Words matter. These are the best Erik Larson Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
I was a promiscuous reader. I loved Nancy Drew books and Tom Swift – never the Hardy Boys – but I also read Dumas, Dickens, Poe, Conan Doyle, and Cornelius Ryan’s war books. As to favorite character: I’m torn between Nancy, on whom I had an unseemly crush, and Edmond Dantes, the Count of Monte Cristo.
Digression is my passion. I’m not kidding. I love telling the main stories, but in some ways, what I love most is using those narratives as a way of stringing together the interesting stories that people have kind of forgotten and that are kind of surprising.
As a writer, you always try to imagine, ‘What if I were in a situation like this? How would I react?’
What is clear is that in 1900, Galveston was growing fast, had already become the number one cotton port on the Gulf Coast, and was already being referred to as ‘the New York of the Gulf.’
I’m very perverse. If someone tells me I have to read a book, I’m instantly disinclined to do so.
The most painstaking phase comes when the manuscript is set in ‘type’ for the first time and the first proofs of the book are printed. These initial copies are called first-pass proofs or galleys.
After I finish writing a chapter, I’ll print it out, cut it up into paragraphs, and cut away any transition sentences. Then I shuffle all the paragraphs and lay them out as they come. As I arrange and hold them next to each other, very quickly a natural structure for the chapter presents itself.
I knew Berlin would have to become a kind of character in my new book, ‘In the Garden of Beasts’. I had felt likewise about Chicago when I wrote ‘The Devil in the White City’ and Galveston with ‘Isaac’s Storm’.
In hunting ideas for books, I look for stories about long-past events that once commanded the world’s attention but that, for one reason or another, faded from contemporary awareness.
I envy other writers who claim to have a backlog of books they’d like to write.
The thing I always tell my writing students – I’m not a full-time instructor, by any means, but periodically I’ve taught writing students – what I always tell them is that the most important thing in narrative nonfiction is that you not only have to have all the research; you have to have about 100% more than you need.
With my research, I really need absolute confirmation of what actually happened, direct physical connections to the past.
I’ve been asked a lot lately what message is there in the Lusitania for the modern day. To be honest, not much. Except that maybe hubris and overconfidence are always dangerous things.
One of the really amazing things about the Lusitania saga was that, at the time, there existed in the admiralty a super-secret spy entity known as ‘Room 40’.
Whenever I finish a book, I start with a blank slate and never have ideas lined up.
My favorite zone is from 1890 -1915, that zone that spans the overlap of the so-called Gilded Age and the Progressive Era. People had such a boundless sense of optimism; They felt they could do anything they wanted to do, and they went out and tried to do it.
As a rule, I am very skeptical of tying books to anniversaries. I don’t think readers care. I also feel that it just about guarantees that somebody else will be writing a book on the same subject, but being a former journalist, I’m always interested in, like, why write about something today? Why do it now?
I write to be read. I’m quite direct about that. I’m not writing to thrill colleagues or to impress the professors at the University of Iowa; that’s not my goal.
As my friends will tell you, I am a superior agonizer. Believe me, you do not want me in the cockpit of an airliner. But in my defense, choosing an idea is also a high-stakes affair.
It’s like being involved in a detective story, looking for that thing that nobody else has found.
A very important part of my workday are the two Nunzillas on my windowsill. They keep me constant company. They’re little windup toys, and when they move across the desk, they spark from the mouth. I think of them as my editors. They sort of remind you that the world can be a silly place.
Trying to find ideas is the hardest part of my job. You’d think it would be the most fun. Just sitting around reading whatever I want, going to cafes and libraries. But I always feel so unproductive. I think I was raised too well by my parents.
The toilet from time to time imparted to the boat the scent of a cholera hospital and could be flushed only when the U-boat was on the surface or at shallow depths, lest the undersea pressure blow material back into the vessel.
I’ve heard from the movie marketplace that James Cameron did such a killer job with ‘Titanic’ that it’s almost impossible to do anything better.
My life! That’s a long story, too. I was born in Brooklyn, New York, like half of the world, I think.
I was in Bucks County at the ‘Bucks County Currier Times,’ which is a great place to start for any reporter who wants to start out.
I’d always been interested in maritime history, especially the great liners. I’d have done a book about the Titanic if it hadn’t already been done to death by James Cameron and Celine Dion.
I went to public school on Long Island, and it seemed every year we were being taught that you had a right to a fair trial and a right to confront your accuser.
I started reading the big histories and the small histories, the memoirs and so forth. At some point, I found the diary of William E. Dodd.
I figured I was going to apply to one journalism school and let fate take a hand.
The sinking of the Lusitania wasn’t the proximal cause for the U.S. entering WWI. It was almost two years between the sinking and the war declaration, and President Wilson’s request for war never mentions the Lusitania.
I found a book facing out that I’d always meant to read: William Shirer’s ‘The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.’ About a third of the way through, I suddenly, finally caught up to the fact that Shirer had been there in Berlin, from 1934 on, and was finally kicked out when the U.S. entered the war.
Captain William Thomas Turner, hero; villain, Schwieger. As I started doing research into him and into the submarine and so forth, I found that I was growing increasingly sympathetic to him. He’s a young guy, 30, handsome, well-liked by his crew, humane.
The writer marks the changes he wants to make, while a proofreader also goes through the galley, checking it page-by-page against the manuscript. Once all these changes are identified, a second-pass proof is made, and this, too, gets sent to the author and the proofreader, and the process begins anew.
One of the things I’ve always loved is collecting telling little details.
We, of course, have the power of hindsight in our arsenal, but people living in Berlin in that era didn’t. What would that have been like as this darkness fell over Germany?
I don’t listen to music when I write, but I do turn on appropriate music when I read portions of my manuscripts back to myself – kind of like adding a soundtrack to help shape mood.
‘The Devil in the White City’ – the ‘White City’ was the nickname for the World’s Fair of 1893, the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
My office is tiny. I think most people would be shocked if they came to my home and saw it. It is, in fact, the former makeup room of a gorgeous local TV newscaster. I keep a neat desk. Clutter makes me anxious.
A writer could spend years reading already-published books just to gain a grasp of the historical terrain.
It’s essentially taught in high school and college survey courses as an item on a timeline: ‘The Lusitania was sunk; the U.S. gets into World War I’.
Hitler was such an anomalous character – he was so over-the-top chaotic in his approach to statesmanship, his manner and in the violence which overwhelmed the country initially. I think diplomats around the world… felt like something like that simply would not be tolerated by the people of Germany.
It was a civilian ship, and the Lusitania could outrun any submarine. So this population of people was very confident that Cunard and the Royal Navy would be looking after them. Why weren’t they under convoy? That’s the real question.
The Nazis hijacked the Jewish thing early on by defining it as ‘the Jewish problem’ and started looking for a solution. These are not just words.
Unalloyed heroes and unalloyed villains make me suspicious.
I pride myself on having a journalistic remove.
I was never concretely aware of the extent of anti-Semitism in the United States and in the upper levels of the State Department.
I like all kinds of music, though I tend to prefer jazz and classics.
I’m always looking for a sign – not in a spooky, supernatural way, but in a ‘neurotic writer’ kind of way.
At some point in the idea process, I simply wear myself down and force myself to choose. But here’s the thing: Once I do choose, suddenly all the other possibilities wither and die, and thus I never have a backlog of well-formed ideas waiting for me when my latest book gets finished.
