Biographer T.J. Stiles

The website Big Think has posted an interview in which I discuss the art of writing biography, research, the character of Cornelius Vanderbilt, and the fraught question of the uses of history for the present.



You can find the webpage, with shorter excerpts, here:
http://bigthink.com/tjstiles.

I've had a very busy spring, with Vintage's publication of the paperback edition of The First Tycoon and requests for public speaking. So allow me to direct your attention to my Media Center page on this website. There I'm posting audio and video clips of my public appearances.

Most recently, I appeared at the Printer's Row Lit Fest in Chicago. Even though I was born in the country, I love great cities, and Chicago is one of the greatest. My only regret is that I wasn't able to stay in town longer, and enjoy the festival (and the rest of the town) for myself.

You can watch a clip of my 45-minute talk/conversation on C-SPAN's BookTV website, here: http://www.c-spanarchives.org/program/294033-8. And don't forget to check out my Media Center page for other interviews or talks.

I've been neglectful of late, when it comes to updating this blog. I do have a defense: I've been on the road, both for business and pleasure. In fact, this last Monday I returned home to San Francisco after two weeks away, a trip that began with the Pulitzer ceremony at Columbia University in New York.

As I've mentioned before, the Pulitzer and National Book Award really have filled me with a renewed sense of humility. I'm in daunting company. And, as I often say, I don't kid myself that I was the only possible choice—far from it. But it's also really a wonderful thing, especially because it's a kind of ratification of my highest hopes for this book: that it would be a work of literature, in some way, as well as scholarship.

The irony, of course, is that the Commodore loathed writing. It has been suggested to me that he was dyslexic, which is quite possible, if impossible to properly diagnose over this span of time. He read well enough, and could write (though he spelled phonetically). Still, he didn't like to write, as he admitted in one letter. He pitched letters that he received into the fire after he read them, and left no collection of papers behind.

Lucky for me that he left a far larger paper trail behind than previous historians and biographers had suspected. Though it didn't seem so lucky when I was five years into the project, with still no end in sight...

Thursday, May 27, 2010, is the 216th birthday of Commodore Vanderbilt. With a National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize on my shelf, I can only wish him a happy birthday.

Not that he was an easy man to like. Vanderbilt fought his way from near the very bottom to the absolute top (in fact, you could say he invented a new top), and he was nothing if not fierce. He embodied profound conundrums for the American republic, as he both created enormous wealth for his fellow countrymen and pioneered a severely polarized society, amassing power never before seen in private hands.

Yet let's give him due credit: He was truly self-made, earned his pride in himself, and, if ruthless, was also honest, and promoted the interests of the stockholders of his corporations as did no other chief executive of his day (or perhaps ours). As a biographer, it's my duty to follow a balanced approach to my subject, rather than preach a message, using my subject as a mere vehicle for preconceived views. Vanderbilt has suffered far too much of the latter over the decades.

I have another reason to wish the Commodore well. I suspect that his ghost tried to put a stop to my biography early on. In October 2003, when I had been at work on The First Tycoon for a year already, I was a passenger on the Staten Island Ferry boat Andrew Barberi when it crashed.

Let me stress, though, that I don't mean to make light of that event. Eleven people tragically died, amid horror that I was unaware of as I rode on the upper deck, where none were harmed.

They don't allow you to dedicate Pulitzer Prizes, the way you do books. So let me just say, on the 216th anniversary of the Commodore's birth, that I'm honoring the people who didn't make it across New York harbor on that windy day in 2003.

On April 20, Vintage released the paperback edition of The First Tycoon, as shown in the sidebar column of this webpage. That begs the question: What's different about the paperback, compared to the hardcover? Almost as significant: What's the same?

First, what's the same, starting with design and reproduction. When I was preparing The First Tycoon for publication, I selected an unusually large number of illustrations—a total of seventy-nine. Rather than distribute these around the book, I asked that they be reproduced in special inserts. Often an illustrated book offers eight pages of illustrations, in just one insert section. In The First Tycoon, there are two eight-page inserts and one sixteen-page insert.

Why special insert sections? They make the illustrations easier to find, of course, but most important is the reproduction quality they offer. They are on heavier stock, which allows for sharper images and prevents bleed-through, where you can see the photo on the reverse page.

Normally Vintage reproduces these inserts in paperbacks on standard-stock paper. Don't get me wrong: Vintage does a very good job of it. But the publisher agreed, on my request, to print them on the heavier stock for the paperback of The First Tycoon, to provide higher quality reproduction, just as in the hardcover. And, of course, the paperback features the same maps and outstanding interior design as the hardcover. The front cover is slightly different, but the beautiful spine from the hardcover appears on the paperback as well.

That's what's the same. What's different? Even though I'm proud of the first edition of my book, as a particularly clean product, there were still a few minor errors here and there. These were cleaned up even before the paperback, in subsequent printings of the hardcover. But there is one case where I made a change for the paperback that may be worth further discussion.

If you compare pages 458 and 459 of the hardcover and paperback editions, you will note that two paragraphs have been switched. This is in a description of the height of the stockmarket battle known as the Erie War, when Vanderbilt was struggling in 1868 to corner the market in Erie Railway stock. His enemies (Daniel Drew, Jay Gould, and Jim Fisk, among others) created new stock that was frankly unlawful, and dumped it on the market to defeat the corner, which Vanderbilt would have successfully carried through otherwise.

I was discussing this episode with another historian, who pointed out that March 10 was the critical day, in which it became clear that there was new stock being manufactured, and on which the Erie people (Drew, etc.) carried out a "lock-up," withdrawing a massive amount of money from bank accounts in order to cause a freeze-up of credit on Wall Street. These two things effectively stopped the trading in Erie on the stock exchange.

In the hardcover, I mention March 10, and then go on to describe Vanderbilt as continuing to buy the stock. Why? Because I didn't want to get too far down into the weeds of this affair. Other historians, notably Maury Klein and John Steele Gordon, have described the day-by-day details very well, and I saw no need to describe every single maneuver in extreme close-up. After my conversation with the other historian, though, I decided my general description was just a bit too general in this case, since I specifically mentioned that date of March 10.

By switching the paragraph that starts "But Vanderbilt continued to buy" so it appears before my mention of the crisis of March 10, it's clearer that that date marked a turning point, in which the battle on Wall Street screeched to a halt, and the conflict shifted almost entirely to the courts and legislature.

Reading the accounts through, it's clear in both cases that I am offering a general description of the events of those days, rather than a day-by-day, hour-by-hour narrative. Because of that, the original version is not exactly wrong. However, that small change made it more precise for the paperback. And precision matters a great deal to me.

Thanks to the Pulitzer Prize, the paperback of The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt will be published early—on April 20, in fact. As of this writing, that's only five days away.

For those of you who want to acquire a copy of the gorgeous hardcover, time is running out. It will be unobtainable before long. (Excuse me for calling my own book "gorgeous," but I had nothing to do with the design and production quality. Well done, Knopf.)

For those of you holding onto your money, waiting for the paperback, your long wait is about to end, almost exactly one year after hardcover publication.

Where should you buy? I encourage you to seek out your local independent bookseller. Reserve a copy! Why not Amazon or Barnes & Noble or Borders, you ask? I am not against any of these retailers. I think the world of books needs them all. But if I'm not anti-Amazon or anti-chain, I am definitely pro-independent. The independent neighborhood bookseller is where readers can interact with well-informed staff, get intelligent recommendations, and discover new and unknown writers. Independents are where writers actually meet readers in face-to-face appearances.

I say this not so much for my sake, since the prizes I've been honored with guarantee that readers can find my books, wherever they shop. Rather, I'm speaking for the legions of writers who deserve an audience, and are waiting to break out. And when they do break out, it's usually through independent bookstores—an essential part of the culture of the written word.

So if you order from Amazon or Barnes & Noble or Borders, you won't get a complaint from me. Buying books is good, no matter where. But if you support your local independent bookstore, then consider this a pat on the back. Well done.

Oh, and thanks again to Mr. Pulitzer. Your forethought, sir, has had a big effect on my life.

The National Book Foundation announced that my new book, The First Tycoon, is a finalist for the National Book Award.

I'm flabbergasted—overjoyed, stunned, and humbled all at once. Yes, humbled, corny as that sounds. I'll be honest: I try my best to write at a level that would merit this kind of recognition, so this honor is a dream come true. But I really do believe in publishing a book with all humility, and this only drives that point home. There are hundreds of fine nonfiction books being published this year, and dozens that merit serious consideration for a national prize. Being singled out is a gift, plain and simple.

I recently spoke at the Miller Center at the University of Virginia. Here's a Flash video of the event, which can also be downloaded in other formats at the Miller Center website.

Recently two very different reviews appeared of my book. The contrast between them says a lot about the optical illusion that the size of a biography can create.

One is in Foreign Affairs, by noted writer and critic Walter Russell Mead. I'm happy to say it's very positive. Mead has good things to say about my "ability to integrate economic, technological, intellectual, and political history."

The other is in the Anniston Star, by Alsie White, "grandmother and an avid book reader". For the history presented in this book, her reaction was: "Yawn!" According to Ms. White, "We learn very little about the private man."

I naturally prefer Mr. Mead's view, but Ms. White's reaction to the book is worth paying attention to, because she's also a reader, like many others. I'm not writing this to beat up on her. My point, rather, is that she formed a false impression, thanks to a sort of optical illusion.

There will likely be a better book published someday about Commodore Vanderbilt, but it will probably be a while before we see more information about "the private man." I found far more than I ever imagined I would (as he left no papers), and his private story is woven throughout every chapter of the book. But, to Ms. White, it feels like there isn't much, because this is a biography that pays a great deal of attention to the historical context. I wasn't content to just write about what he said and did; I wanted to understand (and explain) why he was significant.

All that other material, I hope, makes my book more interesting and important than it otherwise would be. Walter Russell Mead thought so, which is highly gratifying. For him, my approach worked.

For Ms. White, the proportion of space devoted to contextual description, to my reflections and analysis, created the misleading impression that the absolute quantity of personal information is small. It isn't.

Does that mean that everyone must read and like my book? Of course not. It wasn't the book Ms. White was hoping for, and that's perfectly fine—happens to all of us. But her very desire for one element of the book ironically made it seem like there wasn't much of it, because it was embedded in another element that she didn't want. Funny how that works.

I've read that, in certain works of fiction, a city can be as much a character as any person in the story. Certainly cities and localities have played much the same role in my biographies.

In Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War, for example, rural western Missouri emerges as a living, changing thing, as essential to Jesse James's story as his mother or brother Frank. And, in The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt, I tried to tell the story of the emergence of two great American cities: San Francisco and, in particular, New York.

Without New York, Commodore Vanderbilt never would have achieved the staggering success that marked his career. And without Vanderbilt, New York would have had a harder time clawing its way to the top. I tried to give the full flavor of the city as it changed in the nineteenth century: it went from being "an overgrown seaport village" (as a Scottish visitor called it, before the War of 1812)—rife with herds of roaming pigs and packs of wild dogs, with backyard privies and yellow fever epidemics—to an island of tenements and factories, mansions and banks.

As I see the story (and tried to write it), Vanderbilt and New York grew up together. He took on the aristocratic, landowning merchants who presided over the "culture of deference" in the early nineteenth century, championing an individualistic, commercial, competitive culture that came to define American society. And he went on to inaugurate the Gilded Age, with the vast polarization of wealth between himself (along with a handful of other super-rich New Yorkers) and the desperately poor, who lived a short distance from his Washington Square mansion, crowded into decrepit housing in Five Points and other slums. It's a story both exhilarating and hearbreaking, much like New York itself.

Vanderbilt also played a central role in the birth of San Francisco. More than a decade before the completion of the transcontinental railroad—and half a century before the Panama Canal was begun—he ran a steamship line between San Francisco and New York, with a land crossing at Nicaragua. By lowering fares and speeding up service, he promoted migration to California, and magnified the impact of the gold-rush gold in the financial system headquartered in New York. Though he never set foot in San Francisco, he became a major presence there, praised and condemned in newspaper editorials and sidewalk conversations on Market Street. The character of early San Francisco—a city of hustlers and con artists, of schemers and quick-to-shoot miners—shaped a major part of Vanderbilt's own life, and I tried to bring it out in all its brilliant colors.

Though Vanderbilt's greatest corporation, the New York Central & Hudson River Railroad, is long gone, the infrastructure he built has left a lasting mark on New York. His massive St. John's Park freight depot (where the exit of the Holland Tunnel is now) reshaped lower Manhattan, giving it the particular character it has today, with its massive nineteenth-century warehouses. He constructed the original Grand Central, which anchored Midtown, and made 42nd Street into a grand crosstown artery. He sank the railroad tracks that led to Grand Central beneath the surface of 4th Avenue, allowing it to blossom into Park Avenue. And he helped to make Wall Street the most important and sophisticated financial market in the world.

For good reason his statue remains outside of Grand Central Terminal today, looking south toward Wall Street. In many ways, he made the modern city, and with it the modern economy of the United States.