I'm not sure writers are more vain, proportionately, than the rest of mankind. I remember having lunch with David McCullough, and I don't remember him saying anything about himself. He only wanted to talk about John Adams, about whom he had just written a biography. It was as if Adams had been one of his best friends, and he wanted you to get know him as well as he did. It was one of the pleasantest afternoons of my life.
As someone who has interviewed more than 550 authors, I call malarkey on this preposterous article. Sure, there were a few egomaniacs during the Bat Segundo run. But by and large, the authors were excited about their work. And, yes, historians were the most gushing founts of knowledge among the bunch.
ReplyDeleteI'm with you on this, Ed.
ReplyDelete