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sacred to me. I know that if I were in his shoes, I would have been furious to learn that I’d
unwittingly invited a spy to my home.
Do you ever regret your decision to respect his privacy?
No. I do sometimes wonder, “Could the book have been better if I had gone?” The guy who
reviewed the book in The New York Times Book Review seemed to think so. [“What are the stories of
the men he is guarding and the officers he is guarding them with?” the reviewer wondered.] But I
didn’t think it was morally defensible for me to secretly learn about people’s private lives for the
sake of the book. I would have felt awful.
And on reflection, I don’t think it would have made it a better book. That kind of reporting would
have changed the character of the narrator, I think—he would have been not just a witness, but a spy.
Is there a limit to how far you can “go native” as a participant-observer?
Oh, sure. “Going native” means forgetting the observer part, losing all perspective. If after eight
months at Sing Sing I avidly participated in roughing up an inmate with other officers, you might
presume I had lost my balance.
After all, if you truly “go native,” you cease to be a writer. You stay in Samoa with your local
wife, you don’t go home, and you stop sending back letters. I’m always flirting with the line between
observer and participant, asking, “How much of the true me does this role resonate with?” I like to
joke that the prison job brought out my “inner disciplinarian.” What keeps me from going all the way
and losing the observer is the knowledge and expectation that I will eventually go home.
There is often danger inherent in the situations you’ve written about. Do you deliberately
expose yourself to danger in order to get to the emotional heart of a piece?
I don’t mind a certain degree of risk. I may even be attracted to it. It’s instrumental, as well: the
danger I experience often helps the book’s narrative, and therefore helps draw readers to my story.
For instance, it seems easy to entice readers into a story about Paris or Provence or Tuscany. But I
think it’s hard to write a book about illegal immigration that will attract a wide readership. It is hard
to write a book about prisons that many people will buy—they just don’t want to go there. Placing
myself in harm’s way is one way of bringing readers along in the story.
Okay, once you’ve come up with the idea and done some research, how do you prefer to
approach the people you want to talk to? Directly? Or through intermediaries?
If I’m working in another country, a personal introduction can be very useful. Institutional
affiliations, whether it is The New Yorker or The New York Times Magazine, tend to mean less
abroad. And the whole activity of being a journalist is sometimes obscure overseas. That role simply
doesn’t exist in some societies.