Tom Bissell: Empathy and Curiosity

What happens when a celebrated writer like Tom Bissell ventures into the world of video games, fiction, and journalism? Join us as Tom shares captivating stories from his childhood in Michigan's Upper Peninsula and how early encounters with arcade classics shaped his creative journey. With literary influences from his father's circle, including Jim Harrison and Philip Caputo, Tom embraced a life of writing without a fallback plan. His insights into the evolution of gaming and the creative process offer a fresh perspective on artistic identity and the pursuit of one's passion.

We also delve into the nuances of storytelling, highlighting how imagination and empathy drive the creative process. From the technicalities of screenwriting to the fearless exploration of emotions through art, this episode is a testament to the transformative power of creativity.  

www.slightlyprod.com

Episode Transcript

Tom Bissell (00:00):
Good writing always rushes you to a place that is
surprising and inevitable.
That's to me what good drama isand what a good literary
experience is, and doing themboth at the same time is the
trick.

Jennifer Coronado (00:13):
Hello and welcome to Everyone Is.
I am your host, jenniferCoronado.
The intent of this show is toengage with all types of people
and build an understanding thatanyone who has any kind of
success has achieved thatsuccess because they are a
creative thinker.
So whether you are an artist ora cook or an award-winning
journalist, everyone hassomething to contribute to the

(00:33):
human conversation.
And now, as they say on withthe show, I was asking a friend
of mine who came from the videogame world, who can I talk to in
that space?
Who's emblematic of someonewho's a creative thinker?
And he immediately said oh, youhave to talk to Tom Bissell.
He's a great writer and I haveto say I am both grateful and

(00:55):
resentful because I started todig into Tom's career and I saw
he contained multitudes.
He's a journalist, a critic, ascreenwriter, a video game
writer, a nonfiction writer, anaward-winning short story writer
, a Guggenheim fellow.
So I'm excited and a littletrepidatious to welcome Tom
Bissell to Everyone Is.

Tom Bissell (01:16):
No need to be trepidatious my career baffles
me as much as it baffles you.

Jennifer Coronado (01:22):
Well, here we go, let's get into the
bafflement.
So I start interviews with theform of this question, which is
where are you from, as in,where'd you grow up?

Tom Bissell (01:29):
I grew up in the Upper Peninsula or on the Upper
Peninsula of Michigan, kind ofan obscure part of the country.
It's a part of the country thatis virtually impossible to go
to accidentally.
You have to go there to gothere.
It's very hard to pass throughit.
No-transcript wasting quoteunquote all their time playing

(02:13):
video games and worrying they'renot going to be interested in
things like books or linearmedia.
You know, don't necessarilydespair, it might be all right.
You can love multiple thingswith a full heart.

Jennifer Coronado (02:25):
So tell me about what were your favorite
comic books and what was yourfirst video game.
Was it in a console or was itat an arcade?
What was that?

Tom Bissell (02:34):
I think the first games I really remember playing
were the early stand-up arcadegames Donkey Kong, Space
Invaders, Missile Command.
We would go to Milwaukee,Wisconsin, for family vacations
and stay at a very nice hotelthere called the Fister and they
had a little arcade and I justthought it was just a cabinet of

(02:54):
wonders for me.
I would wander down to thatarcade and play for hours.
And that's the thing I oftenremark about video games is that
this is an art form that beganas a way to suck quarters out of
the pockets of children.
It's such a ignominiousbeginning for an art form.

(03:14):
But there you have it.
Well, you know, epic poetrybegan as a way to like flatter
Kings while everyone stuffedtheir faces with pheasant and
wine.
So, you know, not every artform has noble beginnings, but
my first memory was playingthose standup arcade games and
then graduated to the Atari 2600and, just you know, played all
that and just kept going,marching right through the

(03:36):
console generations as they came.
And my daughter was a big videogame player and I showed her
some of the early Nintendo gamesthat I used to play when I was
a kid and she was looking atthem like, you know, someone
looking at a tablet written inSanskrit.
She was like, how did you playthese things?
You know, they're so unpleasant, they're so hard.

(03:57):
And I just told her you don'tknow what you don't know at the
time.
You know, and the fact thatvideo games have probably come
faster, farther than any otherform of technology with the
exception of stuff like AI in mylifetime is, you know, it's a
source of delight and someconsternation for me because it
feels like we could have usedsome of those advances in other

(04:20):
areas.
But, alas, this is theentertainment age we're dumping
it all into entertainment.

Jennifer Coronado (04:25):
Yeah, it's so true.
It's funny when you say yourdaughter is like, how do you
play these games?
You said the Atari 2600.
I was like, ooh, that was fancy.
We had the first Atari.
She doesn't know the pleasureof playing tank where you're
just moving a joystick hard tothe left and hard to the right
just to get a tank to go an inchup a screen.

Tom Bissell (04:48):
Yeah, riveting family matches in tank.
I remember those vividly.
My father really liked thatgame.

Jennifer Coronado (04:55):
Yeah, so was your dad a writer.
Do I get that right?
What would your dad do?

Tom Bissell (04:59):
No, no.
My dad was very close friendswith two pretty well-known
writers though, and that's how Igot the writing bug early on.
So my dad was a lover ofreading, friend to writers, and
he knew the difficult and thesewere very successful writers,
mind you and he'd been there attheir sides for some pretty wild
career turns.
So when I told him I wanted tobe a writer, it wasn't one of

(05:21):
those parents saying you'llnever make any money.
It's a stupid thing to do, youknow, don't daydream.
He just knew intimately likethe struggles for even
successful people trying towrite for a living, and so he
had a pretty clear eyed view ofwhat the bloody voyage ahead of
me.
But he was also prettysupportive of it, and, um, you

(05:41):
know, especially once his twofriends, the writers Jim
Harrison and Philip Caputo whoare like my literary fathers
they showed some earlyenthusiasm for my juvenilia
encouraged me to keep going, andI did.
I never really had a plan B.

Jennifer Coronado (05:57):
Yeah.
So Philip Caputo.
For those who don't know, hewas a Pulitzer Prize winning
journalist, right, and he wroteRumors of War.
Did anything in his styleinfluence how you thought about
writing, or was it just hisstories of writing?

Tom Bissell (06:09):
Phil's an excellent prose writer.
So I think everyone's style isjust an amalgamation of the
first five or six people youimitate.
Right, that's all style is.
It's just mature imitationmixed with a bunch of other
people, and that's why people'sstyles are so different, because
they all have different feederrivers flowing into them.
So Phil and Jim were both, youknow, very formative influences

(06:31):
on me.
But then as I got older gosh, Ithink the writers that I sort
of went craziest for.
Thomas McGuane was one.
A great Western novelist, johnUpdike blew me away when I read
Rabbit Run when I was like 13years old and I can tell a funny
story about reading in JohnUpdike.
I was in maybe sixth grade inCatholic school and I was
reading the Updike novel Couples, which came out in 1968, which

(06:53):
was absolutely filthy like justfilled with sex on every 10
pages or so, because Updike wasa very graphic writer.
And I remember dragging thatbook around school and reading
it and all these adults lookingat me and patting me on the head
oh, tommy is so precocious,look at him reading John Updike,
because they knew the nameright.
I remember thinking they haveno idea what's in this book.

(07:15):
So books became like a secretportal into forbidden knowledge
for me.
So my plan to make kidsinterested in reading is leave
just a bunch of reallyscandalous books around the
house and pretend like you don'tknow what's going on and your
kids are sneaking off with them.
Because reading had like a darkglamour to me.

(07:36):
It was explicit and it wasfunny and I was getting news
from books that I wasn't gettingfrom anywhere else.
So Updike was a big influenceon me.
Later on, david Foster Wallacewas a big influence.
Laurie Moore, a greatMidwestern Well, she's not a
Midwesterner by birth but she'sprobably one of the funniest
writers alive and has written abunch of wonderful books.

(07:58):
Martin Amis people that werefunny, people that were sort of
had a lusty appetite for lifeall that stuff made me want to
be that way, which is ironicbecause I was not that way at
all.

Jennifer Coronado (08:09):
I was a small town kid scared of his own
shadow for years circumstancesand you don't even often know
that you're placing yourself inthose circumstances.
But when you really engage withyour imagination, you can be in

(08:31):
whole different worlds thanyou're occupying in your real
physical space.

Tom Bissell (08:33):
Yeah Well, movies, books, games, their whole goal
is to give the reader or theplayer or the viewer a surrogate
experience as powerful as thethings the characters on the
page or on screen are feeling,and it's the magic of
imaginative art.
It's also the bane ofimaginative art.
So trying to supply my audiencemembers, no matter what I'm

(08:59):
working on, with something thatmakes them as excited and as
gripped and as interested inwhatever it is I'm making I am,
is the it's both the challengeand the reward.

Jennifer Coronado (09:09):
Yeah, so you went to college in Michigan.
You went to community college,first, I believe, and then you
went to your four-year collegeand then you went to the Peace
Corps.
So how did you end up?
And in Uzbekistan, right,that's is that where you went.
So how did you end up inUzbekistan, right?
Yes, is that where you went.
So how did you end up on thatpath?

Tom Bissell (09:30):
Well, not a lot of demand in 1996 for English
majors graduating from middletier Midwestern ag colleges,
michigan State University.
No disrespect intended.
I didn't know what the hell todo with my life.
And then a Peace Corpsvolunteer came to one of my
college classes and just talkedabout what that entailed.

(09:52):
And I mentioned before, as asmall town kid scared of his own
shadow, I wanted a life ofexperience, intense experience
and intense adventure, becausethose are all the books I loved
reading.
But I myself was just not cutfrom that cloth.
I did not like that aboutmyself.
I hated my fearfulness, myanxiety.
So I decided to drop a neutronbomb on it by going to

(10:15):
Uzbekistan as a Peace Corpsvolunteer.
I think cognitive behavioraltherapists there's a term for
that.
I think exposure therapy.

Jennifer Coronado (10:22):
I believe it's called the thing that
frightens you.

Tom Bissell (10:25):
Well, boy, howdy, did I do that?
And it worked.
The Peace Corps said it openedmy eyes to the world and travel,
and I became a very peripatetictraveler for years after that.
And I have no regrets aboutparenting or being a parent, but
the one thing I do miss is justpicking up and going somewhere
for three months, cause I feellike that was my life for, you

(10:47):
know, better part of a decade,and I think it gave my writing.
I don't know, I don't know ifit made me a better writer, but
it's certainly made me a morewidely ranging writer.
You know, the more you exposeyourself to other cultures and
other people, I just think it'sall fuel for your imagination to
other cultures and other people.

Jennifer Coronado (11:06):
I just think it's all fuel for your
imagination.
No, no, totally.
And also it helps you get outof.
You can fall into a rut of selfwhere, if you're in your
everyday and the patterns thatyou develop, particularly as you
get older, keep you fromexploring other things and then
immediately you go to anotherplace and you don't quite
understand the language.
You may understand a little bitof it, but how people see
things is so different.
It really opens up yourexperience to the world.

Tom Bissell (11:29):
Yeah, yeah, I always called that the
monoglott's sudden understandingthat reality does not take
place in English, and that's areally emotionally crucial
insight to make, because theworld is so much more
complicated and people's motivesare so much different from what
you imagine they might be.

(11:51):
I just love discovering hownarrow my understanding of the
world is.
I like that feeling.
Some people don't, but Iperversely enjoy it.

Jennifer Coronado (12:02):
No, I think that's great.
One of the things I love isdon't, but I perversely enjoy it
.
No, I think that's great.
One of the things I love iswhen you travel somewhere else.
For example, I've been to Italyand then I've come back, you
know, and been in New York afterthat and I and you can see the
DNA of Italy in the way somepeople in New York react, or how
the whole Hatfield and McCoy'sfeud in the South came from

(12:24):
Scottish tribalism.
All these things are veryconnected.
You know what?

Tom Bissell (12:28):
I mean yeah, the New York accent is basically a
500-year-old Dutch accent.

Jennifer Coronado (12:34):
Exactly right , or Old English is actually
closer to Southern accents thatwe know today, which I think is
amazing.
You went on to become an internat Harper's and so you're
working for a magazine.
How did how?
You went from Peace Corps andnow suddenly you're like all
right, I want to get a writingjob.
How do you go about doing?

Tom Bissell (12:53):
that I've had a subscription to that magazine
for God for close to 40 years atthis point and I'd always seen
these ads in the back apply forthe Harper's Magazine internship
and this is a story I've told afew times before.

(13:16):
But after the Peace Corps Ididn't really have any prospects
.
So I applied for two things.
One was a paper mill internshipin my hometown.
There were three applicants.
Two of them were granted aninterview.
I was one of them.
And then I applied for theHarper's Magazine internship,
which had 2,000 applicants orsomething, and eight people were
called in for an interview.
I got interviews at both.
I did not get the paper mailjob it was down to me and

(13:37):
another person and I didn't getit.
But I did get the Harper'sMagazine internship, which
struck me then and strikes menow as just a completely absurd
turn of events.
And so I moved to New York Citynot knowing a soul, stayed with
one of my father's Marine Corpsbuddies in New Jersey, madison,
new Jersey for two months.
While I did it I was commutinginto my unpaid internship at

(14:01):
this august literary institutionand just realized New York was
the place for me.
The publishing world was aplace for me.
I met my people.
The first time I was in NewYork, I got on a subway.
It's probably very differentnow with the advent of
smartphones, but I got on asubway in New York and I'm
always a very nosy investigatorof what people are reading in

(14:22):
public spaces.
And suddenly, for Subway in NewYork, people were reading,
everyone was reading a book andthey were good books and it was
maybe the first time in my lifeI'd ever seen someone reading
like a book that I had that Iwas like oh, that's a good book,
that's not just some trashyairplane thriller.
Oh, this is, these are mypeople, this is where I need to

(14:43):
live.
And, yeah, I was in New Yorkfor a decade.

Jennifer Coronado (14:47):
When you say that these are your people, was
it related to the literarynature of how they were
exploring things, or what elsemade that, the place that you
found, your people?

Tom Bissell (14:57):
It's pretty simple.
It's just are you interested inbooks?
Are you interested in writing?
Do you like movies?
Are you engaged in a life ofimagination and thinking about
stuff?
It sounds very artsy-fartsy,airy-fairy to hear me spell it
out that way, but you know whereI grew up.
It just and this is no shame tothese people, the people around
whom I grew up, and not I'm nottrying to suggest they were all

(15:19):
like knuckle-draggingNeanderthals, but it's just hard
to have a conversation aboutliterature knuckle-dragging
Neanderthals, but it's just hardto have a conversation about
literature.
And again, I don't say that as acriticism.
People have lives and issuesand problems.
And now that I'm, you know, 50and have gone through the
emotional ringer and all theways you expect for a
middle-aged person to do, thatpure love I had of talking about

(15:39):
that stuff.
I don't derive nearly as muchpleasure from it.
In fact, a lot of my friendsaren't even writers today
because you know, I don't needthat.
Myself no longer needs thevalidation that other people are
interested in the stuff.
I am Like I'm beyond that point.

Jennifer Coronado (15:58):
For sure, because you're blossoming into
who you are and you're alsoexploring what that looks like,
and so you do need thatvalidation to feel secure.
Particularly as you weretalking about if you're a very
reserved person.
You want to be able to easilyhave those conversations with
people, right?
You want, versus having tostruggle to find a space where
you guys meet.
So what was the first thing youever wrote for yourself?

(16:20):
That wasn't an assignment.

Tom Bissell (16:23):
I wrote a short story for the first creative
writing class I ever took.
I was probably a sophomore inhigh school and it was about a
father burying a dog with histwo sons next to him and, as I
recall, the father had hit thedog.

(16:44):
And, as I recall, the fatherhad hit the dog but he didn't
want to tell his kids that.
So while they're standing nextto the dog's grave, the kids ask
a series of increasinglyinvasive questions about who hit
the dog and the father hasevading telling the truth about

(17:04):
what happened.
I doubt it was very good, butthe psychological pressure
cooker that I put my poor dadcharacter into, I think is very
indicative of what drew myinterest as a writer even from
the very first efforts.
Like an incredibly intensesituation that starts out at a
moment of someone thinking, okay, I got this, and then, as the
story unravels, the protagonistrealizing that not only do they

(17:25):
not have this, they're actuallydrowning and they just didn't
know it.
It's like a lot of my storiesjust keep circling back to the
unknowability of the situationyou thought you were in versus
the situation you're actually in.
That's a theme I keep turningto.
I don't know why.

Jennifer Coronado (17:42):
You're writing at least some of the
criticism and some of the shortstories I've read.
I would define it as muscular,and what I mean by that.
It's very tightly written, butwithin it there's very big ideas
, and you talked before abouthow, when you're finding your
style, it's an amalgamation offour or five different styles
that really resonate with you.
How would you define your style?

Tom Bissell (18:05):
Oh God, I don't know if I have an answer to that
.
I try to think very littleabout it, about that stuff,
because it's your instrument,right, and you don't want to
take it apart.
You don't want to disassembleit and put it back together.
I love thinking about otherwriters' styles and analyzing
what they do, but it's very it'sfunny.

(18:25):
I've never really thought aboutthis until you said something.
I've never even attempted tosort of subject my own prose to
that kind of rigorous analysisof what's going on, partially
because I'm the one who wrote it.
How could I possibly haveanything intelligent to say
about it?
Because it's coming from aplace that's subconscious but
also calculated, you know, butalso you know the subject of

(18:45):
endless revision and also,hopefully, has bursts of like in
the moment, inspiration in it.
I mean writing is a.
It's a very hard thing to doand the more you do it the
better.
You don't necessarily get, youknow like it gets easier.
You probably do fewer revisionsthan when you were young, but

(19:06):
the sheer act of imaginingwhether you're writing a piece
of journalism from your notes,you're inventing a story or
writing a screenplay, having toimagine things that are
simultaneously surprising butalso true, is a real challenge
and good writing to me alwaysagain, fiction or nonfiction,

(19:29):
let's be genre agnostic here.
Good writing always rushes youto a place that is surprising
and inevitable.
That's to me what good drama isand what a good literary
experience is Surprising andinevitable, and doing them both
at the same time is the trick.

Jennifer Coronado (19:46):
And inevitable, and doing them both
at the same time is the trick.
Yeah, so just to give you alittle bit of background.
So our company is calledSlightly Disappointed
Productions and we call it thatbecause when creative people are
striving for things they'renever done and they're always
slightly disappointed with whatthey've delivered, because
they've always wanted thatperfect thing and it's what

(20:08):
keeps creative people comingback to trying things over and
over again.
But there are points whenyou're creating something where
you can find that one aha momentor that one man.
I know this line I just wroteis the perfect line for this
moment.
Have you ever had that happenin any of your writing?

Tom Bissell (20:30):
Yeah, just moments that feel true and just strong.
Yes, if you're lucky, you'llget a couple of those a day.
When you're struggling throughsomething and you swim from buoy
to buoy, you know when you'rethose just real pure moments.
And oftentimes when I'mrevising, it's often those pure

(20:52):
moments are the only things thatsurvive, sort of my first call.
You know, I've often written ahundred pages to get to that
moment and then realize, okay,this is where it starts.
All those pages I had to writethem to get here, but now they
don't need to be here anymorebecause now I actually
understand what I'm doing.
I understand what this story isabout.
One of my books is a nonfictionbook called Apostle.

(21:14):
It's a travel book wherein Itraveled geez to nine countries
over a period of six years justvisiting these supposed resting
places of the 12 apostles.
The first draft of that bookwas 2,300 pages, I think.
Oh, my God, because I had noidea what it was about.

(21:35):
I was just writing.
That's all I was doing.
It was just, and there wasgreat quote, great stuff in it,
but it wasn't about anything andit took me like the last three
years I worked on that book.
I was just cutting, I was justmoving stuff and cutting, and it
was a very helpful writingexperience because I'd never
worked like that before, where Icreated a piece of granite and

(22:01):
then had to find the sculpturethat was inside it.
And it's not a very pleasantway of doing it because you know
, I think the final manuscript Iturned into my publisher was
700 pages long.
So I cut two books from thebook, which is sane to me now to
think about it.
But that's sometimes what ittakes to find out what it is
you're doing.
Something can be good, it canread well, it can have funny

(22:26):
moments, but if it doesn't havean overriding sense of purpose,
it's just aimless.
If it doesn't have intent, nowyou don't have to know what the
intent is.
I'm not talking about didacticart here.
I hate didactic art, I hate artthat preaches.
But intent is, I think, thecrucial component for any

(22:48):
creative person to think aboutwhen they're trying to create
something, Not.
What am I trying to express?
What are the points I'm tryingto get across?
That's not quite what I mean.
I think it's more of an intentis how do you want this to feel
for the person on the other endof the canon?
How do you want them to feelcoming away with it?

(23:08):
Do you want to give them asense of delight, anxiety,
lovelornness, a feeling oflife's richness and wonder?
Do you want to leave them witha sense of disquietude?
I think you really have tothink hard about the type of
experience you're trying tocreate, and it's going to vastly

(23:29):
differ from project to project.
And I think a professional,someone who does this for a
living, is like a studiomusician.
You know, studio musician cansit down, hear a few bars of
something and just start to jam.
I view myself as like a jamperson when it comes to writing.
If I'm coming in to writesomething for the screen, to

(23:50):
work on a video game, if I'mwriting something for myself,
they're all going to have verydifferent types of intent.
Collaborative art form isalways like a miasma of a bunch
of different stuff, especially acorporate entertainment like a
big blockbuster video game.
Good luck trying to have asteely-eyed authorial sense of
intent in that particular arena,but it's important to actually

(24:16):
think about what is this teamtrying to make and how do I fit
into that mosaic, how do Ihighlight all the stuff this
team seems to be interested inand sort of then smuggle my own
kind of unique zhuzh into it,and it's served me pretty well

(24:38):
because I think thinking aboutit in those terms, thinking
about audience not in the senseof like slavishly giving them
what they want, but almostfinding yourself in the audience
.
What if I had amnesia and Iknew nothing about this project,
what would I like?
And I think that's the mosthonest thing you can do as a

(25:00):
creator, because I think tryingto write for the widest possible
audience doesn't always workbecause sometimes comes across
as pandering.
Hollywood, of course, is ourmaestros of creating the
crowd-pleasing pander.
Four quadrant yeah, yeah, thefour quadrant pandering project
that manages to appeal toprecisely no one, versus being

(25:21):
able to trust yourself as havinggood and a good enough sense of
what a civilian is going tothink about what you're a part
of creating and try to positionit as what would I respond to?
And I think you get better,truer, more interesting art that

(25:41):
way than trying to give theso-called audience what it wants
, and I'm putting square scarequotes around that.

Jennifer Coronado (25:49):
There's so many questions I have here, but
the real question I have is yousaid you don't like art that
preaches, but what do you thinkabout art that hates its
audience?

Tom Bissell (26:02):
Oh dear.
My only prerequisite is thatjust something be interesting.
Now, obviously, there are linesyou don't.
Lani Riefenstahl's Triumph ofthe Will is a, you know, is a
pain to Nazism, even though it'sa technically astonishing movie
.
I think I don't want to championfilms that like, have you know,
truly misanthropic points ofview, and I think a lot of Lars

(26:25):
Venturer's films do misanthropicpoints of view and I think a
lot of Lars Ventrier's films do.
But he's also a prettyinteresting filmmaker.
Do I love his movies?
No, but am I glad?
Like?
Melancholia, I think, is an odd, bizarre masterpiece.
I'd never want to watch itagain.
But there's a movie that feelsboth surprising and inevitable,
has utter contempt for humanity,its audience, the performers on

(26:46):
screen.
Surprising and inevitable hasutter contempt for humanity, its
audience, the performers onscreen, and yet it somehow
becomes this really hypnoticmeditation on the end of the
world.
It's a beautiful movie that Idon't love but I really respect.
So you can hate the audience.
As an artist, I think the oddsare stacked against you.
But that doesn't mean you can'tcreate a really interesting

(27:08):
experience, but you're nevergoing to create something that
people love.

Jennifer Coronado (27:12):
That's so interesting.
You say that I was exactlythinking.
I'm not kidding you.
I was exactly thinking ofMelancholia, but I also think
about the plays of BertoltBrecht, because I think
Brechtian theater reallyalienates its audience a bit in
how he approaches, how he tellsa story.
So I just that was my esotericquestion.

(27:33):
I'll have several more of those, not to worry.
You've been called the masterof the literary pivot by Jane
Chiavattari, and what do youthink she meant by that?

Tom Bissell (27:44):
Oh, I think she meant that I've just.
I've had a lot of stages in mycareer.
To me it's just all felt likethe same thing the endless
attempt to make a living withouthaving to get a so-called real
job.
But you know, whenever anopportunity is presented itself,
I've always just gone for it,and anytime a door is opened
I've walked through it.

(28:04):
I think that's all that means.
I don't think maybe I'm justwired weird, but to me jumping
around in genres isn't thatinsane.
To me it's never been like thatbig of a deal.
All these forms of writing havedifferent constraints and again
it's just asking yourself whatis this for?

(28:26):
Why am I doing this?
If you know the constraints,then you can understand the form
.
If you can understand the form,you can work in the form.
Some of them take longer tomaster than others.
Not saying I've mastered any ofthem, but I think I have some
facility with a lot of them.
Screenplays take a while tolearn how to write.
They're weird in a lot of ways.

(28:48):
Video game scripts, holy cow,that's a whole other ball of wax
Writing.
Prose takes a long time tolearn how to do with authority
and with muscularity and withverve, but it's not something
that you're ever going to getbetter at thinking about it.
You actually have to do it.
About it, you actually have todo it.

(29:10):
And so it took me, I think, afew years before I really came
to risk Cause.
When I first started writingscreenplays I was.
I thought I was slumming it.
I thought, well, I can use thisto fund my quote real writing.

Jennifer Coronado (29:16):
Oh, that's very New York influence of you.

Tom Bissell (29:20):
Oh, totally.
I hate that line of thinkingnow and I'm embarrassed.
I ever thought that way.
You read a screenplay by ScottFrank or Tony Gilroy and you're
going to tell me that thesepeople are not writers of the
highest order and theirscreenplays are beautiful.

Jennifer Coronado (29:32):
Well, and think about Tony's father too,
and his, you know.

Tom Bissell (29:41):
Days of Wine and Roses and the beautiful writing
there.
Can I tell a funny story aboutthat?
This is illustrative of a lotof what we're talking about.
So one of my first illustrativeof a lot of what we're talking
about.
So one of my first in terms ofnot really knowing what lays in
store for you.
Career-wise, one of the firstbooks I ever published as an
assistant editor was a reissueof a 1973 novel called Desperate
Characters by Paula Fox.
It was out of print.

(30:01):
I put it back into print.
It's one of the most successfulthings I ever had a hand in
publishing as an editor.
It became a small sensationamong the New York literati.
Everyone was like oh my God,this novel's incredible.
It's so prescient about so manythings, it's so intense, it is
it's just a fall down greatnovel.
I highly recommend it to anyonelistening to this.
Paula Fox has added interest ashaving been Courtney Love's

(30:23):
grandmother.
But Paula became really animportant person in my life for
a while and we just sort of rodethis wonderful train where she
thought that's it, my career'sover, and then had this
wonderful burst of late in liferecognition.
That was great.
Well, it was a movie made ofdesperate characters by Frank
Gilroy.
I watched the movie after thebook came out and I said to my

(30:45):
boss, jerry Howard, debbieNorton, hey, you know, I watched
the movie after the book cameout.
And I said to my boss, jerryHoward, debbie Norton, hey, you
know, I watched this movie lastnight.
Desperate Characters, I didn'tknow.
It made a movie and the moviewas really good.
He's, oh, that's a Frank Gilroymovie.
It's like I don't know FrankGilroy, you don't know Frank
Gilroy.
He was the king of New Yorktheater and independent films in
the 70s.
That guy was a beast and Ithought, well, that's

(31:06):
interesting.
So I went down to the Strand Igot a volume of his one-act
plays.
I got the Subject was Roses.
I just read a bunch of FrankGilroy and got really this is
way before I even I don't thinkTony had a public career at this
point Flash forward 20 yearslater.
And 20 years later and Tony andI are being introduced and I say

(31:29):
, strangely enough, I'm a bigfan of your dads, I'm a big fan
of yours too, but I'm a big fanof your dads and I told him the
story and he just marveled andit was a wonderful ice-breaking
thing for us to sort of connectwith.
You know, before I wasofficially hired to work with
him on season two of Andor and Ijust thought to myself what

(31:56):
better endorsement for curiosityand just following what
interests you than that?
So this writer obscure to menot to the rest of New York,
obviously this obscure to mewriter that I hunted out and
read a bunch of because I wasinterested, later paid off in
this really resident,interesting way with that man's
son decades later.

(32:16):
Forget careerism, forgetcalculation.
Follow your sincere interestsand they have as good a chance
of any as paying off in waysthat you're in no position to
understand now.

Jennifer Coronado (32:29):
Getting more into the video game of it all,
because that's sort of wherethis journey started.
When I wanted to talk tosomeone around that space, you
wrote a book called Extra Liveswhy Video Games Matter.
Where did that book come fromfor you?

Tom Bissell (32:43):
That book came from one of the first, longest and
most frustrating bouts ofwriter's block I ever had.
I was living in Las Vegas,nevada, on a fellowship at UNLV,
supposed to be writing myaforementioned Apostles book and
just couldn't write, probablybecause, again, I didn't know
what the book was about.

(33:04):
So I had a good six to 10months where I just played video
games, rediscovered how much Iliked playing video games.
This is around 2008.
Video games suddenly got prettygood.
I mean, they were good before,but they were achieving a level
of sophistication that I wasn'tused to, that I wasn't aware of.

(33:27):
Pc games had gotten there a lotsooner than console games
because they just had more stuffgoing on.
And then, but I was never a PCgamer, I was always a console
gamer, I was always a consolegaming peasant.
So I was discovering all thesegames for the first time and
thinking, holy shit, there'ssomething like genuinely
interesting and innovative goingon here, that I'm like feeling

(33:50):
things playing these games thatI'm not accustomed to feeling,
while holding a piece of plasticin my hand and staring at, you
know, a cathode tube.
So I thought to myself whydon't I take these six to eight
lost months and try to makesomething of them creatively.
So I proposed to my publisherthis book, extra Lives, which

(34:12):
they did not want me to write.
They thought it was a riskyproposition and could possibly
do damage to my career as awriter of serious literary
fiction and nonfiction.
But I insisted and I did it.
And that book, which was reallyabout storytelling and video
games and the need for it toimprove a book, whose thesis I

(34:32):
now completely reject because Ithink it's way more complicated
than I was ever aware of when Iwas writing it as an outsider to
game development.
Now that I've done it for over adecade, I'm a lot more
sympathetic to quote badstorytelling in games, because
it's a tricky one.
There's all sorts of headwindsthat push against you when
you're quote writing a game.
But that book's publication gotyou know nobody had really

(34:58):
written a defense of games fromlike a non inside position
before you know I it wasn't aninsider saying no, these things
are important, I was a totaloutsider to the industry saying
no, these things are.
That was genuinely new and thebook did fairly well.
And then suddenly I startedgetting approached to work in
the games industry and put mymoney where my mouth is and you

(35:21):
know, have been happilyproviding shitty writing for
video games ever since.

Jennifer Coronado (35:26):
Well, that brings up a quick.
Well, you wrote criticism ofgames too, and so when you're on
the flip side of it and you'resuddenly embedded, I think was
it Gears of War was your first,or which was your first game?

Tom Bissell (35:42):
Oh, I did a couple other little things before that,
but Gears of War was like thefirst big studio game that was
released.
I'd worked on a couple beforethat, but they were canceled so
they never saw the light of day.
But yeah.
Yeah, gears was the first kindof big blockbuster game that
came out.
Yeah, yeah.

Jennifer Coronado (35:55):
So I guess my question and you diving into
the game space is here you are,you've written these wonderful
books about historical travel,you write short stories, You've
been an editor and a critic andsuddenly you're in the games
world.
And so what did you bring in tothat and what did you learn
that?
You were like oh, what wereyour aha moments as you came in?

Tom Bissell (36:19):
The first one was a comic one.
I published my first book whenI was 29.
I was a full editor at a majorNew York publisher when I was 27
.
I was very accustomed to beingthe youngest person in the room.

Jennifer Coronado (36:33):
Are you trying to make me feel bad about
myself here?
Come on.

Tom Bissell (36:36):
No, I'm just saying I was very accustomed to being
the young person in the room andbeing told oh my gosh, you're
so young.
Well, I go to work in the gamesindustry and then very
consistently, at 34 years of age, I was often the oldest person
in the room or one of the oldestpeople in the room.
So that was a really whiplashkind of inducing sort of

(36:58):
realization that I wasn't thewhippersnapper, that in this
world, that I wasn't the otherone that I was in, but a very
healthy one, you know, becausecontext determines everything in
life.
You know your age, your wealth,your attractiveness.
It's all just context, baby.
It's all context.
So the other thing I noticed wasjust how complicated games are,

(37:24):
and I don't mean writing them,I just mean everything.
It's like a miracle any of themactually function.
So many of them are just heldtogether with digital duct tape.
That I realized that somethingthat functions, plays well, is
fun and has a story that givesyou any kind of emotional
resonance at all is like atriumph.
And I was reviewing games allalong.

(37:45):
But the deeper I got indevelopment, the more I just
backed away from having grandthoughts about the place of
narrative in games, because Irealized I don't even know what
it is.
I'm not even.
Certain games are like evennecessarily have to be a
storytelling medium.
It's cool that they are, andsome of my favorite games are
storytelling games, but I alsohave a lot of favorite games

(38:06):
that just run on vibe.
You know it's a very rich,multifaceted art form.
Well, film is the same way.
Same way films don't have to benarrative films like verner
herzog's film.
Some of my favorite of verner'sfilms are not strictly
narrative films.
They're sort of imagisticallydriven films and keeping an open
mind to how you need now,unique's not the right word how

(38:29):
well, the word I just said ismultifaceted, how multifaceted a
medium can be, is a very usefulthing to keep in your head when
you're working.

Jennifer Coronado (38:36):
Yeah, I want to tell you a really quick
Werner Herzog story.
So I'd seen him at a screeningonce and I think it was for his
documentary about the deathpenalty, and he was in the lobby
.
He was very gracious, heactually was talking to a lot of
people and there was this boy.

(39:01):
He's about 16 years old and hecomes up to Werner and he asked
him how do you look at life?
It was like a veryphilosophical 16-year-old
question.
And Werner Herzog turns to himand he goes oh, my boy, you ask
only the questions that a veryyoung man would ask.
And it was just the best, thequestions that a very young man
would ask, and it was just thebest moment.
And so Werner Herzog if you'veseen behind the scenes of
Fitzcarraldo or anything he's,you know it was such a Werner

(39:22):
Herzog moment.
So and I know he adapted one ofyour stories right?

Tom Bissell (39:27):
Yeah, yeah, I've known Werner for 20 years and
you just remind me when I firstinterviewed because I profiled
him first that's how I met himand I asked him a question, one
of the first questions I askedhim.
I did not put this in theprofile for what will soon be
obvious reasons, and he thoughtfor a moment and he said I don't
think that is a veryinteresting question.
Next, and I said, fair, okay, Idon't think that's a very

(39:52):
interesting question.
I like that energy.
I like that honesty.
There was no offense intendedin it, he's just no, let's not
talk about that, let's move on.
That cut to the chastenedness.
That's something that Iintensely value the older I get.
It's just the ability to notshame anyone but just say, eh,

(40:13):
let's not do that, let's nottalk about that.
What are we going to get fromtalking about that man?
That is a gift that creativepeople need more of, because you
wind up just tolerating a lotof endless discussions about
bullshit in these variousindustries, because sometimes
people just are talking to worksomething out or figure out what
they think or impress someoneelse in the room.
I just like cutting right to it.

(40:35):
What are we doing here.
What is the point of all thisAgain?
What are we trying to make theaudience feel?
Can we just stay on that?

Jennifer Coronado (40:45):
In the book you wrote back in 2013,.
You had said you had not seen avideo game at that point that
had crossed over into art.
Have you seen that happen sinceyou first wrote that?

Tom Bissell (40:55):
Oh, I think.
Yeah, that's one of the linesin that book that even as I
wrote it, I was like I don'tthink, I believe.
Well, I don't think I believethis.
I think there's tons of videogames that are art.
I think they're all art.
Art can be bad.
Art can be bankrupt and lousy.
Let's not pretend that callingsomething art is the be all end.
All that whole debate that hasbeen going on in video games for
the last several years.

(41:17):
It's cooled down now, thank God.
But I was an eager participantin that debate for a while and I
just realized that it'shorseshit, no-transcript.

(41:55):
It's cool that Led Zeppelin getsplayed at the Kennedy Center,
but the thrill of illegitimacyis to me what gives newer art
forms all of their rawness andtheir excitement.
And I go back to some of thosekind of garage band teams of
developers in the 90s makingDoom and Castle, wolfenstein and

(42:16):
Marathon and all these likereally early first person
shooters.
These were just kids likesolving some of the most
challenging programming andengineering problems imaginable,
like people at 3M and people atBoeing working with

(42:36):
three-dimensional models couldnot do.
They were creating virtualmovement in virtual space, not
just relying on the tile fliptrick that early 3D simulations
and computers did.
They were basically laying thefoundation of the modern game
industry, modern computergraphics industry, modern
entertainment, and theirresponse to these breakthroughs

(42:59):
was to stick a shotgun in themiddle of the screen and, like a
demon Nazi, a big pixelateddemon Nazi in the middle of the
screen.
That was how they werechanneling this climacteric
technological breakthrough.
People who were respectablenever would have done that.

Jennifer Coronado (43:19):
Well, that's because they didn't know there
were rules.
Because once you know there'srules, you get so hamstrung by
the rules that the breakthroughsbecome harder because the rules
become the dominant.
The breakthroughs become harderbecause the rules become the
dominant.
And you know, we do need rules,but you need.
That's why kids are so amazing,because they're just, they

(43:41):
don't know everything yet andthen they're not knowing.
They can totally make change.
It's that energy that allowsthem to make change the not
knowing, you know, yeah energythat allows them to make change.

Tom Bissell (43:55):
The not knowing.
You know, yeah, their quote.

Jennifer Coronado (44:00):
Idiotic solutions can sometimes seem
unusually elegant after youthink about them.
Yeah, so you wrote a lot ofbooks about.
You know traveling andhistorical traveling, Like you
wrote a book where you traveledwith your father to Vietnam.
Do you see video game scriptsas travel documents?
Because you're moving through aworld?

Tom Bissell (44:18):
Yeah, in a way they are weird travel logs, because
that's the funny thing aboutwriting a game.
I've written a lot of actiongames, right, and if you're
writing a scene in an actionmovie or an action heavy
sequence in a TV show, here'sthe car chase.
You're just putting all youreffort into making it sound

(44:41):
exciting on the page.
Here's how we're going to shootit.
Here's why it's cool.
Here's the new kind of twist onthe familiar chase.
And then the car wrecks and thecharacters get out of the wreck
and you, okay, I'm okay, cut,come back up.
They're in an apartmentsomewhere, ice bag on their head
.
This is all dumb, obviously onpurpose, but I'm just trying to
illustrate the point.
It's the best story I've everheard.
But that cut is crucial becauseyou don't have to live with the

(45:03):
aftermath of the car crash In agame.
Something unimaginable happens.
The car crashes and then thecharacters get out and then it's
back to gameplay and thecharacter's standing there and
they got to start walking andyou have to have all the
conversations that every otherform of visual entertainment
cuts out, because they'rebullshit, because it's hard to

(45:23):
have people talk at length aboutunimaginable things that just
happen to them, and that's whyvideo games are.
It's so hard to get real humanemotion into them, because I
wrote this in a review once thatit's really hard to get real
human emotion into them, becauseI wrote this in a review once
that it's really hard to createbelievable human reactions to
things few people haveexperienced.
Video games are about trying tocreate believable human

(45:45):
reactions to things nobody hasever experienced, being repeated
once every 10 minutes for 12hours.
So that's the challenge, likethe fact that the camera just
hangs there after the most crazy, unimaginable thing and then
you have to fill the silencewhile the characters walk away
from the explosion, walk awayfrom the monster they just
slayed, walk away from the carcrash and that man that gets

(46:09):
hard to do over and over againin a way that again feels human
Cause.
That's sort of what I try tobring to game writing is just
some little glimpse of authentichumanity.
I haven't always succeeded, Idon't even know if I've often
succeeded, but that's sort of myattempt to create characters
that are something other thanjust placards for being cool or
tough, like actual human beings.

(46:31):
That's true I would.
I endeavor for that to be myspecialty.

Jennifer Coronado (46:37):
It's funny when you talk about some of the
mundanities that we sort of skipthrough when we're editing a
film or writing for a film.
One of my favorite things to dois to watch people eat a meal
in a movie.
I don't know why, it's becauseit's just so real.
You know, it's just you have tohave some sort of food to
sustain your energy, to move onto your next thing, and that's

(47:01):
just a real place to live in afilm.
I love stuff like that, so Ithink that's neat.

Tom Bissell (47:08):
Yeah, and I've.
I don't know if I've ever shotan eating scene.
I've shot a few virtual eatingscenes.
I've never shot a like a realone.
But I'm told they're anightmare to cut together
because everyone's glasses andforks and it's what you just
said is true, it's real, itfeels homey, it feels natural.
But actually imbuing it withthat naturalism is one of the
biggest.
Like editing and shootingnightmares, because everyone has

(47:30):
to have a rough sense of whatthey were doing when they said
what.
When you're shooting thecoverage, because it just
creates this like continuitynightmare for the editors to
piece together and I neverthought about that.

Jennifer Coronado (47:43):
Like how hard shooting a dinner table scene
can be technically when you'rewriting characters in either
games or in short stories, or injournalism or in screenwriting.
How much time?

Tom Bissell (47:58):
do you spend judging them, if you do, versus
being inside their perspective?
A lot.
I think you spend a lot of timejudging and I would distinguish
between judgmentalism andjudging.
Judgment is an inevitable partof life.
You're constantly judging.
It's an internal process.
Being judgmental to me is anexternal process.
That's sharing your judgmentson as wide a platform as

(48:22):
possible.
It's being a gossip, it's beingunkind, it's being uncharitable
.
Judgmentalism yuck Judgment.
Mentalism yuck Judgment.
Necessary Now, judgment can bewithout moral condemnation.

(48:43):
But I think if you have tounderstand a fictional character
or a real character that you'retrying to relate through prose
and a piece of journalism or aprofile, say, you're judging all
the time.
Are they telling the truth?
Are they having you on?
Are they trying to be anunusually interesting version of
themselves?
Because you know you're, as ajournalist, you're Schrodinger's
cat made flesh.
You know you are the?

(49:03):
Or what's the?
What's the anthropological termfor the presence of the
researcher disrupting the thingthat they're trying to document?
I can't remember what that'scalled.
But I'm judging constantly, butI'm also trying to be kind, I'm
trying to be charitable.
I really do believe that mostpeople, even awful people, have

(49:25):
motives that are understandable,that are human and that
sometimes are often sympathetic,even when they do genuinely
terrible things.
Now, they're exceptional.
I'm talking about murderers orabusers or things like that.
I'm just talking about theaverage sort of store-bought,

(49:46):
shitty person that you encounterprobably has all sorts of
reasonable sympathetic reasonsfor the way they are, and I try
to be mindful of that.
I really so.
I judge, but I'm neverjudgmental.

Jennifer Coronado (50:03):
Yeah, that's fair.
I want to get a little bit intoscreenwriting because you
mentioned that was anotherprocess you had to learn and I
know you wrote the episodicadaptation for Mosquito Coast.
How is that a different processfor you from the other
processes that you've had to gothrough, from short stories to
journalism, to writing for games?

Tom Bissell (50:24):
Every medium has its distinct strengths and
weaknesses.
Nobody reads novels for the carchases.
Nobody plays video games forthe you know effulgent love
stories.
Nobody sees movies to listen toa character spew out backstory
for three and a half minutesabout you know some obscure
thing that they're interested in?

(50:45):
Learning to think visually.
As a storyteller, I think I'm apretty visual prose writer, but
learning how to be really deftand really quick, because a
screenplay is about establishingwell, two things Screenplays
are about human behavior, andthen screenplays are about how

(51:07):
you transition from one scene tothe next.
It's also about how informationtravels from one scene to the
next, how mood travels from oneto the next.
Whenever I hear someone sayscreenplays are just like about
dialogue, I instantly know I'min the presence of a complete
amateur.
Dialogue is the least of yourproblems when you're writing a
screenplay.
They're about structure,they're about believable
behavior and they're abouttransitions, how information

(51:28):
moves from scene to scene, fromcharacter to character.
In my view, Travel.
Travel again.
Motion Screenplays are aboutmotion.
In a novel or a short story youcan and I do this all the time,
you can sit in a character'shead for pages.
Because what are novels good at?
Prose and novels are great atreplicating what human thought

(51:49):
feels.
It's an illusion.
Thought is often notgrammatical, it's jumbled, it's
not ordered.
Thought is often notgrammatical, it's jumbled, it's
not ordered.
And prose good prose is all ofthose things.
But when you're reading prosethat is trying to replicate what
being inside someone's head is,and you get that thrill of
recognition oh God, that's.
They just put into words somesensation that I've never seen
vocalized before.
Oh my God, prose isunparalleled at that.

(52:11):
That's what prose is for.
So prose has this wholepsychological dimension that
films do not have, and so youneed to supply it somehow, and a
lot of the ways you're going tosupply it on the page are often
going to be overruled inperformance or by the director.
Right it like this the thingthat's shot is never the thing

(52:34):
that's written.
It's never a one-to-onerelationship there.
So what you're trying to do asa screenwriter is be really deft
, be really economical, beinteresting, wrangle information
well.
So not only does the wayinformation moves from scene to
scene work, but the mood and thevibe seems consistent, like the

(52:57):
movie all seems to be about thesame thing.
And so when I start writing ascreenplay, the first thing I'm
thinking of is an interestingcharacter and putting him or her
in a visually interesting place, like where do we start?
And that's sort of the gunshotgoes off, and then it's like a

(53:18):
trial and error process of justtrying to move from one visually
interesting situation toanother until you have something
that feels like a journey inwhich actual change and drama
has occurred.
And it's a veryprofessionalized form of writing

(53:40):
, my God.
Everyone is opinionated abouthow they need to be structured
and all this or that.
I've talked to a fair number ofpretty high wattage
screenwriters at this point andall the ones I respect have had
very little to say aboutinciting incidents and you know
all these like screenwriterlingo things that people throw

(54:01):
around and they've all just saidthey just try to keep it moving
and keep it interesting andkeep it surprising.
And I think, like thescreenplay writing books, when
they talk about these structuralthings, they're often driving
home a very real point, which isstructure helps you Like it,
helps you organize how scenescan work.

(54:21):
But I also think, like, a rigidadherence to structure is very
rarely going to give youanything that feels unusually
rich or interesting, because youknow you can create a beautiful
painting, painting it bynumbers.
But anyone who knows anythingis going to be able to detect
those little numbers underneathall the pictures, and I think

(54:43):
that's what a lot of Hollywoodstorytelling defaults to that.
Do we have any belief that?
Quentin Tarantino, probably ourmost acclaimed quote literary
screenwriter Do you think he'sever thought about the lessons
of save the cat?
I don't think he has.
So no not everyone be, or evenshould be, quentin Tarantino,

(55:06):
but uh, I think he's a usefulantidote to a lot of uh, highly
archetypally Hollywood-stylestorytelling.

Jennifer Coronado (55:19):
When you were a younger writer, you once Not
that you're not young now whenyou're a younger writer you once
said you wrote from a space ofanger and desperation.
What is the space you writefrom now?

Tom Bissell (55:30):
Curiosity, contentedness.
I write a lot more from love.
Now I've, you know, been in astable relationship for, you
know, 16 years.
I have a family that I adore.
I don't, I just don't have theanger.
Anger is of no use to a writer.
Jim Harrison told me that once.

(55:52):
He said anger is always adidactic emotion and didactic is
of no use to a novelist, hesaid, and I would upend that to
you know, most forms of writingdon't need to be angry.
Obviously, if you're aninvestigative journalist and you
find out like the Pentagon ispumping plutonium into the
Mississippi River, anger is atotally justifiable emotion in
writing.
That expose, however, dramathat starts in anger and ends in

(56:18):
anger, I think can only bedidactic and it can only, and if
only subconsciously, sort of bea series of score settling by
the writer him or herself.
And that too is a pretty lousyimpulse for writing.
And I say that knowing that youknow lots of Hemingway stuff was

(56:39):
written, you know, from themost petty place imaginable.
Like you can be a great artistand just be a petty dick, nobody
disputes that.
But look at how Hemingway woundup and you might ate him alive.
So I used to have grand hopesand ambitions for myself and my

(57:01):
level of success and my level ofrenown, and I don't care about
any of that anymore.
I think anyone who's allowed touse their imagination and get
paid for it.
I don't care what you do.
If you're allowed to justimagine and make a living,
you've already won the cosmiclottery.
Just stop complaining.
You're already sitting atop apyramid of unbelievable

(57:23):
privilege.

Jennifer Coronado (57:26):
Speaking of that, I'm asking this question
of everyone this season whatdoes imagination and what does
creativity mean to you?

Tom Bissell (57:35):
Imagination to me is empathy in disguise, really,
and I don't think you can betruly imaginative without being
empathetic.
I think all great writers areempathetic to one degree or
another, and I think my favoritewriters are all people that are
able to imagine their way intoanyone's lives, and I don't.
And sort of some of theidentitarian objections to

(57:56):
people writing outside theirgender or class or race, that
stuff sort of really grieves mebecause I don't understand what
the point of literature iswithout writers feeling utter
freedom to cross those lines andimagine your way into someone
else's existence, because Idon't understand how
reconciliation for any socialproblem is possible without

(58:16):
someone being willing to look atsomething from a point of view
completely different from theirown, whether culturally or
socioeconomically.
That is the engine of changeand understanding.
And I'm not saying writing ishere to foster social change and
understanding, but I'm also notsaying it isn't exactly.
Again, it's all what theparticular nature of your

(58:37):
writing project is.
So that's what imagination isto me.
It's fearless, it's not scaredof going to scary places, it's
not scared of violating taboosand it's also not afraid to be
sentimental ET is one of themost sentimental taboos and it's
also not afraid to be likesentimental.
Like ET is one of the mostsentimental movies ever made and
it's like one of the greatestmovies ever made.
Like it's just being true tothe experience you're trying to

(59:04):
present to a civilian and toyour fellow citizens, to your
audience.
Creativity, to me, is not givingup.
There are lots of creativepeople who start projects and
give them up quickly.
I'm one of those people.
I've done that with everycreative art I've ever tried.
I've tried to learn a lot ofdifferent things and what did I
do to every single one of them?

(59:24):
I gave up eventually, exceptfor writing.
It's the only one I stuck with.
I don't know why.
It's the only one I stuck with,but it's the only one I stuck
with.
If I'm giving people for adviceof a life well-lived, not
everyone can have a job theylove.
Society would not function ifeverybody had their dream job.
So if you're trying to create alife for yourself, there's two

(59:46):
things to do.
What do you really like to do?
If there's a way to make moneydoing it, try to make money
doing it.
If there's not, then structureyour life around a series of
hobbies that you love doing, andyour job then become the vessel
by which you can explore yourhobbies.
I don't know anyone who's notconsumed with interests outside
of quote what they do, who getsto my age, 50, 60, 70, every

(01:00:11):
healthy 60, 50, 60, 70 year oldperson I know.
All have the same thing incommon they are curious.
And my father God love him, aman I love very much got to the
end of his work life, retired,and he kind of lost his mind
because all of his hobbies hadgone away.
I mean, he got old, it becameharder for him to do a lot of
them and I just watched him sortof recede, just like Homer

(01:00:34):
Simpson, disappearing into thehedge, like all the things that
he loved, he took pleasure in,and it was heartbreaking and it
just put steel in my back tonever, ever lose that sense of
curiosity, even if I'm not ableto walk as heartily as I once
did.
Curiosity, you're, quotecreativity.
So if imagination is empathy, Ithink creativity is curiosity.

(01:00:57):
I think they're alter egos andif I ever lose that urge, I
don't want to think what wouldhappen to me, because I imagine
it would be very similar to whathappened to my father.

Jennifer Coronado (01:01:08):
Well, I have one very final, a very esoteric
question for you.
Throughout this conversationand in some of your writing,
you've talked about theintensity of emotions when
you're playing video games orparticipating in creative
endeavors much like we'retalking about right now, or like
watching a movie, and it makesme wonder if those things that

(01:01:28):
are sort of these realities thatwe create versus the reality we
live in can drive emotionalresponses like real-world
activity, interacting with yourfamily.
How real are emotions?

Tom Bissell (01:01:41):
So this is a fascinating question.
In the Confessions, before hebecame a Christian, he was a
great lover of the dramas andthe plays that he would go see
in North Africa, in Hippo, wherehe came of age, and when he
became a Christian the firstthing he wanted to do was stop

(01:02:02):
people from going to the plays.
Because his complaint was whydo we take this?
We see these agonized plays ofpeople suffering and having
heartbreak and if the better theactor is, the more terrible he
makes us feel, the more wepraise them.
This is madness, or so.
I put up for my students to reada short story by David Means
called Sault Ste Marie.

(01:02:23):
It's a very violent story.
There's a really awful assaultin a hotel room that happens in
the story.
That's truly unpleasant.
This is before the sort of riseof trigger warnings and stuff.
I think maybe they were sort ofcropping up then, but there's

(01:02:44):
certainly nothing I ever put anygreat faith in and I had a
student basically say I couldn'tread this story.
It was just too awful, and Iremember saying to her she's an
older woman and I just sensedthe way she said that she may
have been in a few hotel roomswhere not dissimilar things had
happened.
She said I don't need theseimages in my head, it's not why

(01:03:08):
I read.
And I raised my finger to saysomething like, well, it's a
book.
And I, jennifer.
I did not have an answer forher.
I couldn't tell this woman whyit was necessary for her to have
the nightmarish images of thatstory in her head.

Jennifer Coronado (01:03:21):
Yeah.

Tom Bissell (01:03:23):
And then I started thinking about my love of
slasher movies.
When I was a teenager it was myfavorite genre.
I have an encyclopedicknowledge of slasher movies.
When I was a teenager it was myfavorite genre.
I have an encyclopedicknowledge of slasher movies from
the 80s because I saw them all.
I can't even bear to watchhorror movies anymore.
I don't want the images in myhead.
So I think that kind ofintensity of emotion has a real

(01:03:45):
place in life and your creativedevelopment.
But I don't think it's acoincidence that as our own
mortalities become less abstractto us, the nutritive value of
those kinds of intensities getsa lot more debatable and a lot
more theoretical.
It takes a lot for me to exposemyself to media that I know is

(01:04:09):
going to be genuinely upsetting,like I have to really.
I have to really trust theartists that they're going to
take me to a place of newunderstanding.
Because you know, once yourfriends have killed themselves
and you've gotten your heartbroken and your parents have
died, life is intense enough.
Life is intense enough.

(01:04:29):
You don't need to seek outvirtually the same kind of
extremities.
So for that reason I thinkreally intense forms of media
and art are often for youngerpeople for very healthy reasons,
and they're often not for older, for equally obvious ones for

(01:04:51):
very healthy reasons, andthey're often not for older, for
equally obvious ones.

Jennifer Coronado (01:04:55):
Well, Tom, this has been an awesome
conversation.

Tom Bissell (01:04:57):
I really appreciate all your time today.
Thank you so much for joiningus, Jennifer.
I wanted to thank you.
They were just wonderfulquestions to think about and
talk about, so I reallyappreciate it.

Jennifer Coronado (01:05:03):
Thank you for listening to.
Everyone Is.
Everyone Is is produced andedited by Chris Hawkinson.
Executive producer is Aaron.
Thank you for listening.