A Master Class with David Grann
b'David Grann is a staff writer for The New Yorker and the author of two nonfiction books that topped the best-seller list this summer: \\u201cThe Wager\\u201d and \\u201cKillers of the Flower Moon,\\u201d from 2017, which Martin Scorsese has adapted into a film opening in October. Grann is among the most lauded nonfiction writers at The New Yorker; David Remnick says that \\u201chis urge to find unique stories and tell them with rigor and style is rare to the vanishing point.\\u201d Grann talks with Remnick about his beginnings as a writer, and about his almost obsessive research and writing process. \\u201cThe trick is how can you tell a true story using these literary techniques and remain completely factually based,\\u201d Grann says. \\u201cWhat I realized as I did this more is that you are an excavator. You aren\\u2019t imagining the story\\u2014you are excavating the story.\\u201d Grann recounts travelling in rough seas to the desolate site of the eighteenth-century shipwreck at the heart of \\u201cThe Wager,\\u201d his most recent book, so that he could convey the sailors\\u2019 despair more accurately. That book is also being made into a film by Scorcese. \\u201cIt\\u2019s a learning curve because I\\u2019ve never been in the world of Hollywood,\\u201d Grann says. \\u201cYou\\u2019re a historical resource. \\u2026 Once they asked me, \\u2018What was the lighting in the room?\\u2019 I thought about it for a long time. That\\u2019s something I would not need to know, writing a book.\\u201d But Grann is glad to be in the hands of an expert, and keep his distance from the process. \\u201cI\\u2019m not actually interested in making a film,\\u201d he admits. \\u201cI\\u2019m really interested in these stories, and so I love that somebody else with their own vision and intellect is going to draw on these stories and add to our understanding of whatever this work is.\\u201d'