Episode 17 features biographer Brian Jay Jones, author of 4 books covering Washington Irving, Jim Henson, George Lucas, and Dr. Suess.
We discuss lessons learned from those biographies, the writing process, and the value of one’s own work.
During the episode we discuss:
- Being a biographer
- “Having a shelf” (A common theme among biography subjects)
- Career Path
- Writing Process
- Research
- Fiction vs. Non-Fiction
- Storytelling
- Pacing
- Book Collecting
- Doing the Work
- And much more.
Mentioned and Helpful Links from This Episode
Books by Brian Jay Jones
Washington Irving: An American Original
(My Review of George Lucas: A Life)
Becoming Dr. Seuss: Theodor Geisel and the meaning of an American Imagination
Music created and provided by Henno Heitur of Monkey Tongue Productions.
–End Show Notes Transmission–
–Begin Transcription–
00:00:00:01 – 00:00:24:27
Agent Palmer
Previously on Agent Palmer dot com and authentic backstory is exactly what you get from comedian David Mitchell’s autobiography. The Castlevania animated Netflix series is a serious video game adaption, and I’ve avoided Animal Crossing addiction with a mild case of Minecraft. This is The Palmer Files episode 17 with biographer Brian Jay Jones, author of four books covering Washington Irving, Jim Henson, George Lucas, and Doctor Seuss.
00:00:24:32 – 00:01:03:16
Agent Palmer
We discuss lessons learned from those biographies, the writing process, and the value of one’s own work. Let’s do the show.
00:01:03:21 – 00:01:24:35
Agent Palmer
Hello, and welcome to the Palmer Files. I’m your host, Jason Stershic, also known as Agent Palmer. And on this 17th episode is biographer Brian Jones. As a biographer, Brian has written books on Washington Irving, Jim Henson, George Lucas, and, most recently, Doctor Seuss. Of those, I’ve only read the George Lucas book, but it was such a fantastic read that I cannot recommend it to you enough.
00:01:24:39 – 00:01:46:00
Agent Palmer
And all of the other books have been on my to read list, which just keeps getting longer and longer and longer and longer and longer. Brian is a writer whom I respect, and I was really happy to have him on the show. Having an author like Brian as a guest was one of the motivating factors behind starting my own show, because I read a lot and I interact with authors on social media as much as I can.
00:01:46:00 – 00:02:09:39
Agent Palmer
And before this show, there really wasn’t a place for them in my circle. On the microphone. And now there is. And I couldn’t be happier. I reviewed Brian’s book, George Lucas A life a while ago, but it’s a truly fantastic read and one that you’ll hear some of the creative process behind, as well as the process behind what he does, what it’s like to move on from a project, and much, much more.
00:02:09:44 – 00:02:35:13
Agent Palmer
So if you want to discuss the episode as you listen or afterwards, you can tweet me at Agent Palmer, you can tweet the show at the Palmer Files, and you can tweet Brian at Brian Jones. That’s Brian J. Y Jones. You can visit Brian’s site to see all of his works at Brian jones.com. That is the same as the Twitter with Z spelled out, and all of his books are available on Amazon or your local bookstore.
00:02:35:18 – 00:02:57:25
Agent Palmer
Don’t forget, you can see all of my writings and rantings on Agent palmer.com, including the aforementioned review of Brian’s biography of George Lucas. And remember, all of these links and those mentioned in the show will be available in the show notes. So without further ado, let’s get into it.
00:02:57:30 – 00:03:27:02
Agent Palmer
Brian, I am a blogger by trade first before I’m a podcaster, and I’ve written stories of length maybe like ten 20,000 words, which are long for a blog, and I get sick of the material and that’s not a lot. You’ve written biographies of people. How do you not just not want to know any more?
00:03:27:07 – 00:03:49:09
Brian Jay Jones
Well, the problem you have as a biographer is actually the research is the fun part, and you’re never quite sure when to start. You know, you’re always you start off doing your research and there’s always one more thing you want to know, one more thing you want to know, one more thing you want to know. Eventually, you got to just sit down and start writing and figure out what you don’t know until you know you don’t know it, and then go get it.
00:03:49:23 – 00:04:12:37
Brian Jay Jones
And then ultimately, again, biographers, we just we love the research. And you’re constantly researching, even as you’re writing. And ultimately what happens is biography is never really finished as much as it’s abandoned. You just never really feel that it’s finished, that you’ve gotten everything and you always close the book and send it off your final draft. Your editor thinking, God, I hope I haven’t missed anything big.
00:04:12:42 – 00:04:19:54
Brian Jay Jones
It’s a it’s an auto. Like I said, they’re abandoned. It’s an odd place to be in biography. You never really get tired of it because you always feel like there’s more you can.
00:04:19:54 – 00:04:30:27
Agent Palmer
Know you’ve written for, right? Correct. It was George Lucas, Jim Henson. I can picture the other two.
00:04:30:32 – 00:04:32:14
Brian Jay Jones
Washington Irving and Doctor Seuss.
00:04:32:14 – 00:04:37:10
Agent Palmer
So they’re all creatives that that was clearly not by accident.
00:04:37:11 – 00:04:53:45
Brian Jay Jones
Well, I mean, I wish I could tell you I had it all planned out. You know, I could be like George Lucas and say it was all on purpose. But it wasn’t necessarily. I didn’t start out that way. I started off with the Irving book, which I wrote back in. It came out of 2008. I had actually been researching that book for about seven years before I wrote it.
00:04:53:54 – 00:05:09:33
Brian Jay Jones
It was just a book that I wanted to read. I had gotten interested in Irving through his Christmas stories and, you know, poked around and found out what I could about him and if out. He hadn’t been the subject of a biography since like 1935. So that was a book I and the book that was written in 1935.
00:05:09:33 – 00:05:23:29
Brian Jay Jones
It’s two volumes by a Yale professor who just absolutely, clearly can’t stand him. I was wondering why you would devote two volumes to that. But anyway, so it was one of those, you know, it was a project I wanted to write, sort of a modern take. It was a book I wanted to read. So I got done with that.
00:05:23:29 – 00:05:44:08
Brian Jay Jones
And I at that point I sort of thought I, you know, had gotten it out of my system. And, I was on Jim Henson’s Wikipedia page one day and looked down at the bottom to see check the sourcing on something like anyone sources Wikipedia, but and saw there was no biography and started a conversation with my agent and then on through the Henson Company.
00:05:44:08 – 00:05:58:17
Brian Jay Jones
And so, it’s all happy accident, I think, more than anything else. But it does turn out that, you know, this stuff ends up in your lane. When we got when I got the Lucas book, that was the one where I sat down and with my agent, my editor, and I said, you know what? What do we do next?
00:05:58:21 – 00:06:16:03
Brian Jay Jones
And I and I told them, I’ve worked on I worked on Capitol Hill for ten years. You know, I can I can write about a president and I can write about politics. And my my editor was a lovely guy. He looked at me and he said, he’s like, you know, stand on your shelves. And until he said that, I hadn’t really realized I had a shelf until then.
00:06:16:03 – 00:06:21:29
Brian Jay Jones
So and that was sort of Doctor Seuss came out of that conversation. So another one kind of on the same shelf, do you?
00:06:21:34 – 00:06:25:20
Agent Palmer
I mean, are you happy with having a shelf?
00:06:25:24 – 00:06:56:58
Brian Jay Jones
I, I am the hardest part is it’s really hard. I don’t know what I’m doing next. Which is the longest I’ve ever gone not knowing because again, I tend to do names, you know, and names, you know, tend to be done already. So. So that’s the hardest part, is thinking of somebody that’s sort of in that, you know, one of those big game changers, one of those big creative geniuses, the people that, you know, find solutions to problems hidden in plain sight that nobody ever thought of before, that take their chosen field and do something completely new with it.
00:06:57:03 – 00:07:14:30
Brian Jay Jones
You know, finding people that fit that mold is tough. And it’s also tough because you always want to try to find subjects that feel worthy of what you’ve done before. So, you know, moving from Jim Henson to George Lucas, the Doctor, Seuss, it all seems sort of like a natural progression. They all seem, you know, equal among peers on there.
00:07:14:30 – 00:07:32:32
Brian Jay Jones
So so it’s tough to look for. So it’s a tough shelf in that regard because again, you’re you come up with interesting people and they’ve been done. There’s sort of a statute of limitations on biography. You got to pick somebody that, you know, they can’t have been done in maybe the last ten or even 15 years. And everybody’s always got a great idea for who you should do as well.
00:07:32:43 – 00:07:52:59
Brian Jay Jones
But the other issue with biographies, you have to live with that subject for three years, four years, five years, seven years, sometimes, if you’re Robert Caro, 50 years. And so, so the fit between biographer and subject is, is really key as well. I mean, there’s a plenty of, you know, subjects that are really interesting that haven’t been done that I’m probably not a good fit for.
00:07:53:04 – 00:07:58:35
Brian Jay Jones
So, so that’s one of the hard parts about about biography. It’s a little different than almost any other form of nonfiction.
00:07:58:49 – 00:08:35:09
Agent Palmer
I’ve read the Lucas book, which was absolutely fantastic, and if I haven’t already promoted it in the intro to this episode, and I probably should have and I will like, I’m going to promote it at the end, too. I want to give you a kudos, and then I want to ask you a question. First of all, I had no idea that was not an authorized biography until I read your, acknowledgments where you acknowledged that it’s not that I am so astounded by how well that story is told not being authorized.
00:08:35:14 – 00:08:52:10
Brian Jay Jones
Well, I mean, in the Henson book wasn’t technically authorized. I had the cooperation. But authorized tends to mean that if there’s something in there, they don’t like, they can stop it. So, anyway, but the difference between, for example, Henson and Lucas is with the Henson. I have the, you know, the Henson family participated and permitted meaning the archives.
00:08:52:10 – 00:09:18:55
Brian Jay Jones
Lucas gave me nothing. I made a run at him, and I actually got an email back from him or his assistant, which I guess was as close as anyone’s ever gotten telling me. No. Which was, again, everyone that I talk to said he actually told, you know, usually he doesn’t say anything. But the thing you’ll find about Lucas is, even though he considers himself very private, it is that he talks a lot, and has been talking on the record since about 1967.
00:09:19:00 – 00:09:35:29
Brian Jay Jones
So there was actually a lot more out there than I think even he realized. And the way I like to work is, and I hope you got this out of the book, and I’m pleased that you didn’t know that he hadn’t participated. Is because I like to let them tell the story as much as I can. So it’s so it’s a hunting game.
00:09:35:29 – 00:09:52:26
Brian Jay Jones
It’s going out there and, you know, wrapping arm around as many sources as you can find. And one of the things that was very helpful with the Lucas book is, you know, he sat for interviews a lot. And what tends to happen is, you know, he’ll sit and talk to somebody and they’ll have, you know, 80in, 80 column inches.
00:09:52:26 – 00:10:06:30
Brian Jay Jones
I know people can’t think that way anymore, but, you know, like a newspaper story that was 80 column inches and it ran in the LA times. And because they’re the LA times, they ran about 15in of it and through the rest away. But if you’re looking in the newspapers in Omaha, they need content. They ran the whole thing.
00:10:06:44 – 00:10:21:29
Brian Jay Jones
So, you know, going through online resources like Newspapers.com and things like that and going through some of those, you know, smaller newspapers, you can find these gigantic interviews that nobody had really been able to plumb before, because you’re primarily working out of the The New York Times and the LA times and sort of the bigger newspapers that.
00:10:21:29 – 00:10:49:29
Agent Palmer
That is beyond fascinating, because my only experience in that regard is 5 or 6 years ago, I went on an eBay quest for old Playboys because I stumbled on to one, and I don’t know who it was, but I read, it was like a famous movie director, and I read it’s not like a biography, but like an interview slash biography with him.
00:10:49:34 – 00:11:12:39
Agent Palmer
Right. And it just went it was like from a it was a 70s Playboy and it just went on for ever. Like, I was reading this going like, I, I can’t believe how much is going on. Like the conversation. It was, it was like a real podcast. Like if anybody listened to Marc Maron, like, think of that in written form, just in a Playboy.
00:11:12:44 – 00:11:23:38
Brian Jay Jones
And, you know, that’s that’s a really great comparison. I mean, it’s like, you know, Playboy, you could read for the articles. Jimmy Carter did a huge sit down with him. And like you said, it’s just that goes on and on. Rolling Stone did the same thing.
00:11:23:38 – 00:11:51:10
Agent Palmer
And so I started going through like these older magazines to try and just find out more information. Plus it’s happening in real time. You know, at that point in time, Playboy was interviewing like people in the news. Yep. So you’re getting, you know, things almost as they were happening, like, as a precursor to the unfiltered 24 hour news cycle.
00:11:51:14 – 00:12:08:50
Agent Palmer
I’m now going to have to start looking at, like, older, you know, non-major market newspapers, too. I, I had no idea that that was out there, but as a treasure trove, that must be. I mean, you must have read so much that didn’t make the book then. Yeah.
00:12:09:04 – 00:12:37:37
Brian Jay Jones
And I mean, there’s it is a treasure trove, and it’s these gigantic honor you like, this isn’t, you know, the Oklahoma City newspaper, these just these humongous articles. Because a lot of times you read the same old, same old quotes that people use everywhere, and you’re finding it. And what I love about sources like that and, and the reason I like to find things like that and let my subjects tell the story in their words, is because when Lucas is talking with, you know, rolling Stone in 1976, he doesn’t know how this is going to turn out.
00:12:37:42 – 00:12:52:16
Brian Jay Jones
And he’s just got, you know, he’s he’s great in this long piece. And he sets forth that time because he’s pissed off. You know, he’s he’s mad at the studio. The studio’s abandoned him and they didn’t give him any money. They don’t have any confidence in him. And he’s going to be like, if this movie makes a dime, and I love that sort of thing.
00:12:52:16 – 00:13:08:43
Brian Jay Jones
I mean, you are finding them. They don’t know the future. And I like that because it’s different almost than sitting down. Had I actually gotten him and sit down with him and you say, tell me how it happened. And then they get to tell it almost in this third person narrative, it’s so much more exciting and so much more dramatic.
00:13:08:43 – 00:13:12:17
Brian Jay Jones
I think when you get them in first person, when they don’t know what’s going to happen.
00:13:12:24 – 00:13:27:42
Agent Palmer
Now, when you write a biography, do you start with the concept that it’s going to be a linear story, or is it just see what the research tells you and maybe it’ll be slightly out of order or whatnot? You.
00:13:27:47 – 00:13:49:52
Brian Jay Jones
No, I tend to do straight ahead linear chronological narrative because I don’t really know any other way to do it. And because with the subjects I write about, it tends to be sequential in the sense that because they did this, then this could happen. And then the lessons they learned from this then applied to what came next. So I think really the best way to tell those stories is just to tell it in order.
00:13:49:52 – 00:14:05:41
Brian Jay Jones
And again, for me, it’s a choice because I’m not sure I could do it any other way. But I find as I was just talking about with, you know, listening to them talk in first person before they know what’s gonna happen, I think there’s more of a drama when you’re reading straightforward and you know, your subject doesn’t know what’s going to happen.
00:14:05:41 – 00:14:21:36
Brian Jay Jones
And I always hope that you as a reader, there’s almost this tension as you’re going along where you know, the next thing you know, you’re reading about Jim Henson. You know, the next chapter is The Muppet Show. But as we’re reading along, I’m telling you, nobody’s buying this. This pilot he’s doing, he’s three strikes and he’s out.
00:14:21:36 – 00:14:36:46
Brian Jay Jones
Who’s going to pick this thing up? He doesn’t know what’s going to happen. And you as a reader know, but I’m stringing you out in a sense, because you sort of know in the back of your mind, at least if you’re a fan, where it’s going. But in the narrative, I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to start off the book saying, and he was hugely successful in 1976.
00:14:36:46 – 00:14:48:34
Brian Jay Jones
So let’s start you off The Muppet Show now. That’s good in The Way Back Machine and tell you how we got here. I’m not necessarily clever enough to do that. I know some people are, but for me, I tend to work best in just straightforward, chronological, linear form.
00:14:48:34 – 00:14:59:26
Agent Palmer
Now you’ve written about people that were alive and dead. Now, do you feel, any kind of different weight either going in or as you’re researching it?
00:14:59:31 – 00:15:20:24
Brian Jay Jones
No, and that’s a great question. No, because first of all, when dead is easy, then is easy because because it’s laid out like, you know, the beginning of the story, you know, the end of story. When I was doing Lucas, who was very much alive, it kind of keeps the goalpost moving as you’re writing, because as I was running, I think, oh my God, what if he dies while I’m writing this?
00:15:20:24 – 00:15:34:33
Brian Jay Jones
You know, that changes the nature of the book at that point. Whereas as I was closing in on the final chapters of it, you know, at that point I’ve got my eyes sort of almost frantically on the newspapers and I have a Google crawl even till this day. I get an email every day that has every, you know, time.
00:15:34:33 – 00:15:51:47
Brian Jay Jones
George Lucas, his name is in the news. I get an email for it. And so I have that going so I could find out, you know what? What is he doing? Because I need to keep this as up to date as I can. As I approach the last chapter on this, and in fact, the very last quote in that book, which I love, it’s he was sitting for an interview and they said, what’s going to be on your what’s your epitaph?
00:15:51:52 – 00:16:14:21
Brian Jay Jones
And he laughs and says, I tried, which I just absolutely love that line. That was in like a December 30th, 2015 interview he did with like, Charlie Rose and I wrote the last words of that manuscript, like in February. So it really just happened because again, you’re just keeping your eye on the ball as you’re going. But but the story keeps going on.
00:16:14:26 – 00:16:27:00
Brian Jay Jones
So, you know, it was as up to date as I could get it. And then I think even when the paperback came out, I had gone back again because we’d had I think, the last year I had, I was ready to come out. So I tried to at least get some of that in there as well. So yeah.
00:16:27:00 – 00:16:36:08
Brian Jay Jones
So there’s challenges in dealing with a living subject that there aren’t with that. Because again, the story’s sort of done with that. This one, it’s continuing to be written even as you’re going along.
00:16:36:10 – 00:17:01:12
Agent Palmer
So what is your I want to say mindset after you hand in the manuscript, since you still have this Google alert for him. Like, what’s that like when you see like, oh, another alert came in and my manuscripts in my editor’s hands, like, what’s that? That that cannot be, I don’t know, comfortable?
00:17:01:17 – 00:17:16:00
Brian Jay Jones
Well, it’s a little unnerving because when I finished the search for the hardcover, when I turned in the manuscript for that and it had a pretty short lead time. The nice thing is, my editor at that time, he was over at little Brown, and he was like senior vice president, so his books could go to the front of the line.
00:17:16:05 – 00:17:32:16
Brian Jay Jones
So I turned in that manuscript like February, and the book came out in December, which is a really short turnaround. So I wasn’t, you know, it wasn’t like you’re sitting there and you’ve got, you know, the Jim Henson book when I turn it and it didn’t come out for another, you know, 16 months or something, but this one, because, you know, we had a fairly short term, I could keep my eye on that and just hope nothing big was going to happen.
00:17:32:16 – 00:17:49:15
Brian Jay Jones
That was too close to the deadline. But the one big thing that was going on was he was still trying to place his museum like he’s he had a museum. Nobody, you know, he had $1 billion museum he couldn’t give away. And, he was still trying for I was going to go and ended up finally going to LA, kind of near his his alma mater, USC.
00:17:49:19 – 00:18:07:52
Brian Jay Jones
But that was all still going on. And when I was writing that manuscript was like, God, can we please can we please settle this while I’m doing so? This is in here. It ended up not being in the hardcover. It’s in the paperback because of that. So, you know, those are those are the kind of things the biggest thing that would have just really I mean, would it change the nature of the book and, you know, would have made it to a different launch?
00:18:07:52 – 00:18:26:06
Brian Jay Jones
It had been had he died while I was still working on it. And you know, that me that happened when, with the Steve Jobs book, he was writing that book and, you know, actually ran and Walter Isaacson interviewed Steve Jobs practically on his deathbed, and put that book out, maybe, you know, two weeks or something after he died, the publisher put it so it changes in the book of that happens.
00:18:26:18 – 00:18:33:32
Brian Jay Jones
Not that I was hoping he died, but, But, yeah, you you sort of hope nothing cataclysmic happens between the time you turn that in and the time it comes out.
00:18:33:37 – 00:18:46:18
Agent Palmer
So I want to go backwards. Unlike you in the linear nature of the story. And I want to ask, what did you want to be when you grew up? Did you always want to be a writer?
00:18:46:23 – 00:19:07:01
Brian Jay Jones
I wanted to be a comic book artist for a long time. When I was a kid, when I so I, when I finally got into high school and college, I was, you know, I wanted to do something with writing when I was an English major, and I was an English lit major. I wasn’t really into, you know, creative writing anything, but I was a major and, you know, worked on the college newspaper.
00:19:07:01 – 00:19:29:11
Brian Jay Jones
And then my first job was I worked on Capitol Hill as a congressional aide. I worked in the U.S. Senate, and I didn’t know at the time, but that was actually good prep for biography, and I’ll get back to that in just a second. So but when I was in when I was in college, you know. Yeah, this kind of happens to you when you’re, you know, in your 20s and, you know, late teens, early 20s, like, you fancy yourself a great artist and great novelist.
00:19:29:11 – 00:19:46:50
Brian Jay Jones
And, you know, I was going to write a novel and write a book. And I sat down. Even at one point I thought, well, I’ll start off writing a children’s story. And I just I just could not do it. I can’t plot, I just, I and Ringo Starr has this great story where he talked about going away and writing a song and would come back and play it to the rest of the Beatles.
00:19:46:50 – 00:20:02:53
Brian Jay Jones
And they say, you do know that that sentimental journey, you know, as he said, right there, I’d gone rewriting another classic, and that’s kind of what I was doing when I was trying to come up with fiction. I’d come up with some plot and I would explain to people and they’d say, you know, that’s actually an episode of Star Trek.
00:20:02:58 – 00:20:20:31
Brian Jay Jones
So. So I was I was really terrible at that. And then and then I sort of dropped it when I went off to work in the real world. But so I worked I worked in the U.S. Senate. And your job in the U.S. Senate is your boss will come to you and say, you know, somebody wants to, introduce legislation that does X tell me about this.
00:20:20:31 – 00:20:38:47
Brian Jay Jones
Should we do it? You know, how does it work? So you go out and you read everything you can on that subject, and you talk to people, and you can find people on both sides of the story, and you read everything that’s been read that you can find about it, and you talk to the Library of Congress, and then you write it all up and try to make it as short as possible to give your boss your opinion.
00:20:38:52 – 00:20:56:43
Brian Jay Jones
And that turned out to be really good practice for biography, though I didn’t know it at the time. So, it was sort of serendipitous that I had done that in my career at that point, but I didn’t really think about writing a book finally until, maybe 19. I think I was still working on the whole time.
00:20:56:43 – 00:21:18:33
Brian Jay Jones
It was probably the late 90s when I fell in love with Washington Irving, but I had no idea how to go about doing it and what I what actually finally did was I bought, remember, there’s a whole series. It was it was like, not the dumbest, but it was like The Idiot’s Guide. Yes, I, I actually bought The Idiot’s Guide to Getting Published that talked about when you do nonfiction, it’s a very different creature than writing a novel.
00:21:18:33 – 00:21:28:34
Brian Jay Jones
Like, you don’t have to have the book done. You write a proposal, but you need to have an agent. So you should write a pitch letter to it. You know, I went through the whole thing, and this is back in the days when you had a, you know, like a stamp and put it in an envelope and mail it off.
00:21:28:39 – 00:21:45:05
Brian Jay Jones
And, and that was sort of how I broke in in the early 2000s was that way. But, you know, I kind of thought that I was that it was never gonna happen again. I knew I was a terrible novelist and my my dream job was I wanted to write, you know, Detective Comics with Jim Sparrow as my artist on Batman.
00:21:45:09 – 00:21:52:23
Brian Jay Jones
But I’m sure I would have started writing, you know, a Batman comic, and someone would have said, this is what Steve Englehart did back in the night. Yeah. So.
00:21:52:28 – 00:22:02:17
Agent Palmer
I mean, while you don’t know what biography is next is there like, is fiction gone? Is it a possibility you’ll you’ll return to it?
00:22:02:22 – 00:22:20:59
Brian Jay Jones
Well, I mean, there’s nothing to return to. I’ve never done anything. I don’t think so. I just I’m, I’m not wired that way. I don’t think I have a friend who’s a screenwriter, and he. He’s one of these guys. You. You’ll give him a, you know, you’ll say something and like, you’ll see him cock his ear and he’ll say, that’s a great title, and I’m going to write it down.
00:22:21:04 – 00:22:37:04
Brian Jay Jones
And then you go to his, you know, his apartment, and he’s got notebooks literally stacked up on the floor by his bedside that have, like, random bits of plot elements or little vignettes written out longhand. It I couldn’t I could never do that. I just I’m just not wired that way.
00:22:37:18 – 00:23:10:43
Agent Palmer
Yeah, I know from experience I’ve written a few pieces of fiction. I say dabble in a little bit. In the last few years, I’ve been blogging for what feels like forever, and I’m not going to say it’s formulaic because I write about different topics and mediums and genres and all sorts of things. But to change gears and make it up completely and not have it be opinion or even, you know, to tell a story.
00:23:10:43 – 00:23:43:11
Agent Palmer
And, you know, I, I wrote, I don’t know, 20,000 words on this story of a podcast my friends did, to to turn that and start writing fiction. I almost have to reprogram my brain for a little bit. Yeah. And and I can understand why, like, I mean, I’ve done it before, so it’s it’s slightly different, but I still look at what you’ve done in a full book and go like, well, that’s that.
00:23:43:23 – 00:24:08:15
Agent Palmer
I don’t think I can do that. You know, like there’s, I don’t and it’s, I don’t know, I mean obviously it’s, it’s pages, it’s column inches, it’s words. It’s more research. But like I find a wall like I wrote a personal story. Right. That was, I wrote I sat down one day. I wrote 95% of it out.
00:24:08:19 – 00:24:24:12
Agent Palmer
At least, you know, for the stream of conscience, like, let’s get from point A to the end as quick as possible as, like seven pages. I haven’t gotten back to it yet because it feels like a wall. I’ve built that I can’t get to the inside anymore.
00:24:24:25 – 00:24:28:35
Brian Jay Jones
Yeah, yeah. You’re you’re looking through the bars at it is.
00:24:28:35 – 00:24:49:06
Agent Palmer
I mean, do you have any tips or is is because you’re always I mean, your subjects have been, written about, at the very least in newspapers and magazines. So you always have this influx of research. Does that make it easy when you’re starting to put the whole thing together?
00:24:49:10 – 00:25:04:35
Brian Jay Jones
Well, you know, I mean, it’s it’s not fair for me to say yes on that because, you know, my wife is a chemist and my wife will tell me, you know, she’s got a PhD in chemistry. She’s like, well, chemistry’s not hard. And I was like, yes, it is. Because if it wasn’t, I would have a PhD in it.
00:25:04:44 – 00:25:23:14
Brian Jay Jones
So so it’s one of those like I don’t find it necessarily that hard because I always say you have to be able to see it and I can see it. And then I tell my wife that she says she can see chemistry and I, I never could. I tried to visualize chemistry and like I found out later, I was what they called a dry chemist, meaning I never did it right and always faked my data.
00:25:23:19 – 00:25:40:14
Brian Jay Jones
And like, my math, would always come out where my neutrons were, you know, like the size of a basketball. So but you have to be I think you have to be able to see it and to be able to hear it. The one thing that you know. So I always tell people who write fiction, you know, that we as especially as biographers and I don’t I’m sure historians have the same issue as well.
00:25:40:14 – 00:26:04:06
Brian Jay Jones
But, you know, it’s like we’re so envious of you guys who can go sit and write with your laptop in a coffee shop. Because everything you need is in your head and in your fingertips, where as we sit down to write and we, you know, you’re sitting there, you get to a point and you say, okay, well, so George Lucas is he’s in, he’s in, he’s he’s in Modesto and he goes to college.
00:26:04:15 – 00:26:21:20
Brian Jay Jones
He’s got to go to college, you see. How do you get to college? Well, I’ll just I’ll just say that he that he got on an airplane and flew down there. Well, I can’t do that. I have to know what actually happened. So, you know, we we can’t go to coffee shops because we have to have all of our all of our crap with us, you know, and I’m very, I’m very, analog.
00:26:21:20 – 00:26:40:46
Brian Jay Jones
And then I print everything out and I punch holes in it, and I have it in binders. And the Lucas I think I had, you know, 22 binders or something of information. And so we had to have all that junk with us, to do it so it, you know, it’s a different skill set and that, you know, when George Washington was getting ready to cross the Delaware, we have to tell the how they got in the boats and not in a land speeder.
00:26:40:50 – 00:26:59:09
Brian Jay Jones
And how, you know, it would have been easier if you would have had, you know, a blaster instead of, you know, a bayonet or, you know, a musket. You know, we have to work with what really happened, and that’s that can be very limiting. And it’s, you know, it’s it’s very freeing, I would think, as a novelist to, you know, only be limited by what you can imagine happens.
00:26:59:24 – 00:27:23:06
Agent Palmer
See, and to me, what you just described, the limiting part for me, and this is I have to go back to college the last time I actually did this. But the citation part I, I have all the respect in the world for you because I remember lamenting that, like, that was the part, like, I just let me write, just let me write this thing.
00:27:23:11 – 00:27:33:54
Agent Palmer
Don’t. Yeah. Like I’ll give you all the sources, but I don’t want to stop in the middle of a flow of writing to tell you where I got it.
00:27:33:59 – 00:27:47:48
Brian Jay Jones
Yeah. No. Yeah, that’s a great point. And I think it’s one of those quirks of writing that we as nonfiction writers have sort of come to accept, and we have to be very careful about that. I was telling a story, and I wish I could remember what the quote was, but I remember I think it was even in the Doctor Seuss book.
00:27:47:48 – 00:28:06:54
Brian Jay Jones
I was writing a chapter, and I had named the chapter. I had used a couple of words out of this great quote that I had from him, and I’d written the chapter, and I got done with the book, and I turned it in, and I even had the quote in that chapter, and I came back from the copy editor, and she had marked it and said, you didn’t actually source this quote.
00:28:06:58 – 00:28:18:04
Brian Jay Jones
And I was like, oh my God, you know, oh, okay. Well, let me go back and write up for the life of me. I could not find the source on it. And if you can’t find the source, you can’t use it. So I had, you know, so I lost the chapter name because it came out of that quote.
00:28:18:04 – 00:28:40:25
Brian Jay Jones
And it changed sort of the thrust of the chapter because that was defining the direction of that chapter. And anyway, so it’s one of the things you have to be very careful about, because one little slip like that, if I can wreck your chapter, I tend to take all of my quotes and I do what I call the data dump, where I go in, like I’m going to restart chapter eight, and I take every quote that I know I want to use so far in chapter eight.
00:28:40:25 – 00:28:58:10
Brian Jay Jones
And I just go into my document and I just type them all in, and then like, I’ll type, New York Times article, you know, August 17th, 1986, and I’ll have the source, and then I’ll just type every quote from that underneath it. And so then when I’m writing the text the first time I use a quote, I’ll do a full source.
00:28:58:10 – 00:29:13:59
Brian Jay Jones
And then the next time I use it, I’ll just put in brackets next to it New York Times story. So I know where they where it came from, so I don’t have to stop too much. And so since I’ve sourced it the first time, so the full length, you know, the full end note is at the end, and then the next time I’ll just write New York Times story, New York Times story, you know, a Smith interview, things like that.
00:29:13:59 – 00:29:27:55
Brian Jay Jones
And then I go back later and fill them in. But it’s like I’ve always got them all sort of, sourced at first in the full document before I start writing it. So for that very reason, because I don’t want to lose the sourcing because I have had sources disappear before, and you’re just devastated when that happens.
00:29:28:08 – 00:29:47:23
Agent Palmer
And when you’re writing, do you get in? What I like to call a rhythm, where it’s just. All right, I know exactly what I’m supposed to be writing right now, and as long as I don’t stop, I probably just go to the end of, you know, this chapter, this whatever.
00:29:47:28 – 00:30:07:00
Brian Jay Jones
Yeah, I have to, you know, I, I’m a I’m an outliner, and I generally know where my chapter begins and where it ends. I also, I like dramatic cliffhangers, so I usually know exactly where my chapter is going to end. Like, I know I’ve got a great quote it’s going to end on, or it’s got a great scene.
00:30:07:00 – 00:30:25:47
Brian Jay Jones
I’m in it’s way, I almost think almost like in scenes. And the trick a lot of times is to just, you know, go from the sounds terrible because it sounds like you’re just going Abcde, but you want, you know, you’ve got great stuff going on. Do you want to be sure you get from point A to point B to point C cleanly?
00:30:25:51 – 00:30:48:35
Brian Jay Jones
And that can often be the hardest part. What I tell people a lot of times to do is go in and write one sentence and say, in, you know, 1957, he did this and then go down, you know, hit, hit, return seven times and then say, and then, his wife got in a car accident and then hit seven returns, then say, and then in 1960, this happened and then go back and start filling in the details around each of those sentences.
00:30:48:40 – 00:31:04:17
Brian Jay Jones
And that helps you sort of start to build the structure, at least. But, you know, you know, at least you hit the high points of urinary, you hit the post, you want to hit, and then you start filling in to do that. And, you know, transitioning is the hardest part a lot of times with nonfiction and sometimes you just have to cheated.
00:31:04:22 – 00:31:18:18
Brian Jay Jones
And, you get to the point where, like, I don’t know how to go from, you know, at this point to this point cleanly. And that’s when you’ll see us every once in a while, we stick in about, you know, six, asterisks. Yep. That move over. So it’s like, you know, cut scene, you know, go to the next one.
00:31:18:18 – 00:31:21:20
Brian Jay Jones
And that’s sort of the way we get around that. Sometimes you just get stuck.
00:31:21:25 – 00:31:52:28
Agent Palmer
Is there a balance to the amount of detail that I mean, obviously some scenes are more than others. Like, I mean, reading the Lucas book, I knew as you were approaching, you know, say American Graffiti that that was going to be the next project he worked on. You know, everybody’s not I’m not going to say everybody, but most people who are reading a book about George Lucas probably have, you know, something in mind when they’re reading about American Graffiti and, you know, Star Wars.
00:31:52:28 – 00:32:13:13
Agent Palmer
So is there a level of detail that you, you know, take me as the reader, you know, into consideration or or is it just from, a storyteller perspective where you’re just trying to tell the best story and it’s, you know, you’re going to help the reader along, but you’re not going to cheat them either.
00:32:13:18 – 00:32:40:31
Brian Jay Jones
I think the worst thing you can do is not keep your reader in mind. One of the first things I do on some books is I have my wife read them, because she’s the one who’s able to tell me if something is boring and usually what happens there is I put too much detail in, because I had all this great information and I wanted to use it all, which again, is what you do as a as a person who writes nonfiction, even if it’s a journal, even if it’s journalism, you know, you’ve got great information and you and, you know, you want to use it all to show you did the research,
00:32:40:31 – 00:33:01:06
Brian Jay Jones
to show that you’re a serious researcher. I think you have to keep the reader’s ear, if you will, in mind, on pacing and things like that. So, you know, so something like in the Lucas book, for example, you as a reader, for the most part, people come into Lucas knowing somewhat what his big stories are. You know, they some people are actually surprised about how he did American Graffiti.
00:33:01:06 – 00:33:18:54
Brian Jay Jones
But, you know, they they know Star Wars is the money shot in there and they want to get to Star Wars quickly. But there’s a lot that goes on in Lucas’s life that’s really important. That makes him the kind of person he is who can make Star Wars. So, you know, actually, the filming of Star Wars in that book doesn’t come along until the second section.
00:33:18:54 – 00:33:36:49
Brian Jay Jones
It’s about halfway through the book. And so, you know, you you have to make sure you understand and manage the reader’s expectations in that. Look, we’re not going to start off, you know, 20 pages for he first he was born, then he went to college, and then he made America graffiti and now let’s talk Star Wars. You know, you have to it’s like a line in Amadeus.
00:33:36:49 – 00:33:49:59
Brian Jay Jones
You can’t make too many demands on the royal ear. But you have to be sure you’re you’re true to your subject. I mean, one of the ways I get around that, if you will, is you notice in the in the Lucas book, I start you off with a prolog where he’s filming Star Wars.
00:33:50:10 – 00:33:50:40
Agent Palmer
Yes.
00:33:50:40 – 00:34:05:26
Brian Jay Jones
So when you open the book and you start reading, you’re in the middle of the Star Wars already, which is which is where you want to be. And it helps you set up the theme, which is, you know, I love that that I patted myself on the back for being clever on, you know, the name of that chapter is out of the prolog is out of control.
00:34:05:30 – 00:34:22:07
Brian Jay Jones
And a lot of it’s about how R2-d2 didn’t work. He would go out of control across the desert, but the bigger theme is Lucas had lost control of his project and, you know, vowed that that was never going to happen again. That’s what makes him George Lucas is he wants complete control over those projects. So, you know, it helps you sort of cleverly set up the theme.
00:34:22:07 – 00:34:38:16
Brian Jay Jones
But but, you know, you’re managing the readers expectations. You get to see Star Wars now. Now that’s go and see how we got there. So, you know, that’s probably one of the few places I think you’ll see, Jason, where I, I do go out of out of order. But it’s in the prolog, so I don’t consider it cheating.
00:34:38:21 – 00:34:59:58
Agent Palmer
Is there? And this is, a cheap shot question. I apologize, but like, they are creatives, it is your shelf. How have you found a, common thread or, you know, maybe like an underlying theme, whether it’s through what you’ve put out in the book or just from your research?
00:35:00:12 – 00:35:22:32
Brian Jay Jones
I think one of the things that binds you’ve been going back to Irving, all four of them is, you know, they’re all people who knew the value of their work, you know, working to compromise their art because there was easy money in it. You know, there’s a moment in Washington Irving’s life, for example, when he is determined to make it as a writer.
00:35:22:32 – 00:35:38:29
Brian Jay Jones
It’s right, you know, he’s at work on the short stories that eventually become the sketchbook where rip Van Winkle is and legend, Sleepy Hollow. And, and he’s been trying for his entire life to, you know, just get a cozy government job so he doesn’t have to really work anymore. And, you know, he wants this government job so he can actually afford to be a writer.
00:35:38:34 – 00:35:53:16
Brian Jay Jones
And he has no money, and he’s stranded in London and he’s somewhat miserable, but he’s writing these stories. And his brother, who’s a congressman, right. I almost called him, writes him and says, you know, I’ve got a job for you. You need to come back to the United States and you can become, you know, the assistant to the secretary of the Navy.
00:35:53:20 – 00:36:11:59
Brian Jay Jones
And Irving says, no, I’m going to stay here and I’m going to get this done. Is it going to compromise that vision at that point? And this is what, you know, happens repeatedly with through Jim Henson. And it was Lucas and Doctor Susan, you know, things like marketing with Lucas Seuss and, Jim Henson. Like they were all determined to control that marketing.
00:36:11:59 – 00:36:28:45
Brian Jay Jones
They knew their art had value, that their art had worth. And they weren’t going to sell that out or let someone take the control away from, you know, Henson’s another one who very much about the control of a project. And when it came to merchandizing, he had to get put his hands on everything and approve it personally.
00:36:28:49 – 00:36:35:52
Brian Jay Jones
George Lucas did that, doctor Seuss did that. These are people who inherently knew their art had value, that their art had worth.
00:36:36:01 – 00:37:04:32
Agent Palmer
I guess I’m going to tell you a statement and then ask you the question, which is I have trouble finding value in my own things. So when you say that that’s a common thread and I can easily see it, I also feel like that’s not a common, statement. I feel like anybody I know who’s in marketing, selling themselves is the hardest thing they’ll ever do.
00:37:04:36 – 00:37:17:48
Agent Palmer
So do you see that same value in your work? And did you before you saw this through line for all of your subjects?
00:37:17:53 – 00:37:34:53
Brian Jay Jones
No. And it’s a lesson that I think all of us, as people who do anything creative, have to take to heart because it isn’t something, you know, that you know, you have people that will say, you know, well, in a time like this, you know, when people are stranded at home and they need health care, go get a job.
00:37:34:53 – 00:37:40:44
Brian Jay Jones
We don’t need art. And I think many of us would argue this is the time you especially need art.
00:37:40:49 – 00:37:46:45
Agent Palmer
This is absolutely the time. I mean, where everybody’s turning to whatever service they can get.
00:37:46:50 – 00:38:05:11
Brian Jay Jones
Yeah, they’re always, you know, they’re watching movies and things like. Which is all art. It’s not, you know, it’s art that you know, you’re paying for, but it has a value. And I think that’s that’s the message that I take away that I try to embrace, which is, you know, our, our natural instinct is to be for loss is to be self-deprecating about our work and about ourselves.
00:38:05:11 – 00:38:23:19
Brian Jay Jones
And I’m as guilty of it as anybody. But, you know, these are the guys who are, you know, who say, this is, you know, yeah, it was fun to do, but it was it was hard work. And it’s something of value. I mean, there’s a there’s a moment in Jim Henson’s life, when he’s still a young man and he’s, you know, created Rowlf the Dog for a commercial.
00:38:23:24 – 00:38:44:36
Brian Jay Jones
Rowlf was actually created for a Canadian dog food commercial, back in, like 1961, something like that. And his agent, Bernie Brillstein, comes to Jim and says, you know, this this dog food company actually wants to just buy Rowlf outright, and he they want to give you, you know, this outrageous sum of money. And this is Jim, who’s, you know, still an up and comer and doesn’t have a lot of money.
00:38:44:41 – 00:39:03:57
Brian Jay Jones
And Jim would have been, you know, set, you know, at least for the next decade. And Jim turns to Bernie Brillstein and he says, Barney never sell anything I own. And I love that line and really try to inhabit that line don’t always succeed. But, you know, that’s one of the things that I try to keep in mind for that.
00:39:03:57 – 00:39:07:31
Brian Jay Jones
There’s value and understand the value of your own work.
00:39:07:36 – 00:39:23:37
Agent Palmer
Okay. So the real question I have now is a side note, which is how many of the Wilkins coffee commercials did you watch for the Henson thing? And like, how deep down did you go? Like, did you watch all of them?
00:39:23:42 – 00:39:41:36
Brian Jay Jones
I did, I got so I think most of them are on YouTube nowadays. But back when I was writing the book, they weren’t nobody had them. And the internet company actually provided me with a DVD that had all of them on it. So I just stuck it in on my laptop and sat there and I think, yeah, I think if you watch them all in a row, it’s like 42 minutes or something ultimately.
00:39:41:41 – 00:39:57:39
Brian Jay Jones
And, I remember everything in interview with, I think it was Matt Groening or one of the writers of The Simpsons who said, you know, people used to tell them, you guys should do an Itchy and Scratchy movie. And he said that, you know, they sat down and they strung together all the episodes of Itchy and Scratchy they’d ever done, which only laughed about, you know, 10s apiece.
00:39:57:39 – 00:40:15:04
Brian Jay Jones
And he’s like, after three minutes. It’s just brutal. And, you know, you just don’t want to watch it. And that kind of happens. Walk ins and walk ins, it’s just, you know, doing terrible things to each other over and over and over again. After a while, it’s a little exhausting. And so it’s one of those you kind of have to take in bites because they’re very funny and they’re very clever.
00:40:15:04 – 00:40:23:10
Brian Jay Jones
But, you know, same thing. Something terrible happened to Ganz every, you know, 16 seconds is is a lot.
00:40:23:15 – 00:40:47:14
Agent Palmer
And and we and we know what he becomes like. We know what that’s the start of as well. So there’s a, a projection that we’re putting on those puppets, knowing that they’re the beginnings of the Muppets, basically. So we’re not watching this as just we would have been had we watched TV back then.
00:40:47:19 – 00:41:09:01
Brian Jay Jones
Well, I mean, you know, they they came out of the already sort of established version of the Muppets on Sam and Friends. But I mean, what what I think is really cool and kind of key about about, the Wilkins commercials is it’s Jim’s humor and sensibility on full display and seeing a solution to something that nobody ever thought of before that.
00:41:09:01 – 00:41:31:40
Brian Jay Jones
Now we’re all like, well, of course you would do it that way. So when I, when I talk about Jim Henson, and I start talking about the Wilkins commercials, the first thing I do is I show them what a typical coffee commercial look like in 1958. And it’s 10s. And the Wilkins commercials are 10s, and it’s, you know, it’s this pile of beans that that look like they’re roasted and it’s like, you know, rich coffee flavor, you know, with dollar.
00:41:31:40 – 00:41:52:59
Brian Jay Jones
And I needed your local grocery store to come get rich tasters choice now and that’s it. It’s just like picture of the coffee with a voiceover. And then you show Wilkins right after that. And I mean, there’s just no comparison. It’s no wonder people went bananas for those. They didn’t look like anything else. And who who would figure, you know, how do you get people’s attention to buy a product?
00:41:52:59 – 00:42:08:00
Brian Jay Jones
You make them laugh and they’ll associate that laugh with the product. And Wilkins product went through the roof after that happened. But, you know, of course, that’s the way you do it. That’s way advertising works. All the time now. But no, nobody had really thought of that in 1958.
00:42:08:05 – 00:42:11:39
Agent Palmer
Yeah, it’s it’s probably one of the first viral marketing campaigns.
00:42:11:46 – 00:42:31:08
Brian Jay Jones
Absolutely. Everybody everybody wanted them. And Jim went and used sort of the same conceit for a lot of different products and sold bread that way, and tea and Boston and coffee down in Louisiana. And what I love about that, too, is he didn’t just redubbed, the vocal track over the existing commercials, he actually went and shot them again.
00:42:31:13 – 00:42:33:34
Brian Jay Jones
So the lip movements would line up.
00:42:33:39 – 00:42:46:43
Agent Palmer
Speaking of like, things have changed, you released your books in an era of audiobooks. Is that all publisher? Do you have any input as things are getting read?
00:42:46:48 – 00:43:04:45
Brian Jay Jones
No, no. Usually you’re completely in the hands of the audio department who are fantastic at this stuff. Usually what has it, it’s, you know, you don’t really have you don’t get to say yes or no, you don’t have output. But, you know, any smart audiobook producer will come to you and ask your opinion on things. And they’ve always done this.
00:43:04:45 – 00:43:22:32
Brian Jay Jones
They’re fantastic at it. So, you know, for example, when they were doing the Jim Henson audio book, they sent me, you know, four different samples or like, these are four people we’re talking to, that we’re considering for the book. Tell us what you think. And, you know, so I listen to them. And I wrote back with my input in my opinion, and there was one that I really like.
00:43:22:32 – 00:43:37:18
Brian Jay Jones
And I said, but can can you, can you, you know, send me audio of him maybe doing. Jim I said, you’re just you’re having him read exposition but he’s not getting to do any of the voices. Can you maybe haven’t read a chapter from The Muppet Show, sex or somewhere I can hear him do Jim’s voice, and Frank Oz’s voice and they said, oh, yeah, good.
00:43:37:18 – 00:43:49:57
Brian Jay Jones
Great. That makes perfect sense. And so they sent me another little audio file that was new. And I said, this is the guy that I really like. And that’s just my opinion. Well, it out, that was the guy they ended up using. And I think they liked it too. But so, you know, they seek your input and put your input in.
00:43:49:57 – 00:44:02:41
Brian Jay Jones
But if I said no, I think that’s terrible. I don’t want him. They would have said, well, this is the guy we’re going with. So, you know, they collaborate with you on the audio book, but it’s ultimately it’s one of those things that’s, not really in your hands. And, you know, the covers the same way, for example.
00:44:02:41 – 00:44:08:33
Brian Jay Jones
So, there’s, there’s limitations on what the author’s input is because that’s all considered marketing, which is not really in your hands.
00:44:08:37 – 00:44:15:42
Agent Palmer
How do you consume books? I mean, we’re talking about audio. Like, I’m just going to take a wild guess that you’re a reader.
00:44:15:47 – 00:44:26:54
Brian Jay Jones
Yeah, I, I am old school. I am a read the hardcover, and when you’re reading the hardcover, you take the jacket off so you don’t ruin it. And then when you finish the hardcover, you put the jacket on and put it back on the shelf and keep it forever.
00:44:26:54 – 00:44:57:59
Agent Palmer
I am exactly the same way. Like there are a few, maybe, series and authors that I, I exclusively get the paperback for, and I can only justify that by saying, his name is Chuck Klosterman, and I like the extra bit he puts into the, paperbacks, but everything else is hardcover. And yes, of course, you take the dust jacket off and you and for me, like, I’m.
00:44:57:59 – 00:45:04:17
Agent Palmer
So I guess it’s OCD that I take the dust jacket off and I put it on the shelf where.
00:45:04:17 – 00:45:05:17
Brian Jay Jones
The book where the thing.
00:45:05:30 – 00:45:08:46
Agent Palmer
So it fits in when people are looking at my shelf.
00:45:08:54 – 00:45:30:09
Brian Jay Jones
Yup. That’s exactly, exactly what I do. And like, I don’t I don’t dog eared pages. I would never dream of using the the sleeve to mark my page like I’m a bookmark guy, or I’ll have a piece of paper and or whatever. I have recently started reading some books on Kindle. Not a lot. It’s books that I’m always like, wow, I’m thinking I’m having emotional attachment to that.
00:45:30:14 – 00:45:48:24
Brian Jay Jones
So I read stuff on there and there’s some stuff like, I’m currently making my way through Alan Moore’s, Providence, which the only place I ever can really find it was on was on, you know, e-book or Comixology or whatever it is. And it’s actually a better reading experience than I thought it would be, but it was definitely a learning curve.
00:45:48:33 – 00:46:23:02
Agent Palmer
I tried to Comixology years ago, and I’m sure it’s gotten much better, but I so for anybody who’s listening to this, who’s read my blog, I include quotes from every book I review because I feel like I can only tell you so much. And you know, in order to give you a snapshot of what you’re about to get into, if I do my job as a reviewer properly, I want, you know, you either hear the author or, you know, some poignant quote, and I’m exactly like you.
00:46:23:02 – 00:46:56:15
Agent Palmer
I’m not going to highlight it. I’m not going to mark the page. I put the bold, I put the book down on my phone, I pick it up and I say, you know, page 53, the end of the world near the bottom. Yeah. And then I go back after I’ve finished the book and when I’m getting ready to do the review, kind of like as a refresher, I type up all my notes and, you know, but I type up all my notes, which is the most frustrating part, because I try not to mess up with mess it the spine up.
00:46:56:15 – 00:46:57:05
Agent Palmer
So I’m kind.
00:46:57:05 – 00:46:58:25
Brian Jay Jones
Of like the spine. Yeah.
00:46:58:39 – 00:47:12:57
Agent Palmer
Holding it gingerly while trying to type with, you know, it’s a but, it’s a dying art. I feel like because I, I look at books as, collection pieces as well.
00:47:13:02 – 00:47:27:52
Brian Jay Jones
Yeah. I mean, you know, my wife says quite fairly that to me, they’re like, fetishistic, which is completely fair, but but I’m like, I cannot write in a book. I had a professor in college who would talk about how she had a hard time because she would check out library books, and she found herself writing. And then I was like, what are you talking about?
00:47:27:54 – 00:47:40:08
Brian Jay Jones
How can you find a book? And I actually tried to make myself write in a book once and I just couldn’t do it. First of all, I didn’t know what to write in, and I’m like, am I having a conversation with this book? Or like, writing? What do people feel compelled to write in books?
00:47:40:09 – 00:48:08:07
Agent Palmer
My my grandmother was an English teacher. And when she died and we went through her house, I don’t I and listen, my grandmother wrote in shorthand, you know, she was a teacher for like 60 years. I couldn’t even make out what she was writing in the margins of these books. But she wrote in almost every book, and I don’t.
00:48:08:12 – 00:48:29:25
Agent Palmer
And it was it wasn’t like she was an English teacher. She wrote in, you know, you know, The Grapes of Wrath for, like a lesson plan. Like there were just books that I’m sure she didn’t teach that she just. Oh, there was always something in the margin, and I. Unfortunately, I couldn’t read her handwriting, so I didn’t know what to make of it.
00:48:29:25 – 00:48:48:06
Agent Palmer
But I still don’t know if I would have made heads or tails of it. Anyway, but I just. I cringe at that. Like, I, I’m like, eat right with you. I can’t do it. I don’t even think I did it in college when it’s like, no, this is a workbook now I’ll write on this paper. Thank you.
00:48:48:06 – 00:49:01:01
Brian Jay Jones
I could I would highlight, you know, I can highlight like biology books and stuff like that. But I have this beautiful cloth bound Chaucer book that I just could do in that book. It’s still on my shelf to this day. I just could not make myself highlight it.
00:49:01:06 – 00:49:06:22
Agent Palmer
So what are you reading? You know, what are what are you consuming?
00:49:06:27 – 00:49:24:52
Brian Jay Jones
As of right now, one of the things I’m reading is I’m reading Alan Moore’s Providence, which I love, Alan Moore. And one of the things I love about him is he does do a lot of research, like. And that’s where I that’s when I start to get near the point where I’m like, well, I could, I could maybe write something like that because he’s got a lot of, you know, research and he’s writing almost like historical fiction and thing.
00:49:24:52 – 00:49:30:44
Brian Jay Jones
But the just, you know, I’m not Alan Moore. There’s no way. But, you know, Providence. Have you read it? You know about it?
00:49:30:44 – 00:49:32:10
Agent Palmer
I haven’t read it.
00:49:32:14 – 00:49:50:47
Brian Jay Jones
It’s it’s sort of like it takes place in 1918, and it’s sort of his take on the Lovecraftian universe. Like, what if, you know, there was a reporter investigating all these weird goings on, and and it’s just and it’s just fascinating and, you know, typical of more like the back section of it is, you know, somebody’s diary and writing things.
00:49:50:53 – 00:50:09:36
Brian Jay Jones
It’s just it’s just so brilliantly done. I love anything else. So I’m making my way through that. And it’s just every issue is just fantastic. And as I said earlier, I was I’m reading him. I always feel like I’m not quite smart enough to read him, but I just love his stuff. I’m finishing up midnight and Chernobyl Higginbotham book all about, Chernobyl, which is fantastic.
00:50:09:40 – 00:50:31:46
Brian Jay Jones
I actually have Grapes of Wrath on my nightstand. I read that book probably once or twice every year. Because I just love Steinbeck’s narrative voice. It’s a very distinct, very American voice. I love the way he does dialect. It’s just to me, it’s just writing as well as it can ever be done. So those those are the ones that I have going right this very moment.
00:50:31:46 – 00:50:45:17
Brian Jay Jones
Some of the other stuff I read early this year, I read I got in this zone where I read a biography of Chris Farley. I read one of, Phil Hartman. I read David Spade’s memoir. You know, I was just going through and just reading a lot of stuff by comedians. For some reason, I got in the zone on that.
00:50:45:27 – 00:50:49:36
Agent Palmer
So you read multiple books at a times, though?
00:50:49:41 – 00:51:03:59
Brian Jay Jones
Yeah, not always, but yeah, right now I just happen to be, you know, one of them is like, you know, I like, like I said, the, you know, providence. I’m reading on my Kindle, and I read that when I go to bed because the lights are out, I can read on the Kindle and the other book I carry around, it’s on my desk right now with my hat on top of it.
00:51:03:59 – 00:51:14:30
Brian Jay Jones
Midnight. Chernobyl. So yeah, every once while I’ll have 1 or 2. But I’m not somebody that can have 12 books stacked in my nightstand, and I read a little bit of each all the time. I can’t I can’t multitask quite that well. See.
00:51:14:32 – 00:51:15:02
Agent Palmer
And I’ve.
00:51:15:02 – 00:51:16:52
Brian Jay Jones
I was like older.
00:51:16:57 – 00:51:35:49
Agent Palmer
I learned, I don’t and maybe it’s the fault of having a blog and writing about it, but I learned maybe a couple of years ago that I can’t. Not only can I not read more than one book at once, which is fine. You know, I can get through a book in a week and a half, two weeks if I’m even, if I’m busy.
00:51:35:54 – 00:52:05:04
Agent Palmer
But I can’t read the same thing back to back. Like I have to try and filter between, like, biography and then fiction and then maybe fantasy and then, like I have, I have to give myself the variety. Otherwise they end up, running together on me. Especially because, like, I was reading, I early on when I was reading through the Len Deighton bibliography, which I’m still doing, like I’m 20 books and I still have like 30 more books to go.
00:52:05:09 – 00:52:37:06
Agent Palmer
I read two of them back to back, and for some reason, because they’re similar and they’re in a series like I couldn’t separate them. So because I couldn’t separate them, I started reading them every other and then like putting other books in. And one of the things I’ve learned about reading and your book is guilty of it as much as any other, like nonfiction I’ve read, is you can’t read one without getting like three other titles.
00:52:37:11 – 00:53:00:55
Agent Palmer
Like, I, I’ve read any any nonfiction book I read. I know I’m going to add to my to read list from like things that are mentioned in it, and it’s just the most wonderful web, but it’s still a web. So like the to read list never goes down. Yeah, it just always gets bigger.
00:53:00:55 – 00:53:22:21
Brian Jay Jones
And I, you know, and actually usually when I’m writing a book I don’t read outside of the project I’m working on. So it’s actually been kind of nice because right now I don’t know what my next project is. I’ve been able to just read a lot of crazy stuff. Like I said, I was reading the Phil Hartman bio and the and the Chris Farley, but, you know, it’s the first time I’ve been able to kind of sit down and just plow through all this random stuff that I wasn’t able to read.
00:53:22:23 – 00:53:40:56
Brian Jay Jones
You know, when I’m running the doctor six book, all I’m reading about is Doctor Seuss and, you know, and Chuck Jones and I’m reading Doctor Seuss books and, you know, reading about Frank Capra. So, you know, it’s like when I’m on the project, I tend to just stay on that project, and I don’t go off to the side a lot because I worry about, you know, brain scope creep in that regard.
00:53:41:01 – 00:53:48:57
Agent Palmer
Do you? Right. I mean, you’re in you’re in a do you write, just to keep it up as you’re in between projects?
00:53:49:01 – 00:54:03:08
Brian Jay Jones
Oh, no, not not really. I’m not one of those people who, like, can sit down and just say, today I will do a writing exercise. I kind of have to have a project to work on. And then, you know, have the discipline to sit down every day and work on it and do things like that.
00:54:03:08 – 00:54:13:43
Brian Jay Jones
But no, I don’t that, you know, I used to maintain a blog. I don’t do really do that anymore. Not regularly. You know, I tend to shake the cobwebs out mostly on Twitter these days where anything else.
00:54:13:56 – 00:54:33:50
Agent Palmer
Is there advice you would have for, you know, people who want to get into nonfiction writing as either as someone who’s been there like, and it can it doesn’t have to be specific. Just like, you know, these are things that, you know, having been through it, make it easier.
00:54:33:55 – 00:54:52:59
Brian Jay Jones
Well, you know, I think I think the first and foremost rule is the one that applies almost no matter what you’re writing. And it’s, you know, Stephen King said it and I you know, every writer I read talks about some variation of when it’s ass in the chair, that is the hardest, most painful part of doing any project.
00:54:53:04 – 00:55:15:40
Brian Jay Jones
Whether you’re writing fiction, poetry, a movie script, nonfiction biography is just sitting down and doing it. I mean, there’s a there’s a saying that’s something like, I camera who said it, but, I hate writing, but I love having written, which is, you know, very true. You know, sitting down and George Lucas called it bleeding on the page, and I can called the chapter on writing Star Wars that because that was the that was to him, it was a cruciate.
00:55:15:47 – 00:55:33:34
Brian Jay Jones
And that is always the hardest part for anything else. You know, I’m sure you run into people who say, oh, gosh, I would love to write a book someday. I just need the time. Well, the time or anything else is you can do it. Yeah. You know, I had a full I’ve had a full time job. Every book I’ve written and the name of the game is you come home at night and you sit down in the chair and you do it.
00:55:33:39 – 00:55:51:22
Brian Jay Jones
And it sucks. It’s talk a lot sometimes. That’s the hardest part, is just making yourself sit down and do it. And some people have routines and they have, you know, certain pens they need or they have a certain notebook they need. And you know what? More power to you take what works for you and go with it.
00:55:51:22 – 00:56:13:13
Brian Jay Jones
And I tell people who are writing biography, on how they organize sources and how they, you know, how they organize their, their information. I don’t use anything electric there. There’s some people that swear by Scrivener, for example. It feels like a forced extra step to me. I can’t think that way. But if it works for you, by all means use it.
00:56:13:13 – 00:56:24:15
Brian Jay Jones
I you know, I don’t tell anybody what the right or wrong approach is on organizing and biography and how you want to write it, because the best answer to that is it’s the the version of it that works best for you.
00:56:24:20 – 00:56:26:54
Agent Palmer
So. So do you write pen on paper?
00:56:27:09 – 00:56:45:30
Brian Jay Jones
No, no, I don’t do that. All right. Like Scrivener. Scrivener is, is something where you like, you know, type your notes into it and like, scan your, your, you know, three by five cards into PDFs that you can search for them. And so, you know, people who who love it, swear by it, I can’t use it. Like I said, it feels like an like a forced step to me.
00:56:45:35 – 00:57:02:40
Brian Jay Jones
I don’t, you know, I handwrite some notes, but for the most part, when I’m reading a source, I’m just typing the notes right into my laptop in a, in a document, and, and then I, you know, go through later and I move all that information, download it into the chapter I’m working on. Other people can’t do it that way.
00:57:02:40 – 00:57:13:11
Brian Jay Jones
They have to write a rough draft and then an out, an outline and a rough draft and fill in. And that again, to me feels like an extra step. But if it works for you, do it that way. By all means. Whatever works for you, do it.
00:57:13:25 – 00:57:39:19
Agent Palmer
Yeah, I, I I, I can’t agree any more. Like, I don’t know if there’s another level of agreement I can have with you on that. I’ve, I’ve not missed a Thursday blog post in over a couple of years. And it’s just a weekly post. At one point I was, you know, throwing an extra one into Monday because I don’t know style points, but it’s just four posts a month on average.
00:57:39:31 – 00:58:12:37
Agent Palmer
But I’m not game and like up for and completely equally inspired into every single thing. And sometimes you look and you go, all right, that’s, what I mean, that’s a great intro, but, I don’t know where to go. And you just it’s just like to, you know, write something you need. You need to start it. And, you know, all writing is an avalanche or, more specifically, a boulder or a snowball running down a mountain.
00:58:12:42 – 00:58:31:16
Agent Palmer
Right. The the amount of effort it takes to get that thing going varies from project to project. Day time, you know, it’s sunny outside, so it’s even harder to point. But once you get that thing rolling, if you’re a writer, you write and.
00:58:31:20 – 00:58:49:22
Brian Jay Jones
Yeah. And yeah, you can. You know, we talked earlier about rhythm and groove and, you know, I know some people that they get up at 430 in the morning and they start writing and starting at 430 in the morning, and they write till 6:00, and that’s when they get their best writing done. I I’m sorry, I cannot do that.
00:58:49:27 – 00:59:05:02
Brian Jay Jones
I’m an evening person now. I’m better. I’m actually best, and you know, when I had a day job or have a day job, it works out this way because, like, I’m best from about 8 p.m. until about two in the morning. And that’s just the time that works for me. And there’s people are like, what? Are you insane?
00:59:05:02 – 00:59:18:19
Brian Jay Jones
You know, I’d go to bed at 2 a.m. and I’d get up at 6 a.m. to go to my day job. But it’s just, you know, it’s it’s what worked for me. I just, I can’t I can’t be creative and organized and functional at five inches the morning, but I could do with it, you know, one in the morning.
00:59:18:24 – 00:59:28:41
Agent Palmer
Are you? You said you’re in between projects. If if you never wrote another book, would you be happy with what you have done?
00:59:28:46 – 00:59:49:03
Brian Jay Jones
Yes. Yeah, I’m glad I can say that, actually. I mean, I’m really proud of the of the books I’ve written. And it’s weird to me, actually, that I can pick them up and thumb through them and actually be like, okay, this is okay. You know, I actually did this pretty well. That’s that’s a weird place. As we talked earlier, how artists always like very self-deprecating and not always hate their work.
00:59:49:03 – 01:00:09:07
Brian Jay Jones
And, you know, I think they suck. I’m pleased. At least I can pick these up and almost look at it as an outsider. Read this. I’m like, oh, this is this is pretty good. I did a good job on this. I had to go back one day and read the chapter in the Jim Henson book on The Muppet Show or something, and actually, like, got caught up in it, and then you know, I got done and I thought, well, you know, actually, I actually did did that pretty well.
01:00:09:12 – 01:00:09:37
Brian Jay Jones
Is,
01:00:09:42 – 01:00:26:15
Agent Palmer
Is this hindsight? Is this, you know, I’ve done four of these. I’ve got I’ve, I can look back at them. Or did you feel this after maybe say the second or third one, or has it been that you’ve had this break and you get a little bit more hindsight?
01:00:26:20 – 01:00:38:03
Brian Jay Jones
I think probably the, the latter having a break and having a little hindsight, because when you, you know, when you, you do, you know, you get your first one down, you’re like, well now I gotta have the I got to do the second one and then you get the second one. You’re like, I don’t want I don’t want that to be a sophomore slump.
01:00:38:03 – 01:00:58:13
Brian Jay Jones
I got to do another one. Yeah. I, I was like, I think I was telling my agent or somebody this when I was doing the Lucas book, that it was the first time I felt like I knew what I was doing, and that was my third one. And in the first book, I had somebody come to me the other day and say, you know, this one is just it’s so different than the other ones you’ve done.
01:00:58:13 – 01:01:15:49
Brian Jay Jones
I could really see what you were doing. And I was like, God, really? So, you know, it’s it’s I think it’s I think there are some people who can see it evolve, see my style, evolve. I don’t see it. I don’t, you know, I go back and look at it and I think, you know, I did. I did my subject, you know, justice, the one, the one, the one book.
01:01:15:49 – 01:01:32:48
Brian Jay Jones
I go back and I read the Irving book. I’m like, oh, I wish I could write this one again. Now that I know what I’m doing. But, you know, it’s I think it still holds up. Okay. So yeah, I think being able to I think having the last it’s been almost a year now, that I, you know, I turned that manuscript in about a year ago, that I haven’t had a subject.
01:01:32:51 – 01:01:45:38
Brian Jay Jones
It does give you a little bit of time to sort of breathe and take a break and look back and go, you know, those those are okay if I. If I didn’t write another one, I guess I could be happy. I want to do another one. I’d like to keep doing because I love doing it. But I’m pretty.
01:01:45:53 – 01:01:53:55
Brian Jay Jones
Most people don’t get to write for, so I feel pretty lucky in that regard to.
01:01:54:00 – 01:01:58:00
Agent Palmer
Me.
01:01:58:04 – 01:02:17:45
Agent Palmer
First off, let me say that my book fetishism is pretty much on par with Brian’s. As you heard, we both like to read. We both like to collect books, prefer hardcover, and have an appreciation for special editions. I’m proud of my library, and whether you have 5 or 500 books in yours, you should take pride in your library as well.
01:02:17:49 – 01:02:41:22
Agent Palmer
Don’t have a library? Brian’s got four books you can start your collection with. I’m not just saying that because he was on the show. I read one and I’ll be reading the others once I get through the 20 or more books I currently have on my waiting list to read. But enough shilling though that wasn’t too much, I could keep going on and on, but I want to talk to you about something important that came up in the episode.
01:02:41:26 – 01:03:10:20
Agent Palmer
Knowing the value of one’s own work, I am in the unique position to value my own work because I’m doing it for me. While I appreciate every one of you who is listening right now, I’m doing this for me. Otherwise why I do it, which is for another discussion. Actually, I find value in the creative process and in the process of doing because from start to finish, not every podcast or even blog post is creative.
01:03:10:29 – 01:03:34:42
Agent Palmer
Some of it is work and I relish all of it. But as Brian learned in looking back on his four biography subjects, and I’ve learned as I’ve read more and more biographies, most often it takes hindsight to see value. But that doesn’t mean we are all lucky enough to have the time to gain such perspective. Making time to understand the value of something can be a critical part of that project.
01:03:34:42 – 01:03:57:20
Agent Palmer
Success. It doesn’t matter what it is, but you should know the value of what you are doing. Don’t be too quick to sell yourself short. Make sure you know what you are worth, and it could be that something you are working on is invaluable to you or priceless. There is nothing wrong with that. Just know that even taking a break from something can give you perspective.
01:03:57:25 – 01:04:22:41
Agent Palmer
You don’t need to have four books with your name on them sitting on the shelf as Brian is, or with me. A blog with over 500 posts or a podcast with countless episodes. It could be anything. Anything. It doesn’t have to be for public consumption either. Maybe you write for yourself that has value. Maybe you take time to learn things in your spare time that has value.
01:04:22:52 – 01:04:48:22
Agent Palmer
Maybe you volunteer. That absolutely has value. Know that everything has a value. A few episodes ago, Henno and I discussed how getting caught up in outcomes will just get you more outcomes. Understand that. True to that, the process has value as much as the outcome. More often than not, the process has the greater value then the summation of that process.
01:04:48:27 – 01:05:13:13
Agent Palmer
Because we’ve all heard it before. Part of the end is the journey. We all have highs and lows. We all have moments where we are more or less productive than usual, but by making sure to put value on the process itself, whatever it is, it gives us hope that we may continue to get through the hard times and sail through the easy times, because they all have value.
01:05:13:18 – 01:05:35:02
Agent Palmer
You’ll have noticed by now that I’ve kept this pretty generic, and that’s for a reason. Every time I talked about process, you thought of something in your head. In your mind’s eye, you thought of something. So is that thing you thought of the process you were expecting to? Is it what you want? Is it not? Think on that.
01:05:35:14 – 01:05:56:47
Agent Palmer
And while you’re at it, please don’t forget to say hi. Thanks for listening to The Polymer Files episode 17. As a reminder, all links are available in the show notes. And now for the official business. The Palmer Files releases every two weeks on Tuesdays. If you’re still listening, I encourage you to join the discussion. You can tweet Brian at Brian Jones, that’s Brian J.
01:05:56:47 – 01:06:16:40
Agent Palmer
Jones. You can visit Brian’s site to see all of his works at Brian J. Jones.com, and all of his books are available on Amazon or at your local bookstore. Plus, as always, don’t forget you can see all of my writings or rantings on Agent polymer.com. You can tweet me at Agent Palmer and the show at the Palmer Files.
01:06:16:45 – 01:06:39:23
Agent Palmer
The show email is the Palmer files at gmail.com. If you have any feedback on this or any previous episode, or if there’s a topic or guest you’d like me to consider, you can also hear more of me in the meantime on our liner notes, a musical conversation podcast with host Chris Maier and my other gig as co-host of the podcast digest with Dan Lizette.
01:06:39:28 – 01:06:53:23
Agent Palmer
You?
01:06:53:28 – 01:07:15:53
Agent Palmer
See?
01:07:15:58 – 01:07:22:20
Agent Palmer
She’s all right. Brian, do you have one final question for me?
01:07:22:25 – 01:07:33:11
Brian Jay Jones
I actually do hear. So when it comes to biography, don’t tell me a biography you would like to read the most. Tell me a biography you would like to write the most.
01:07:33:16 – 01:07:41:23
Agent Palmer
I attempted this with a blog post about Ralph Bakshi.
01:07:41:28 – 01:07:43:50
Brian Jay Jones
Oh, great subject and I.
01:07:44:03 – 01:08:19:31
Agent Palmer
It was one of the first serious research things I did in the early parts of my blog. Is I made a decision. I wanted to do a series on Ralph Bakshi, and I cleverly called it The Road Perspective. So I started with Wizards, and I wrote a little bit and it wasn’t like in-depth. And then, it got away from me and, I basically wrote about his movies in the order I had watched them, not the order that they had been released.
01:08:19:36 – 01:08:47:26
Agent Palmer
And when I got to like American Pop, I was writing like full on, like commentaries on the movie. So it kind of got away from me. But I at a certain point, I circled back and I went, all right, I’m, I’m going to write about the man and now the artist himself. And I did a lot of research, and I’m not unhappy with it, but it’s very, like, I feel like there’s not a lot of heart in it.
01:08:47:40 – 01:09:15:53
Agent Palmer
Like, I tried to give it a little bit more heft maybe than I was. Should have. Like, I probably was writing out of my depth. I think now with years more experience, not just in, you know, research, but in writing in general, I feel like I could do it better. But I feel like that’s the one I would want to do most because as an artist, he absolutely inspires me.
01:09:15:53 – 01:09:35:33
Agent Palmer
Just kind of similar to, you know, everybody we talked about in this episode, like he wanted control. And, you know, when he didn’t get that control ultimately in like Cool World, he walked away. And that’s that’s probably the one I would want to write the most.
01:09:35:38 – 01:09:54:16
Brian Jay Jones
Well, in the research and the research, it sounds like you’ve already got quite a bit of it, but that’s, you know, so, so, so one of those you would go back years later and start, you know, gathering, gathering your papers about you and, you know, putting on your robe and sitting down and write, is that one that, that you regret not doing, or would you go back at some point in the future?
01:09:54:16 – 01:09:56:44
Brian Jay Jones
So, you know, maybe I’ll take this up again?
01:09:56:49 – 01:10:18:36
Agent Palmer
It’s it’s possible. It’s so the the idea of me writing a book has been I don’t, I don’t know if it’s every blogger because I don’t talk to a lot of bloggers, but. And, you know, my mother self-published a book, so maybe that has something to do with it, but I get a lot of, oh, you’re a blogger.
01:10:18:36 – 01:10:37:15
Agent Palmer
What are you going to write a book? And it’s like, well, I mean, you know, it’s it’s it’s it’s on my blog. It’s on my website, like, I’ve written the equivalent of a book. It’s not like I can’t write that many words. I just, you know, and maybe back, she would be one of those scenarios of somebody I would want to write about.
01:10:37:15 – 01:10:45:15
Agent Palmer
Although he’s written his own stuff that’s covered himself very well. But, I do get that.
01:10:45:15 – 01:10:47:26
Brian Jay Jones
Trust it, I think.
01:10:47:26 – 01:11:08:09
Agent Palmer
So I feel like he’s the kind of artist that wouldn’t, you know, from that beatnik generation that just. I feel like. I feel like there’s a certain generation out there of maybe they’re not telling you the whole truth, but they’re not sugarcoating anything, right? But I always get this question of, like, when are you going to write a book?
01:11:08:09 – 01:11:29:15
Agent Palmer
And I just, I feel like if I was inspired to do it, I would have done it already. I’m not saying it’s not in the cards, but it’s just, you know, and I’m also not one of those writers who’s like, you have to be inspired to write. I’ve, I’ve written because I want to.
01:11:29:20 – 01:11:47:13
Brian Jay Jones
Well, I mean, that’s a that’s a great way to look at it because, you know, something like a book and especially a biography, like I was saying earlier about a lot of biography is a fit between subject and biographer. You don’t ever, in my opinion, want biography to feel like you’re writing a book report. Because that makes you rush things.
01:11:47:13 – 01:12:00:49
Brian Jay Jones
I think, first of all. So I, so I, I think, I, I think your instinct on it is right. You know, I mean, you don’t really have to enjoy writing it, but it needs to be one that you feel connected to and, you know, don’t sit down on your desk and go, oh, God, here we go into this world again.
01:12:00:53 – 01:12:09:55
Brian Jay Jones
Well, that’s the worst thing I think can happen is where you might get to a chapter like, oh, God, this is like the really sad part of the story to write, but that’s different from God. I wish I wasn’t writing this well.
01:12:10:00 – 01:12:25:57
Agent Palmer
That it does lead me to one final question back to you, which is, can can you be too big of a fan to write like, I mean, I’m a huge fan of Ralph Bakshi. Is it possible my fandom brings me too close to the subject matter? Is that.
01:12:26:02 – 01:12:49:24
Brian Jay Jones
You know, it can. But I think, you know, I think it’s like anything this sounds like a like, I’m, you know, trying to put an escape hatch into the question, but I think it just comes with practice on it and, and reading. You know, that’s why I ask you the question about can you trust back? She’s, you know, memoirs because, you know, I read you read a lot of stuff from George Lucas and like, you can just smell the bullshit coming off of it.
01:12:49:28 – 01:13:05:24
Brian Jay Jones
And, you know, part of you kind of lost or like, I’m not going to let him get away at that or, you know, so, I mean, I think that sort of comes with practice. You start to know, when you, you know, when you, you start reading about your subject, what you would like to happen versus what actually happened.
01:13:05:29 – 01:13:25:51
Brian Jay Jones
And I think that when you’re a biographer, you want to be, you know, true to your subject. And the best way to be true to yourself is to be honest about it. Now, you can bring your warmth to it. I mean, I was, you know, telling somebody that I don’t write takedowns, you know, and, and I had somebody say, you know, you’re the only person that could ever written a biography.
01:13:25:51 – 01:13:59:49
Brian Jay Jones
But Jim Henson had exposed his marital infidelities and gotten away with it and people loving him. When the book is over, because, you know, and I think in a way, you know, I’m, I’m forgiving of Jim for that, you know, but what I want people to do is, is understand, Jim, more than anything on that. So, so I think, you know, being a fan does bring, you’re bringing something to the table, but I think any subject you write about, you’re going to bring something to the table that you have to contend with, whether you’re writing a book about Joe McCarthy and you absolutely hate the man, and yet he’s fascinating and his
01:13:59:49 – 01:14:16:38
Brian Jay Jones
story is fascinating. And what he did is fascinating, even as it’s terrible. And I think that helps shape the way you tell your stories and write your news. I think it’s what makes biographies so rich. I mean, somebody could have had the same sources I have for Jim Henson, probably written a completely different book. I just think we bring our own things to it.
01:14:16:38 – 01:14:38:03
Brian Jay Jones
And that’s what makes biography really interesting and fun. It’s why people can keep writing books on Abraham Lincoln. You know, for the last time, I think, I think there’s something like, you know, 58 books on Lincoln produced a year on average or something like that. Everybody’s got a different take. They bring that. There’s a brand new biography of George Washington by Alexis Cole that’s just, you know, marvelous and funny and interesting and fun.
01:14:38:03 – 01:14:52:00
Brian Jay Jones
And, I think that’s the really fun part of biographies because it’s people telling the stories of people, and people bring their biases and their and their own, you know, sense of what’s interesting to them, to the story and to telling someone else’s story.
01:14:52:05 – 01:14:57:27
Agent Palmer
Well, I’ll I’ll leave it under consideration. I’ll add it to the to do list. Right.
01:14:57:27 – 01:14:58:31
Brian Jay Jones
Next to great place for.
01:14:58:39 – 01:15:02:40
Agent Palmer
Yeah, right next to the list of all the books I still have to read a great.
–End Transcription–
This transcription was processed by PalmerTech 3.1 and may contain errors for HUMINT (human intelligence).