"For me, it's about being a grown up. I think what I projected even at an early age was I've been doing this a while. I plan on doing it for years to come. There's nothing about me that suggests I'm going to scoop up your words and run away and never be heard from again. I'm not leaving town. I'm not leaving the career. You can trust me because it's in my best interest to be trustworthy, too. And then, of course, I listen more than I talk," says Robert Kolker, the bestselling author of The Vanishing Family: Love, Fate, and the Quest to End Dementia.
It’s Robert Kolker, returning to the podcast to talk about his latest book, which is, I have to say, the odds-on favorite to win the 2nd annual CNFy for outstanding achievement in the field of excellence. Last year Cassidy Randall won the wooden plaque. If all awards are ultimately meaningless, I’m happy to contribute. Oh, yeah, you want the book title don’t you? It’s The Vanishing Family: Love, Fate, and the Quest to End Dementia. It’s published by Double Day. I don’t say this as hyperbole: This book is a masterpiece.
Bob is also the author of Hidden Valley Road, a No. 1 NYT bestseller and a selection of Oprah’s Book Club and a top 10 book of the year by the NYT, WaPo, and the fat cats on Wall Street at the Wall Street Journal. The Vanishing Family was one of those “noted books” in The New Yorker. Yeah, it’s THAT good. I’ll give you a little more about Bob in a minute.
Bob Kolker is a writer for the New York Times Magazine and his work has also appeared in the Atavist Magazine, check out his last appearance on Ep. 385. His journalism most often takes the form of gripping, humane narratives. He’s a national magazine award finalist with work appearing in Wired, The Atlantic, Bloomberg Businessweek, Oprah Magazine, and New York magazine. It’s … impressive. Learn more about Bob at robertkolker.com and follow him on IG @bobkolker.
You’re in for a fun ride with this podcast. Among many things, we talk about:
- The gear he uses
- Timeline files
- His crisis of confidence at the start of a story
- What is the self?
- The power of timelining
- His reportorial approach
- Interviewing chronologically as a means to creating a rough draft
- Balancing the confidential information of the family in his reporting
- And a lot more, a LOT more.
Parting shot this week about having an emergency book nearby. I recorded this as a video for the Patreon crew. No b-roll, but I might go in and pretty up my parting shots as vlogs for Patreon and YouTube. Visit Patreon.com/cnfpod to see the first video. Again, no b-roll so it’s just me riffing.
