Krakauer is one of my favorite non-fiction writers working today. His books, including Into the Wild and Into Thin Air, are simply tremendous haunting works. His latest is about Pat Tillman, the NFL football player killed by friendly fire in the war in Afghanistan.
Katie Drummond, for Trueslant.com, chatted with him recently about his writing.
From the piece...
“Every single time I write, I ask myself what the fuck I’m doing, why the fuck I’m writing,” he says, comfortably off-the-cuff at the midway point of our conversation. “Every book I finish, I swear I’ll never write another one.”He’s been obsessed with climbing since childhood, but Krakauer never had the same enthusiasm for writing. After earning a degree in environmental studies from Hampshire College, he spent his 20’s working odd jobs, then venturing out to get his fix in the mountains. When he married wife Linda in 1980, Krakauer was ready to slow down and earn a steady income, but work in his trade of choice, carpentry, was hard to find. It was then that a former professor at Hampshire, David Roberts, himself a longtime outdoors writer, suggested freelancing.
“He said that freelance writing was the best gig you could get, and I always said I’d never do it,” Krakauer recalls. “It was a last resort, but I gave it a shot and it paid the bills.”
That backup plan was soon a full-time job.
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