Tim Wendel

Perseverance and adaptability are the words that come to mind regarding Joan Didion. Not only did she forge ahead with some of her best work in the face of personal tragedy ("The Year of Magical Thinking"), she could make about anything sing. She first gained a following with "Slouching Towards Bethlehem," but her novels ("Democracy" and "Miami" are also fast-paced reads with great characters. In addition, she excelled at writing screenplays with John Gregory Dunne, who was her husband of nearly 40 years.

"The right stuff," "radical chic," and "the Me Decade" (sometimes altered to "the Me Generation") are among the popular phrases that Tom Wolfe has come up with over the years. But he seems proudest of "good ol' boy," which he introduced to the written language in a 1964 article in Esquire about Junior Johnson, the North Carolina stock car racing driver, which was called "The Last American Hero."
Besides writing quality best-selling nonfiction and fiction for decades, Wolfe also has illustrated his own work in newspapers and magazines since the 1950s.
His areas of expertise extend from popular culture to American architecture to the space program.
One of the bromides of writing is "write what you know." Wolfe is such an adept researcher and interviewer that he can put his twist on just about anything.

New semester at Johns Hopkins and I'm teaching the grad level class of Nonfiction Techniques. Of course, nonfiction is the new king of the publishing hill, a reversal of 50 years ago when the glossy magazines and bigtime publishers lined up for the next new story from Hemingway or Fitzgerald.
A major reason for this sea change was the curious friendship of Harper Lee and Truman Capote. They were next-door neighbors from 1928 to 1930.
Of course, Lee was the author of "To Kill a Mockingbird." In 1959, she joined her childhood friend on a trip to Garden City, Kansas. Capote's goal was to research the Clutter family murders and write what he described as a "nonfiction novel." The resulting work was "In Cold Blood."
It turned the nonfiction world on its head as Capote showed that many of the tools novelists employ (dialogue, scene, dramatic plot line) could be used in narrative nonfiction as well.
Sometimes our friends, especially in writing, can have tremendous influence upon us and how much we dare to try on the page.
In our first class, we watched scenes from the Capote movie (What kind of reporter/researcher/interviewer are you? A Harper Lee or Truman Capote?) and discussed this book's impact.