Po Bronson on Lessons Learned on the Road, Looking for Life's Calling
by Norman Oder, PW Daily for Booksellers -- Publishers Weekly, 2/3/2003
Po Bronson's recently published What Should I Do With My Life: The True Story of People Who Answered the Ultimate Question (Random House) is a self-help/careers book that reads more like narrative journalism, with an undercurrent of spirituality--and a bestseller in its first month. Bronson's own story informs the book: as a novelist (Bombardiers, The First $20 Million is Always the Hardest) and journalist (The Nudist on the Late Shift), he found success, but, after the dot-com crash and some frustrations in Hollywood, he said "[I] felt like the kinds of stories I'd been telling no longer worked" and "was intrigued by people who had unearthed their true calling."So he went out looking for others on similar quests, eventually interviewing some 900 people, and winnowing these down to about 50 profiles included in the book.
While reviews have varied--critics alternately applaud and chide Bronson for inserting himself in the book and giving his subjects advice--the book has touched a chord with readers, commenting on Bronson's Web site (www.pobronson.com), at readings, even via a new online Yahoo group. PW Forecasts praises Bronson's "skillful probing and careful anecdote selection.". He's garnered massive media attention and is in the midst of a multi-city tour. Just a week ago, he and some of his book's subjects appeared on Oprah .
He spoke to PW by phone from his office in San Francisco.
Q: The new book is listed under self-help/careers.
A: We had many discussions about categorization; in the end it was decided for me. I felt weird about it at first, but now that I'm on the road, I just worry about being responsible to the text and the ideas and the readers.
Q: What have you learned on your book tour?
A: I had written about Wall Street and Silicon Valley, and it warped my perspective. People I met broadened my perspective, and on tour it has broadened me further. I was sure that this question was being asked by people of every age and class and profession, but when you're on tour, you see it face to face. There were people in the book in their mid-50s and I didn't mention their age, figuring people couldn't relate. That was my warp.
The book is not me trying to tell people anything. The book is me trying to learn from people I met. It's supposed to provoke a conversation. The booksellers are telling me they're seeing a lot of people who've never been to their bookstores.
Q: Is a version 2.0 coming?
A: I'm talking to Random House about what's possible. Maybe just on the Web site. I'm handing out a chapter at all the events that I couldn't get into the book. For instance, I had a lot of stories about single mothers, but I avoided putting them in. I've been informed that, yeah, there's a hunger for that. The conversation has continued in a very constructive way.
Q: You were on Oprah and the stories were all inspirational--but your book is much more complicated.
A: No one was saying, 'This is my whole book.' I thought they did a tremendous job focussing on one type of story, the 'I always wanted to do this thing...and had the courage to do it.' After the show, a lot of women in the audience were in tears. It was a profoundly emotional response, just to be there.
I am obsessed with not bearing false witness, I don't think any of the stories make it look too easy. Maybe one. In every other story, people are conflicted. People e-mail me: they see a story about a Harvard MBA who's got it made when they should be seeing a story about a guy who was hospitalized for illness. I thought in the '90s we told stories that made it look too easy.
Q: Including yourself?
A: Absolutely. [Bronson's Web site explains how he wrote apologies, first as a joke, then more seriously, for "leading people to Silicon Valley's false nirvana."]
Q: On your Web site, you say you'd like more couple stories, more working class stories, more diversity.
A: I interviewed all these people. Again, I was distorted by my past. The first 200 people I talked to were ex-tech people. There's just stories that I didn't see as important and now I do. I have a guy in Miami, Okla., who's never made more than eight dollars an hour and now does something he loves. I see more working class people reading the book, more than I ever imagined. They relate to the stories and see people like them, people who went through some tough times.
Q: What would you add in the paperback?
A: I've got a whole section in my binder. Some stories have new endings--not just an update, I might want to reshape them.
Q: You wrote that your experience in publishing led you to do a half-dozen unusual things to help sell your first book.
A: I felt such pressure around publishing a novel, I decided, in effect, to satirize it. We sold fictional shares in the book, I wrote up a prospectus. We had a trading party, with traders from Wall Street. It was unlike any other publishing party. Also, I printed five sets of galleys before Random House printed them, paid for them myself, maybe 40-100 at a time. My foreign rights agent used my printed galleys. When you publish small press books [as he did at Mercury House in San Francisco], you have to have kind of a guerrilla attitude.
Q: For this book, you do a slide show on tour.
A: I tell six people's stories. In a way, by using the slides and talking, I can get across the full feeling of their stories. I use the stories to explode some stereotypes. We so often pretend to ourselves that you won't let some place get to you, you can do something for five years and it won't.
Q: You chaired the board of Consortium Book Sales & Distribution--a story at the end of your book is about Don Linn, the former investment banker turned catfish farmer who earlier in the book was planning to leave his farm. You endorsed him the person with "the character to own and run" Consortium. What's happened since he's taken over the company?
A: Don is really happy in Minnesota. In the book, maybe the reader is wondering: is he going to be good at it? He's great at it. He's a real book lover, more than he ever imagined.
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