wrote who never would have written before. It changed what they wrote about, too.
I’ve continued in a little enchanted space. I’m at a wonderful publishing house, Knopf, with a wonderful editor, Ann Close. Though I have taken a lot of risks with my work, my house has been with me every step of the way.
Publishing has gotten so much more difficult overall, though. I had a long period of innocence before I quite knew that publishing was a business and books had to be sold. I didn’t know what my sales numbers were; that wasn’t part of my life. And in truth, I’m still not very clear about them, though I’m not in as much of a fog as I was. But can the young people afford that innocence? I’m aware that this whole project we’ve embarked upon is fragile and very much at odds with mainstream trends. Anyone who cares about writing has to be more realistic than in the past.
The fact that you can’t get an advance you can live on is inevitably going to weed out a lot of good writers. Not that there won’t be any; but we will tend, I think, to have writers with both talent and resources. Talent is not going to be enough. Or talent will be enough for the writer to produce one or two books, but not a body of work. And we may well see something like what we see in many elite institutions, too, a kind of barbell, with people with resources doing all right, and people who come from very unrepresented groups also doing unexpectedly well, but with the middle hit hard. As somebody who could so easily have not been a writer myself, I feel terrible to see this happening.
I support every effort to make writing
live
for people—to help people understand how books enrich their lives, and to encourage writers to write books that do actually enrich people’s lives. If the crisis in reading helps writers focus on what itis they actually have to say, that will not solve the problem but will still be a good thing.
Gish Jen’s Wisdom for Writers
Writing is a ridiculous thing to do for money. If you do it, do it for the reason writers have always done it, which is not money but for another, deeper satisfaction.
Readers are interested in what’s going on in other parts of the world, because what’s going on in other parts of the world is relevant to what’s going on here. Writing with an international viewpoint is important.
When you tell a story in the kitchen to a friend, it is full of infelicities. I try to edit those out in literature but keep the feeling of a story being told. It’s not a lecture; it’s something much deeper.
C HAPTER N INE
Sebastian Junger
KORENGAL VALLEY, AFGHANISTAN
Spring 2007
O’Byrne and the men of Battle Company arrived in the last week in May when the rivers were running
full and the upper peaks still held their snow. Chinooks escorted by Apache helicopters rounded a massive dark mountain called the Abas Ghar and pounded into the valley and put down amid clouds of dust at the tiny landing zone….
—Opening lines, Chapter 1 ,
War
, 2010
N o matter how many more blockbuster books he writes (he’s had four bestsellers to date), or award-winning documentaries he makes (
Restrepo
won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize in 2010), Sebastian Junger is likely to be best known, always, for his first book and for its movie adaptation. Who among us hasn’t used the phrase “a perfect storm?” Who among us can hear that phrase without conjuring George Clooney at the helm of a tiny, toylike fishing boat being tossed about in the churl and chop of monster waves?
Another phrase that will be forever associated with Sebastian Junger is “quintessential war reporter.” Junger has reported from some of the world’s most dangerous war zones, including Nigeria and Afghanistan—where he wrote for
Vanity Fair
and filmed
Restrepo
with his close friend and colleague Tim Hetherington, who was killed by mortar fire in 2011 while reporting from the front lines of the Libyan civil war. About the death of his colleague
I’ve continued in a little enchanted space. I’m at a wonderful publishing house, Knopf, with a wonderful editor, Ann Close. Though I have taken a lot of risks with my work, my house has been with me every step of the way.
Publishing has gotten so much more difficult overall, though. I had a long period of innocence before I quite knew that publishing was a business and books had to be sold. I didn’t know what my sales numbers were; that wasn’t part of my life. And in truth, I’m still not very clear about them, though I’m not in as much of a fog as I was. But can the young people afford that innocence? I’m aware that this whole project we’ve embarked upon is fragile and very much at odds with mainstream trends. Anyone who cares about writing has to be more realistic than in the past.
The fact that you can’t get an advance you can live on is inevitably going to weed out a lot of good writers. Not that there won’t be any; but we will tend, I think, to have writers with both talent and resources. Talent is not going to be enough. Or talent will be enough for the writer to produce one or two books, but not a body of work. And we may well see something like what we see in many elite institutions, too, a kind of barbell, with people with resources doing all right, and people who come from very unrepresented groups also doing unexpectedly well, but with the middle hit hard. As somebody who could so easily have not been a writer myself, I feel terrible to see this happening.
I support every effort to make writing
live
for people—to help people understand how books enrich their lives, and to encourage writers to write books that do actually enrich people’s lives. If the crisis in reading helps writers focus on what itis they actually have to say, that will not solve the problem but will still be a good thing.
Gish Jen’s Wisdom for Writers
Writing is a ridiculous thing to do for money. If you do it, do it for the reason writers have always done it, which is not money but for another, deeper satisfaction.
Readers are interested in what’s going on in other parts of the world, because what’s going on in other parts of the world is relevant to what’s going on here. Writing with an international viewpoint is important.
When you tell a story in the kitchen to a friend, it is full of infelicities. I try to edit those out in literature but keep the feeling of a story being told. It’s not a lecture; it’s something much deeper.
C HAPTER N INE
Sebastian Junger
KORENGAL VALLEY, AFGHANISTAN
Spring 2007
O’Byrne and the men of Battle Company arrived in the last week in May when the rivers were running
full and the upper peaks still held their snow. Chinooks escorted by Apache helicopters rounded a massive dark mountain called the Abas Ghar and pounded into the valley and put down amid clouds of dust at the tiny landing zone….
—Opening lines, Chapter 1 ,
War
, 2010
N o matter how many more blockbuster books he writes (he’s had four bestsellers to date), or award-winning documentaries he makes (
Restrepo
won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize in 2010), Sebastian Junger is likely to be best known, always, for his first book and for its movie adaptation. Who among us hasn’t used the phrase “a perfect storm?” Who among us can hear that phrase without conjuring George Clooney at the helm of a tiny, toylike fishing boat being tossed about in the churl and chop of monster waves?
Another phrase that will be forever associated with Sebastian Junger is “quintessential war reporter.” Junger has reported from some of the world’s most dangerous war zones, including Nigeria and Afghanistan—where he wrote for
Vanity Fair
and filmed
Restrepo
with his close friend and colleague Tim Hetherington, who was killed by mortar fire in 2011 while reporting from the front lines of the Libyan civil war. About the death of his colleague
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