“When you become a writer, you inevitably lose your innocence as a reader,” says the Pulitzer-winning novelist, whose new book is “Somebody’s Fool.” “It’s like being given the underground tour of Disney World. Some of the magic dissipates.”
Being a storyteller is just fine with the journalist turned historian. “The Fate of the Day,” the second volume in his American Revolution trilogy, is out this month.
An adaptation of “Fatherland,” the best-selling novelist’s first solo work, “sets my teeth on edge,” he admits. His newest book, “Precipice,” is about a former British prime minister in love.
“You can’t read a page without laughing,” says the author of “The Outsiders,” who’s watched the stage musical of the novel become a Tony Award-winning hit this year.
“A great story casts a spell,” says the author, whose new novel is “The Vulnerables.” “It can enthrall you so completely that you not only forget that you’re stuck between two manspreaders in a noisy, crowded, smelly subway car but miss your stop.”
“I try to fight this lamentable tendency,” he says, but now reads more nonfiction than fiction. “Odyssey” is the fourth in his series on Greek mythology.
The former N.F.L. player has been living with A.L.S. for more than a decade. Sharing “the most lacerating and vulnerable times” in “A Life Impossible” was worth the physical and emotional toll, he says.