equation in
my book, and thats S=cA^2, the basic, basic equation of island biogeography.
Is that the right equation, Shane? Do you remember?

I dont remember off the top of my head, Im sorry.

S=cA^2, its something close to that. You can explain what that is fairly simply,
so I included that equation. I said to the reader something about, Here it
comes, close your eyes. Get ready for it. Im going to print an equation. All
right, you can open it now. Im done. Joking about math anxiety, joking about
my own math anxiety and readers math anxieties. Some mathematicians got
mad at me for that, a few of them, saying, You shouldnt indulge people to
feel math anxiety. They should get over it.

It deals with reality, right?

Yeah, its reality. Maybe this is one way of helping them get over it. Im joking
about it, but Im still giving them an equation and Im explaining it. I think Im
helping the cause just a little bit, even though Im joking about it.

Whats the general process you take when you feel like you have an area,
outside of math maybe, thats kind of crucial to write about, that you feel you
dont understand quite well enough to write about it correctly? Is it a matter of
trial and error and writing and rewriting and honing your understanding of the
idea? Do you talk to other people? How do you get yourself to a point where
I have to sacrifice you feel like you can write confidently on it?
precision, that Generally, I read the journal literature. I read the journal papers, and then
part of the work of I reread them. Then I reread them again. Then maybe I go and interview
somebody who has written some of those journal papers, and I ask him or
the science writer her about it. I ask them to walk me through it a little bit, and that helps. Then
for the general I write about that work, and then I go back to those sources and say, Would
you please read this and correct it for me? Would you please hold me to
public is to dial standards of accuracy? I make clear to them that Im asking them for help
with accuracy. Im not inviting them to spin me, in terms of the way I present
down precision them or their work. Im strictly interested in accuracy.
while maintaining I make clear that I have to sacrifice precision, that part of the work of
accuracy, absolute the science writer for the general public is to dial down precision while
maintaining accuracy, absolute accuracy, insofar as possible. Those are very
accuracy, insofar as clear, different things. They are always clear in my mind. Scientists care
possible. about both precision and accuracy, but a science writer for the general public
has to reduce precision, has to omit precision. In omitting precision, you can
maintain accuracy. Thats what you do.

Why do you feel like you have to omit precision, is that because it gets too
mathematical and technical, and you lose the audience?

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Yes, you lose the audience. Its not always just mathematical precision.
There are other kinds of precision. There are all these details. When
scientists create a model or when scientists describe an ecological process
of a phenomenon, there are details, details, details. There are cycles and
epicycles and cycles within cycles. Theres the rule and then there are
exceptions to the rule and then there are exceptions to the exceptions. At a
certain point, you have to leave out the exceptions to the exceptions. Maybe
you can describe the exceptions to the rule, but your job is to focus on the
rule. Thats where the scientist differs from the science writer for the general
public.

Lets turn to your own reading, and maybe book digestion process for yourself.
Heres a question thats certainly tough for an author to answer about his own
book, but Im going to ask it anyway, which is how would you go about reading
a book like the Dodo if you were just coming to it? How would you maximize
your absorption of the material and your enjoyment of the material?

If Im reading for pure enjoyment, then I just read. First of all, the page
The page numbers numbers are there for a reason, people. Im talking to everybody. Page
are there for a numbers are there for a reason. Dont skip ahead to the end. I wrote some
mystery novels, some spy novels. This was an issue then. If youre reading
reason, people. a mystery novel or a spy novel, dont skip ahead to the end. The point is not
Im talking to to find out what the final answer is. The point is the journey. The point is the
process. The point is the discovery. Pay attention to the page numbers, and
everybody. Page read things in order.

numbers are there Secondly, if Im reading a book that is, say, partly for enjoyment but I also
have a certain intellectual interest in it - that means almost everything, but
for a reason. Dont maybe not quite - then I read with a pencil behind my ear. If something seems
skip ahead to the to me interesting or important or certainly interesting and important, then I
make a little pencil line in the margin- just a vertical line one inch down the
end. side of the paragraph. Thats all, and I keep going. Its almost instinct to me,
to read like that.

Do you go back over them?

Well, thats what Im getting to. If I really care about this book, if I care
about it as a literary artifact that I want to understand better, or as a good
introduction to a field or to part of a field, then I read it a second time.
Reading a second time is hugely important. I learned this back with Faulkner
and Penn Warren. You read a novel like one of Faulkners, and the first time
you read it, youre dizzy and disoriented. Youre supposed to be dizzy and
disoriented. He is gradually lifting that veil of confusion, so that by the end of
it youre not confused anymore. You have a sense of what he was doing, the
story he was telling, even what happened, if there is an objective answer to
the question what happened? But you havent been able to really see what
hes doing or how hes doing it.

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Rereading a If you want to understand how Faulkner created his effects, then you got to
read it the second time. Read the whole book the second time. Read it a third
book, to me, is time, and youll see still more. Rereading a book, to me, is hugely important
in the process of appreciating that book, appreciating, not just whats in it, but
hugely important how it does what it does. You cant get that on the first reading, no matter how
in the process of slowly you read.

appreciating that Let me add something here now. I am a very slow reader. I read all the time.
Ive read a lot of books, not as many as if I were a fast reader, but for me
book, appreciating, reading slowly is a very important part of reading well. I read things twice,
not just whats in and I read things slowly. Thats because I care about the way things are put
together.
it, but how it does
what it does. You I want to geek out just a little bit here on this. Do you write to yourself notes
in the marginalia? How do you phrase things so when you go through it the
cant get that on second time, are you reading that first? Are you reading the book and seeing if
the first reading, no it still draws your attention? Walk me through that process a little bit. So after
you know the journey you use for rereading
matter how slowly
I generally do not make notes. Say Im reading a book on the history of
you read. science that is tangentially related to the book that Im writing. For instance,
right now in the mornings Im reading a very fine book called The Tangled
Field by Nathaniel Comfort. It is a biography of Barbara McClintock, the great
American geneticist. She might end up being a character in my current book,
but this book is not all that closely related. Im reading it, and as I go along
heres page 44. Page 44 has three little pencil lines, vertical pencil lines,
each of which highlights about five or six lines of Comforts text. On the next
page theres one name, an important name, August Weismann, an important
German biologist of the 19th century who Im interested in. His name appears
on page 45, so Ive underlined his name. Theres a vertical line down along
three lines of Comforts text. Then theres a little tiny X.

If I reread this book, I wont be looking at my own marginal annotations. I

very seldom write words in the margin, but I make these little vertical lines.
That means this is kind of important or interesting. If its a vertical line with
an X, its probably interesting and maybe potentially important to me. If its
a vertical line with two Xs, that means make note of this, this is probably
something youre going to use, maybe you should put this into your reading
notes.

You do you organize your reading notes? Do you write them out by hand? Do
you use a product like Evernote?

I use MS Word.

Do you have one file per book?

Yes.

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Or is it one big file that you can kind of search?

Im very old For my reading notes, yes. I used to do this. Im very old fashioned and slow
to adopt new technologies. I dont apologize for that, its just fact. Until this
fashioned and book, I did my reading notes in ring notebooks by hand, by ballpoint pen.
slow to adopt new Then I coded them. I numbered them, dated them, and I coded them by
theme or subject. Id write a couple of words like adaptive radiation. If I was
technologies. I doing island biogeography and I read something that had to do with adaptive
radiation, I might write this note about heres a case of adaptive radiation.
dont apologize for The fruit flies of the Hawaiian islands have undergone amazing adaptive
that, its just fact. radiation. There are 600 different species of drosophila on the islands of
Hawaii, or something like that.

I was literally writing that into a ring notebook until the last book, even
through Spillover, I did it. Then I would go back as I was writing it, and I would
look for theme-related entries. I would use those ring notebooks. One of my
various different forms of note-taking, Id use those ring notebooks. Well, it
only took me - God help me - until 2014 to realize that if I used even a simple
word processing program, MS Word, and recorded these things, then I could
search them by subject. I could type in adaptive radiation and bing, bing,
bing, Id have all the entries that related to that theme. Or type in the word
genome or type in the words horizontal gene transfer and I could get to all
my reading notes related to that. Obviously some people would have figured
that out a little bit earlier.

Well, its worked for you, though. I often wonder if thats counterproductive
in a way. It makes it easier to access the information, but it also puts so much
more information in front of us, that we tend to maybe get lazier about how we
think about it.

Yeah, I think theres something to that. The other thing, though, Shane, is that
besides being a slow reader, Im a slow typist. Ive been making my living as
a writer for about 40 years now, and Im a slow typist. Is that a disadvantage?
Well, no, because if I write 900 words in a given day, I consider it a really good
day. It doesnt take very long to type 900 words. Its useful if youre note-
taking, if youre interviewing people, and youre typing notes as you interview
somebody. Yes, its great to be a really fast touch typist. Im not. I never went
to journalism school. I never acquired those basic skills, shorthand, touch-
typing at high speeds. Im a guy who started as a novelist.

Maybe, its overrated as well. I find it hard to believe that we can cognitively
process the information and write it down in real time that somebody is
speaking.

Yeah, I do too. Although my process is slow, I dont find myself envying a lot of
other writers and a lot of other books. I dont want to advertise or brag, but I
feel like my process, plodding as it is, yields a pretty good result.

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Its hard to argue with that. Like the biography youre reading right now,
how does a book get to a level like that, with you? What kind of books tend to
demand that kind of loving attention from you?

I love history of science, as I said. When I read history of science, I tend to

do that, although not always. Sometimes I read, and this is related to your
interests, too, Im sure. Sometimes I read on electronic devices. I have an
iPad. I have a Kindle that I havent touched recently because Ive been reading
books on the iPad, and the iPad has its own lighting source, so I can read it
in bed. I dont need a head lamp or a tensor lamp. I bought a Kindle because
I was in the middle of the Congo at a very removed field camp a handful of
years ago, and one of the field assistants, a young British guy, had a Kindle.
He told me he was getting about a month on a recharge.

On his battery, yeah.

If I were reading your supply. He told me about that, and I said, Damn it. Im going to get a
that in a paperback
or a hard copy, I
This was a field camp where there wasnt much solar radiation, where
electricity was at a high, high premium. They were charging their computers
with solar panels that they put out in the sun during the day. They had a lot of
computers, so theyre recharging resources were very limited. This guy had
his Kindle that was giving him a month of reading in his tent on a recharge.
This was not a backlit Kindle, so he probably still needed a headlamp with
AA batteries, but if youre in a field camp in the Congo, youve already got a
headlamp with AA batteries. You probably brought a lot of AA batteries. Thats
Kindle. Yes, it is in fact, especially a Kindle that doesnt have its own lighting
source, you get a really long time on a recharge. Thats great, but an iPad is a
little bit more convenient, a little bit nicer to look at.

would probably
have made a lot of
little vertical pencil
lines on it. Instead,
I was reading it on
my iPad. where your highlighting is. Although, I do read books on electronic devices,
To circle back, I read books on an iPad. I just finished reading a book called
The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes, its a history of leaders in science
in the 18th century: Joseph Banks, William Hershel, Caroline Hershel, and
Humphrey Davey- some of these great leaders in 18th century science. If
I were reading that in a paperback or a hard copy, I would probably have
made a lot of little vertical pencil lines on it. Instead, I was reading it on my
iPad. Harder to annotate. You can do it. You can do the little blocks of yellow
highlighting, but then its hard to flip back through the thing quickly and see
mostly because of travel, because it allows me ...

We should get back to this, travel with the electronic book. Mental note to
return to that.

Because of travel, I have these electronic devices that can carry a whole lot
more capacity than I could carry in my shoulder bag, if I were carrying paper
books. I dont like electronic books for the difficulty of going back through
them to find your notations.

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Right, it becomes harder. Do you differentiate between reading for research

for a book and just reading in general? Do you read specific passages out
of books when youre doing research or do you read the whole book so you
contextualize it?

I do both. I read a lot of books that are related to the current book project.
When Im getting into it, I start ordering books as well as downloading journal
papers. I pile up all this reading, and then gradually I work through it in the
course of writing the book. In some cases, I dont read the whole book. There
are books that are collections of articles that have chapters by different
people, and theres one or two chapters maybe that Im interested in. I
sample that way, but I also read some books as books, as literary works, as
well as just sources of bits of information. For instance, Nathaniel Comforts
book that Im reading, or a book called The Vital Question by Nick Lane, which
is about the biochemistry of energy sources in complicated creatures. Hes a
good writer, and hes a brilliant scientist. I read that book as a literary thing,
and I made my little pencil marks in it.

Those books, I tend to read in the morning before I start my actual research
or writing. I read for half an hour or forty-five minutes, drinking coffee,
letting my brain wake up. Thats my morning reading book. That generally is
project-related, but its not directly something that Im mining for information
that day. Its big-picture project-related. Thats my morning book. Then my
evening book is something that is a little bit more sheer enjoyment, which is
not to say its frivolous or its junk. I read too slowly to read junk. Some people
say, I read a few hundred mystery books a year. I dont have time for that
kind of throw-away reading.

Thats a great way to look at it, yeah.

I only read books if I think theyre good books. A book on the history
of science can be just as entertaining to me as a mystery book, more
entertaining, probably. A book like Richard Holmes The World of Wonders,
I only read books if about 18th century science, that was an evening book I was reading for pure
I think theyre good enjoyment. Right now Im reading a book about a Russian defector. Its a
nonfiction memoir by a fellow from the CIA about a famous Russian defector
books. who came across to the US in the 1960s. It so happens I wrote a spy novel
on this case, fictionalized it. This was a book that didnt exist then. This is a
much more recent book. Im reading it in the evenings for enjoyment. After
that, Ill probably read this book about Alexander Von Humboldt, a nonfiction
book called, I think, The Invention of Nature, which is an evening enjoyment
reading kind of book for me.

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How do you filter whats a good book? When you say youre trying to read
something really nutritious, whats your process for determining that? How do
you judge that?

There are too If its a nonfiction book, is the research careful? Is the subject field
interesting? Is the writing graceful and economical, maybe even a little bit
many nonfiction poetic, but graceful and economical at least? Those are the things I care
about. If its a nonfiction book, is it really nonfiction? Alas, there are too
books being many nonfiction books being published these days, even decorating the
published these bestseller list in nonfiction, that are filled with junk, what I call factoidal jive,
thats not really nonfiction. People insert things into nonfiction books, based
days ... that on their own speculations. This may not have happened, but it could have
are filled with happened. Im writing about a historical character, so Im going to imagine
her childhood, and Im going to create scenes with dialogue describing her
junk, what I call childhood. I hate that.
factoidal jive ... A A book like that, Im likely to throw it against the wall, even if the subject
book like that, Im matter has drawn me to it. Say I want to know about this field, I start reading
it, and I find things like that in it, Ill put the book down. I might literally throw
likely to throw it it against a wall.

against the wall.

You have no qualms about stopping to read a book once it fails to serve a
purpose for you?

No, I dont. Im not obsessed with finishing every book that I start. If I think
the book is disappointing me, letting me down, violating my standards, Ill
stop reading it. Sometimes, if Im really interested in the subject area, I will
eventually come back and try again, force myself to read that book even
though my teeth are on edge every time it is creating composite characters
or bogus quotes. If youre knowledgeable about nonfiction and youre paying
attention, you can smell that. You can detect it. You can tell when somebody
is not really sticking to the journalistic standards of nonfiction. Some people
say, Well, it doesnt matter as long as its a good story. Oprah Winfrey
herself was very confused about this at one point.

I cant remember which of those bogus memoirs that she had promoted in
her book club turned out to be nearly completely fictionalized. At first she
said, What does it matter if its a good story? Then she realized just a few
days later that she was offended by this, her listeners, her audience was
entitled to be offended by this. Then she came down very hard on this guy. You
might remember his name, James Frey or something like that? Is that who
Im trying to think of?

Wasnt that A Hundred Years of Solitude?

No, A Thousand Little Pieces, maybe. Dont confuse that with A Hundred
Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquezs great, great novel. I think it was
maybe A Thousand Little Pieces. [Ed: He was referring to A Million Little
Pieces by James Frey.]

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If somebody is Im not sure about that. Then she came back and she was very hard on this
guy. My logic for that is very simple. If somebody is presenting a book as
presenting a book nonfiction, then they are laying claim to the urgency of fact. Fact does have
its own urgency that has a power that goes beyond fiction. If people think,
as nonfiction, This is a real story, theres an urgency to that. If you create composite
then they are characters and you create bogus quotes, then what youre doing is laying
claim to the urgency of nonfiction without accepting the responsibilities of
laying claim to the nonfiction. That, as far as Im concerned, is unacceptable. That creates a junk
urgency of fact. in-between genre of work that does not deserve to be called nonfiction.

Fact does have It makes it harder for the reader to tease out whats real, whats fake. One last
its own urgency question, then I want to come back to travel and the eBook for a second. Just a
general question, whats your daily routine like? You mentioned you do some
that has a power serious reading in the morning. Can you maybe walk me through a typical day?
that goes beyond Okay, very simple. I have a very nice office in my home where I work. I get up
fiction. in the morning. I make coffee. I walk around the block. I come back. My wife
may be getting up. The dogs may be getting up. I say hello to everybody. I go
into my office. I sit down with the cup of coffee, and I read for half an hour,
forty-five minutes. I usually have a handful of dried fruit, maybe prunes, just
to kind of put something on my stomach with the coffee. This may be more
information than anybody needs, but its part of the routine for me.

Then I start to write. I might write or revise for an hour or two and then take
a break for breakfast, eat something, usually at my desk, read the New York
Times online while I eat. Then walk the dogs after that, and then come back
to my office and write for another session. Then maybe a couple more, two or
three hours, maybe take a break, have a little something to eat. Lunch for me
typically is maybe two tablespoons of peanut butter at three in the afternoon.
Then I go back to work, or else if Ive gotten my work done, then I get out
and go to the post office or run errands. Then at 4 or 4:30, I try and get some
exercise.

If Im lucky, I might, on a really good day, get five or six hours of writing done.
If I can get two or three pages of revised draft in that period of time, Im very
happy.

Thats awesome.

Sometimes I start the day by revising yesterdays two pages. Then I take a
break for breakfast, and then I come back and I create todays rough draft of
two pages, then leave them to be revised the following morning.

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 18

Thanks for being so detailed with that. Thats really helpful. Just to come
back to the travel. Theres kind of hints in Dodo that youre still a pretty active
reader while youre traveling and voyaging, going so far as I think you wrapped
up books in plastic bags to protect them from water and weather. Maybe talk
to me about traveling with books and the role of travel with the eBook and how
that intersects for you.

When I was researching Dodo, at one point I went to New Guinea to go into
a very remote field camp in the highlands of New Guinea, with a couple of
biologists, a married couple. They were struggling young PhD students. They
had a grant and were trying to make it go as far as possible. We had to go
They said, We into the site by helicopter. They were paying $600/hr for the helicopter. The
have books at the helicopter could only carry so much weight. I met them at this provincial town
in New Guinea, in the highlands, and it was a staging point for us. We were
camp. I said, You going to take just I think a half an hour helicopter flight to their field site.

dont have these They said, Okay, open your pack. Let us see what youre carrying. Every
books! I clutched pound cost them money. Ive written about this. I wrote a piece about this for
Outside. I was going to be in there with them for ten days in the middle of the
those books, and I jungle. They said, Whats this? I said, Thats my first aid kit. Never mind,
weve got a first aid kit at the camp. You dont need it. Leave it behind. Whats
was very reluctant this? An extra pair of shoes. You dont need an extra pair of shoes. Throw
to leave those those away. Set those aside. Whats this? Whats that? They went through it
based on weight. Whats this? Its a water pump. Our water comes off
books behind. the mountain, its very clean, you can drink it right out of the stream. Leave
that behind.

Finally, they said, Whats this? I said, Books. Those are my two books.
They said, We have books at the camp. I said, You dont have these books!
I clutched those books, and I was very reluctant to leave those books behind.
I cant remember what I was reading, but if Im going to be in a field camp for
ten days in the middle of the jungle, by God I want a good book, a headlamp,
and some extra AA batteries. It means a lot to me to at least be able to read
for half and hour, forty five minutes before I go to sleep at night. If its a rainy
day and were sitting around, I want to be able to read.

I might have Tolstoy with me. I might have Dostoyevsky. I might have an 800
page English novel by Anthony Trollope. I want that book with me. That was
probably in 1989 or 1990. I came back and wrote a short column for Outside
Magazine about what this world needs is a compact electronic book. It didnt
exist. It should be something about the size of a Penguin paperback, but it
should contain a hundred books.

What year was that again?

1989, I think.

Oh, dude. You foresaw the Kindle.

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I predicted the Kindle, yeah. I published it. I think the essay was called A
Moveable Feast because when I got out of there, one of the things that I
next read was Hemmingways great memoir of his time in Paris, A Moveable
Feast. So I named this thing The Moveable Feast compact electronic library. I
had an acronym, MFCEL or something like that, the Moveable Feast Compact
Electronic Library. What I described was essentially the Kindle, but I didnt
know how to build one so I couldnt patent it.

Oh, thats phenomenal. Do you travel with a Kindle now? Is that all you take?

If Im going to go into the Congo for ten days, I would travel with a Kindle, but
I might also travel with an 800 page British novel. I spent 8 weeks walking
across the Congo on a National Geographic assignment with a guy named
Mike Faye, for a series of stories called The MegaTransect

Series. I would walk with him for two weeks at a time, and then I would come
out and write one installment of the story. Then he would keep walking. He
was walking 2,000 miles across the Congo Basin to do a biological survey of
places where nobody else went, walking through swamps, crossing rivers,
wearing a pair of river sandals and shorts. When I walked with him, I wore
My field journal river sandals and shorts.

and my Penguin We carried day packs. His African crew carried the heavy stuff, the tents and
the food. In my day pack, I always had one little precious package. It was my
classic book would field journal, which was about a four inch by six inch little hardbound ledger
still be dry. journal thing, that happened to be exactly the same dimensions, in terms
of up and down, sideways, as a Penguin classic paperback book. I could
put those together, and they would make this neat little package, a Penguin
classic and my field journal. I put them inside a Ziplock bag, I put a rubber
band around it, I put it in my daypack, and then I knew that I could go through
any amount of rain, any number of river crossings. If I had to swim, it didnt
matter. My field journal and my Penguin classic book would still be dry.

Generally, the Penguin classic while I was doing this whole thing was one
of Trollopes novels. One of the 19th century comedy of manners novels
by Anthony Trollope, such as The Way We Live Now. It was one of his great
novels, The Way We Live Now. It was a 19th century comedy of manners
taking place in London. When I got into my tent in the middle of the Congo, at
the end of a hard day, and I had my headlamp, it was enormously satisfying
and enormously important for me to be able to spend half an hour reading
Anthony Trollope.

That was your way to kind of unwind and take yourself away from the place.

Exactly, to unwind and take myself away. I didnt want to read about

Go somewhere else.

jungle exploration. I wanted to read about comedy of manners from 19th

century London.

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 20

Do you still have those field notebooks? Do you review them at all?

I have all of them, yeah. I do sometimes review them. For instance, I could
go back to one of them and tell you that on July 14th, 1999, sitting at a camp
fire in the middle of Ebola habitat in northeastern Gabon with this guy and
his African crew, one of the crewmen told me about what it was like when his
home village was struck by Ebola. He told me, among other things, that he
and his friend had seen a pile of 13 dead gorillas nearby in the forest, when
Ebola was hitting their village. He didnt know, but I did know, that Ebola kills
gorillas, as well as chimps and humans. That moment was the beginning of
my six year project to write the book Spillover. Its in one of those. Its both in
my field notebook and in my journal, because I carry a moment-to-moment
notebook in one ziplock bag, which is on my body and easy to get to during
the course of the day. Then I carry a field journal in another ziplock bag that I
write, usually first thing in the morning.

I was going to say, you consolidate your minute-by-minute, thats ...

The following morning I write a journal entry that gives a sort of narrative
overview of whatever happened the day before.

Thats phenomenal. David, thank you so much. This has been freaking
amazing. Were looking forward to coming back to you in six weeks with some
detailed questions about The Song of the Dodo. I cant thank you enough for
your time. This has been an absolutely phenomenal conversation. I really,
really appreciate you taking the time.

Youre very, very welcome, Shane. I love close reading, so I love what youre
doing. Im very grateful youre doing it on one of my books, and I salute the
whole enterprise.

This interview is intened for Members of the Farnam Street Virtual Reading Group
and not intended for wide distribution. If youd like to participate, sign up for a
membership at farnamstreetblog.com/membership.

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