previous books are A Brotherhood Betrayed: The Man Behind the Rise and Fall of Murder, Inc., Incendiary: The Psychiatrist, the Mad Bomber and the Invention of Criminal Profiling, The Limit: Life and Death on the 1961 Grand Prix Circuit, and I.M. Pei: Mandarin of Modernism.
Cannell has worked as a reporter for Time and an editor for The New York Times. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Sports Illustrated, and many other publications.
Recently I asked the author about what he was reading. Cannell's reply:
Some years ago a book editor took me to lunch at a Midtown Manhattan sushi restaurant. Over miso soup and tuna rolls, I proposed a complicated structure for the book he had hired me to write. His response was this: I don’t care what structure you employ, as long as you ask yourselfVisit Michael T. Cannell's website.what the characters want at the start of each chapter. It was the best advice I ever received.
I write in a style know as narrative non-fiction. I’m a journalist. I tell true stories drawn from history. I fabricate nothing. Nor do I exaggerate or embellish. My books may, however, read like fiction, at least I hope they do, because I borrow techniques found in novels. Among other things, I try to impart my subjects’ feelings and motivations — their inner lives — as my editor suggested.
Where might you observe the most skillful examples of character development? I direct you to Colm Tóibín’s novel Brooklyn, the story of a small-town Irish girl who emigrates to New York in 1951. Toibin is a master of subterranean emotions, of plumbing the complicated depths of feeling and motivations even as the surface of the story remains almost still.
My Book, The Movie: The Limit.
The Page 99 Test: The Limit.
My Book, The Movie: Incendiary.
My Book, The Movie: A Brotherhood Betrayed.
--Marshal Zeringue
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