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Digging ‘Killers Of The Flower Moon’ Out Of The Depths Of History

David is a staff writer at the New Yorker and author of one of my favourite stories of all time… the incredible life and adventures of Percy Fawcett and the Lost City Of Z.

David has of course, many other credits to his name, not least of which is authoring Killers Of The Flower Moon, which is a violent and horrifically true story from Americas wild west that has actually been turned into a movie featuring Leonardo DiCaprio & Martin Scorcese to be released this summer.

David Grann has also authored the unbelievably rich and incredible story from the 1700s called The Wager, this story is confirmation of the old cliche, that sometimes the truth really is stranger than fiction. 

#139 w/ David Grann - ‘Curious Worldview Podcast’

Forward this email or share this podcast episode with your mate who is just a bit to interested in Leo…

Here is a transcript of the opening exchange from the conversation…

Ryan
So your mother sounds like an incredible woman and perhaps you can explain why, but if the two of you were characters in one of your stories, a very neat line would be drawn between her career and then how you turned out. And I just wonder if there's any truth to that.

David Grann
You know, it's very funny. My mom was a great publisher, and she was a pioneering woman in the field because she was the first woman to be first managing editor, a senior editor. I guess it was... editor in chief, first person to be editor in chief of a major publishing house in New York and then later became a CEO of a publishing house. The funny thing is, so I grew up around authors, but the funniest thing was, and I always wanted to be a writer, but the only advice she ever gave me was, whatever you do, don't become a writer.

She thought it would be a hard life for me. And so like any good son, I ignored her advice and I decided to prove her wrong and became a writer.

Ryan
Was your, was your path into writing serendipitous or was it quite exact because your mom surrounding with books, it might be like to produce great writing.

David Grann
I think there was no question of unconscious effect or conscious or not in the sense that, you know, I grew up around books and reading was important. And, you know, some of the early books I read were authors of hers and they were, she was kind of known for these kind of a finger on the pulse for these very commercial books like, you know, these kind of thrillers that you know, you get at the airport and, you know, they would, you know, hold you in their grip wherever you were going. So, you know, people like Tom Clancy and Dick Francis, a lot of mystery writers. And so those were some of the early books I read and they certainly had an effect on me. And, but in terms of the path of becoming a writer, it was very long and winding and inexact. I don't know if there really is a linear. path to becoming a writer and especially for me I didn't know what kind of writer I wanted to be when I was young I just want like to write I like to tell stories that I told stories in basically every form you could you could try so I tried my hand at poetry which was terrible and fiction which was equally terrible and then and also journalism and even then when I became a journalist I initially got, you know, went to where I could get a job. So I got my first job covering Congress or Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. And so I was always kind of tagged as a political reporter and kind of a wonk. And those weren't really the stories I really longed to tell. So even then, you know, it took me about a decade in trying to be a writer before I really had a career doing the kind of things I like to do.

Ryan
Where are the lost unpublished grand poems?

David Grann
Oh gosh, hopefully in an attic decaying and they'll never be found…

……. continue the conversation with the podcast here.