Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Halberstam is fascinated by power. In ”The Best and the Brightest,” he examined the forces that led this country into the Vietnam War. In ”The Powers That Be,” he turned his attention to the political influence of the media. In ”The Reckoning”
(Avon), he discusses the decline of U.S. industrial strength, specifically in the auto industry, alongside the rise of Japanese economic power.
Q-As a writer, what attracts you to a subject?
A-Curiosity. I write the book that I wish someone else had written because I`m curious about the subject. And then, if it`s a book that I`m going to spend five or six years on, I`m looking for something major that has shaped our society. A story so important that it has changed our lives: Vietnam, Watergate, the loss of our industrial supremacy. In between, I`ll do smaller, sports books that give me a chance to catch my breath. Writing a major book is like running a marathon. When you finish, you don`t really want to start thinking about your next marathon.
Q-What kind of research do you do?
A-All out. If a book takes five years, three and a half are research, basically interviewing as many people as I can. I figure out whom I need to talk to and keep on going. There are no shortcuts. I don`t write books by sitting in a library. For ”The Reckoning,” I spent seven months in Japan, then I went back for three months and then went back again for a couple of weeks. All in all, I must have talked to several hundred people. The writing is the easy part.
Q-Was ”The Reckoning” especially difficult because you were working in a foreign country?
A-Yes, there was a lot to master. I had to learn about the Japanese culture. They do astonishingly well with very few God-given resources. They have a very small, barren land, but they`ve maximized their limited gifts, especially their human resources. Theirs is a culture of adversity, ours a culture of affluence. I also had to learn about the worlds of business, automobiles, Wall Street and international trade. It was like I had to retool myself.
Q-How do you know when your research is done?
A-The moment comes when you`re interviewing some expert and you realize that you know more about the subject than he does. I have a tendancy to do too much legwork, but even I have to stop when I`ve answered all the questions I started out with.
Q-What will your next book be about?
A-I`m working on two books. ”The Summer of `49” is a small book about the 1949 pennant race between the Red Sox and the Yankees, which went down to the last day of the season. Then I`ve planned another big book about the social, cultural and political history of the `50s.
