Despite rarely slapping a Tilley hat on his head or strapping Merrell boots on his feet, David Grann is an explorer. Although he doesn’t regularly battle the heat and insects of the Amazon like his subject, Percy Fawcett, or the cold and bleak nothingness of the Arctic like his muse, Ernest Shackleton, he shares these explorers’ tendency toward obsession. Grann becomes consumed by his topic as he writes of the myths, legends, and murders that mark our history as human beings. As Grann put it, “being a writer or an author is essentially a quest.”
On March 27, the Connecticut College alumnus and staff writer for the New Yorker magazine gave a talk in Palmer Auditorium about his new book, Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI. Like many of his works—such as his novel The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon and his long-form article published in the New Yorker called “The White Darkness: A Solitary Journey Across Antarctica”—Killers of the Flower Moon uncovered an unknown mystery. His tale of the deceit and betrayal the Osage Indians faced during the 1920s is shocking and widely unknown by the general public. I hadn’t read the book when I entered the auditorium, but his lecture convinced me to put it on my list.
Though Grann’s lecture was both engaging and intelligent, I preferred talking to Grann in the more intimate setting of my Narrative Nonfiction class taught by English Professor, Blanche Boyd. Grann had been Boyd’s student, years before I was even born. The two authors sat side by side in class, occasionally sharing private comments as if life had never separated them at all.
Grann’s current accomplishments as an author are impressive, but I found myself deeply curious about how he worked his way to the top. Professional writers often fall into the trope of the starving artist; anyone can write, but it is difficult to make that writing matter enough to earn a paycheck. Becoming a paid writer goes beyond talent. Grann himself claimed, “writing does not come easy to me.” Yet, he made it. Despite a few setbacks and writing “some really bad poetry” upon graduating from Conn, Grann’s work has been published in The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, the Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal, among others.
David Grann and Blanche Boyd pose together. Photo courtesy of Miles Ladin’90.
During Boyd’s class I asked Grann how he did it. “I went to Mexico after college,” he said, conducting research for his Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. He also spent his days writing a novel he hopes is “buried” because, as he puts it, “it was terrible,” and working on a variety of local news articles. Grann explained, “I would type it [the article] on the typewriter, get on a bus, and turn in the copy.” The proceeds from the pieces he wrote provided him with enough money to see a movie in Mexico City and take the bus home.
When he returned to the U.S., Grann began working as a low-level copy editor at a D.C. startup called The Hill in 1994. He managed to move up in the ranks quickly, becoming an executive editor by 1995. Eventually, Grann left The Hill to write for the New Republic. Although he was earning a steady paycheck, Grann was unsatisfied with his work. He was known as a political writer, but this was not his passion. He reflected, “I covered Capitol Hill a lot, but I didn’t want to write about Capitol Hill.”
With the support of his wife, Kyra Darnton—who formerly worked for 60 Minutes and is currently the executive producer of Retro Report—Grann moved back to his hometown of New York City to do freelance work. Though he wasn’t making a significant paycheck, he was producing content that was meaningful to him. The risk he took by quitting his stable job in order to write about what he was actually interested in fortunately paid off. In 2003, he was hired as a staff writer for the New Yorker; this had been his dream since college.
Though Grann has accomplished much of what writers strive toward, he said regarding self-doubt and desperation: “If you want to become a writer, it will never end.” He told our class the story of his tour of the New Yorker headquarters after being hired. He entered the office of one of the editors on staff—who happened to be Grann’s personal hero—and noticed a mattress on the floor. Sometimes the editor had to sleep in his office as pieces came in paragraph by paragraph well into the night. Grann summed up the humor and symbolism of that mattress on the floor in relation to the challenges of being a writer: “Even my hero had a mattress in his room in his 60s… I knew then that it would never end.”
Becoming a writer is difficult and even once you have made it, the job doesn’t get much easier. Yet for Grann, “It’s a habit. It’s a calling. I love learning about things I don’t know about.” His stories are compelling and deeply researched. From Fawcett’s disappearance into the Amazon to Mollie Burkhart’s intricate family dynamics and horrors, it is clear that Grann understands and values people. Toward the end of our class, he detailed his writing process: “You begin with individuals. They have hearts and souls, troubles, illnesses and children. You care about them.”
Grann’s humble attitude and gentle manner reflected this deep concern for people and their stories. Though the author said he can “crumble” if he reads bad a review, and struggled through a short trek into the Amazon jungle as part of his research, he is perhaps more similar to the brave and earnestly curious explorers he writes about than is immediately obvious. With words, rather than machetes or snow shoes, he uncovers the mysteries that have been buried with time and tells the stories that have gone untold.
