1 00:00:19,686 --> 00:00:23,023 Hello and welcome to another episode of Book Lust. 2 00:00:23,056 --> 00:00:24,524 I'm Nancy Pearl. 3 00:00:24,524 --> 00:00:27,894 My guest today is writer David Maraniss. 4 00:00:27,894 --> 00:00:31,898 And we'll be talking about his new book, A Path Lit by Lightning. 5 00:00:32,866 --> 00:00:36,336 David, thank you so much for joining us today. 6 00:00:38,004 --> 00:00:42,242 I'm a sucker for librarians and libraries, so I'm happy to be back. 7 00:00:42,409 --> 00:00:45,345 Well, it's a pleasure to to meet you in person, 8 00:00:45,345 --> 00:00:49,949 because I've just been such a such a fan of your books. And 9 00:00:51,484 --> 00:00:53,686 I you know, I think you just do a great. 10 00:00:53,686 --> 00:00:57,057 You're just you're just great. So. 11 00:00:57,057 --> 00:00:59,092 Your new book, A Path Lit by Lightning, 12 00:00:59,092 --> 00:01:02,028 is a biography of Jim Thorpe. 13 00:01:02,462 --> 00:01:04,497 And many of us, 14 00:01:05,231 --> 00:01:07,801 if we knew who Jim Thorpe was at all, 15 00:01:08,334 --> 00:01:10,570 we were introduced to him 16 00:01:11,271 --> 00:01:13,807 in those childhood biographies 17 00:01:14,140 --> 00:01:18,478 which simplified everything about his life. 18 00:01:18,711 --> 00:01:21,347 What what was the impetus for you? 19 00:01:21,347 --> 00:01:26,453 Why why did you choose him to do your next big biography? 20 00:01:27,087 --> 00:01:28,221 Well, you're so right. 21 00:01:28,221 --> 00:01:31,891 So many people when I told them I was writing this book, 22 00:01:32,292 --> 00:01:35,929 said, oh, I read about him in fourth grade or alternately, 23 00:01:35,929 --> 00:01:40,533 oh, I saw the 1951 movie starring Burt Lancaster. 24 00:01:40,867 --> 00:01:44,137 Those were the ways that people knew the story. 25 00:01:45,238 --> 00:01:47,340 So, you know, I didn't know 26 00:01:47,340 --> 00:01:50,777 much more about him than that either when I started. 27 00:01:50,777 --> 00:01:54,781 But of course, the whole point of being a biographer is to learn about 28 00:01:54,781 --> 00:01:58,818 life and illuminate the history and sociology through someone's life. 29 00:02:00,253 --> 00:02:02,055 You know, I'm not a sportswriter, 30 00:02:02,055 --> 00:02:05,658 but I have written sports biographies in the past. 31 00:02:05,658 --> 00:02:08,161 One on Vince Lombardi, the football coach, 32 00:02:08,661 --> 00:02:11,531 and one on Roberto Clemente, the beautiful ballplayer. 33 00:02:12,165 --> 00:02:14,467 And in those books, as with Thorpe, 34 00:02:15,168 --> 00:02:20,073 I saw the chance to use the drama and action of sports 35 00:02:20,507 --> 00:02:23,643 as a way to illuminate sociology and history. 36 00:02:24,410 --> 00:02:26,679 You know, Jim Thorpe was so much more than an athlete. 37 00:02:26,679 --> 00:02:30,750 It's it gave me the opportunity to write about the Native American experience 38 00:02:30,750 --> 00:02:33,953 through the the stations of the cross of his life. 39 00:02:35,221 --> 00:02:36,623 You know, the idea was first 40 00:02:36,623 --> 00:02:40,593 broached to me a long time ago, more than two decades ago 41 00:02:41,161 --> 00:02:45,832 when I was in Denver on book tour for my book on Vietnam in the sixties, 42 00:02:46,633 --> 00:02:49,435 and a someone who was at the event 43 00:02:49,869 --> 00:02:53,773 who was from the Oneida Nation in Wisconsin and a writer named 44 00:02:53,773 --> 00:02:57,710 Herbert, Norbert Hill, who came up to me afterwards 45 00:02:57,710 --> 00:03:00,380 with his sheaf of papers 46 00:03:01,181 --> 00:03:03,249 and said, David, this is your next book. 47 00:03:03,449 --> 00:03:04,884 Jim Thorpe. 48 00:03:05,251 --> 00:03:08,188 And I politely said, Thank you. 49 00:03:08,521 --> 00:03:10,390 I don't take ideas from other people. 50 00:03:10,390 --> 00:03:13,193 It has to come organically. 51 00:03:13,193 --> 00:03:15,695 I'm writing another book right now. 52 00:03:15,695 --> 00:03:19,232 But he planted the seed and it took a long time to grow. 53 00:03:19,232 --> 00:03:21,601 But I'm glad that it did. 54 00:03:21,601 --> 00:03:23,636 Do you have do you do 55 00:03:23,636 --> 00:03:27,173 you plan your next book well in advance? 56 00:03:27,207 --> 00:03:29,142 I mean, do you know, for example, 57 00:03:30,176 --> 00:03:33,313 what what your next book is is going to be? 58 00:03:33,613 --> 00:03:37,250 That's a great question, Nancy, because this is the first time 59 00:03:37,951 --> 00:03:41,688 in 30 years since my first book, the biography of Bill Clinton, 60 00:03:42,422 --> 00:03:45,391 that I've purposely not planned my next book. 61 00:03:45,858 --> 00:03:50,063 My wife and I, you know, we're 73 years old, but we're going to take a gap year. 62 00:03:50,563 --> 00:03:50,964 Okay. 63 00:03:51,598 --> 00:03:55,668 So, you know, after writing books nonstop for 30 years, I do have some. 64 00:03:56,202 --> 00:04:00,673 Some other books that I will get, too, including a second volume 65 00:04:00,707 --> 00:04:05,878 of my biography of Barack Obama, who I left off at a fairly early age. 66 00:04:06,646 --> 00:04:10,016 But I won't do that until his second memoir 67 00:04:10,350 --> 00:04:12,452 or a book about his presidency comes out 68 00:04:13,052 --> 00:04:17,690 and his library is more complete. 69 00:04:17,757 --> 00:04:21,060 You know, it's really an initial stage of documents there now. 70 00:04:21,060 --> 00:04:23,763 So I can't do only more shot at it. 71 00:04:23,763 --> 00:04:26,165 So I'm not going to do that would probably next. 72 00:04:26,165 --> 00:04:29,736 But I hope I'm around to do it to finish that one. 73 00:04:31,004 --> 00:04:33,339 When you do your research for a book, 74 00:04:33,973 --> 00:04:37,076 I imagine that you have like 75 00:04:37,076 --> 00:04:39,979 piles of three by five note cards. 76 00:04:40,146 --> 00:04:43,783 I mean, how do you I mean, I remember I was I have a master's degree 77 00:04:43,783 --> 00:04:46,619 in history and I remember doing the research. 78 00:04:47,120 --> 00:04:51,824 Of course, that was way before computers, because we're we're almost the same age. 79 00:04:52,125 --> 00:04:55,762 And I remember the fear of losing one of those 80 00:04:56,329 --> 00:05:00,066 one of those important footnotes, the reference to that. 81 00:05:00,099 --> 00:05:02,235 So how do you go about your research? 82 00:05:02,568 --> 00:05:05,004 I'm very old school. 83 00:05:05,004 --> 00:05:07,206 Speaking of index cards, before I 84 00:05:07,740 --> 00:05:11,077 I started my first book, which was the Clinton biography. 85 00:05:11,611 --> 00:05:14,881 I talked to Taylor Branch and Robert 86 00:05:14,881 --> 00:05:18,951 Carow, two great biographers who I deeply admire. 87 00:05:19,352 --> 00:05:21,688 And they shared, you know, I just said, how do you do it? 88 00:05:22,188 --> 00:05:26,059 You know, and Taylor said that he used index cards. 89 00:05:26,526 --> 00:05:29,996 So for my first two or three books, I used index cards 90 00:05:30,096 --> 00:05:32,932 about 5000 or 10,000 of them, 91 00:05:33,132 --> 00:05:37,870 you know, arranged by chronology and theme, you know, in shoeboxes. 92 00:05:39,339 --> 00:05:41,441 And, you know, it worked. 93 00:05:41,441 --> 00:05:43,743 Now, I tend I still don't 94 00:05:43,743 --> 00:05:46,746 use one of those fancy 95 00:05:46,746 --> 00:05:49,349 computer organizational tools, but 96 00:05:49,982 --> 00:05:52,819 but I use three ring binders instead. 97 00:05:52,819 --> 00:05:57,123 So for the Thorpe book, as for my last four or five 98 00:05:57,690 --> 00:06:02,128 or six books, you know, I've had shelves full of three ring binders. 99 00:06:02,962 --> 00:06:05,565 And then I will take, you know, by subject 100 00:06:06,799 --> 00:06:08,835 theme and then before 101 00:06:08,835 --> 00:06:12,805 I write them, start writing the book, I'll take all of that material 102 00:06:13,106 --> 00:06:17,210 and process it one more time into sort of my master notes, 103 00:06:18,044 --> 00:06:21,748 which can be three or 400 single spaced, 104 00:06:22,415 --> 00:06:25,051 single typed pages. 105 00:06:25,051 --> 00:06:27,053 And even then, I work 106 00:06:27,053 --> 00:06:30,990 chapter by chapter, I refine the notes even more and detail to them. 107 00:06:31,457 --> 00:06:33,760 I'm not the sort that writes 108 00:06:33,760 --> 00:06:36,863 out a long outline. 109 00:06:37,330 --> 00:06:41,667 You know, one of my closest writing friends, Rick Atkinson, who writes 110 00:06:41,667 --> 00:06:45,638 about military history, has outlines that are longer than his books. 111 00:06:47,273 --> 00:06:48,207 I don't do that. 112 00:06:48,207 --> 00:06:51,110 You know, I for each chapter, I'll try to figure out 113 00:06:51,644 --> 00:06:54,547 where I want to start, where I'll probably end, 114 00:06:55,014 --> 00:06:59,252 and what the important points are through that chapter. 115 00:06:59,252 --> 00:07:02,054 But then I'll sort of let the magic happen from there. 116 00:07:02,054 --> 00:07:04,657 I don't want everything to be played out ahead of time. 117 00:07:05,091 --> 00:07:08,127 So that's basically my organizational process. 118 00:07:08,127 --> 00:07:12,098 I've always told younger writers, non fiction writers, 119 00:07:12,899 --> 00:07:16,302 that every hour you spend 120 00:07:16,302 --> 00:07:19,172 getting control of your material, will save you hours 121 00:07:19,172 --> 00:07:22,975 and hours of writing time, you know, if you have it ready. 122 00:07:24,911 --> 00:07:27,547 Besides Taylor Branch and Robert Carow, 123 00:07:28,214 --> 00:07:33,619 Are there other biographers that you that you 124 00:07:34,487 --> 00:07:37,523 maybe not have influenced you, but that you read with pleasure? 125 00:07:37,757 --> 00:07:39,659 Oh, yeah. Many. 126 00:07:39,659 --> 00:07:40,893 Stacy Schiff. 127 00:07:40,893 --> 00:07:42,195 That's who I was. 128 00:07:42,195 --> 00:07:45,064 Yeah. I love I loved her book as well. 129 00:07:46,532 --> 00:07:47,600 I apologize. 130 00:07:47,600 --> 00:07:49,235 I don't know how to pronounce her first name 131 00:07:49,235 --> 00:07:52,305 because I had only just read it, but Hermione Lee. 132 00:07:52,772 --> 00:07:53,573 Oh, yeah. 133 00:07:55,641 --> 00:07:58,978 And, you know, I read with, 134 00:07:59,912 --> 00:08:03,483 you know, McCullough and some of the older 135 00:08:04,550 --> 00:08:06,853 standards, you know, I admire all of those. 136 00:08:06,853 --> 00:08:10,323 But I would say Carow is my first role model in terms of 137 00:08:10,890 --> 00:08:15,895 trying to get all of the details in every possible way 138 00:08:15,895 --> 00:08:20,299 and then write it in a storytelling fashion. 139 00:08:22,335 --> 00:08:24,103 But, you know, there are a lot of 140 00:08:24,103 --> 00:08:27,139 I do read a lot of biography and many that I admire. 141 00:08:28,007 --> 00:08:32,879 Do you when you started this book about about Jim Thorpe. 142 00:08:32,879 --> 00:08:35,414 Millard is another one, by the way, who I really. Respect. 143 00:08:35,515 --> 00:08:37,483 I'm sorry. Candace Millard is another one. 144 00:08:37,483 --> 00:08:39,218 Oh, yeah. Oh, Candace, I agree. 145 00:08:39,218 --> 00:08:43,155 Yes. We share we we have those biographers in common. 146 00:08:43,155 --> 00:08:44,824 Absolutely. Candace Millard, 147 00:08:45,992 --> 00:08:47,460 when you started working 148 00:08:47,460 --> 00:08:50,763 on A Path Lit by Lightning or when you imagined it, 149 00:08:51,264 --> 00:08:55,902 did you did you think that it would be 150 00:08:57,970 --> 00:09:02,842 did you plan as detailed as as you go into it? 151 00:09:02,842 --> 00:09:06,812 Or is that the reward of being a good researcher 152 00:09:06,812 --> 00:09:10,082 that you that you found all this information. 153 00:09:11,851 --> 00:09:16,022 I guess the way to answer that is I know it's always out there. 154 00:09:16,822 --> 00:09:19,191 I just have to go find it. 155 00:09:19,191 --> 00:09:21,427 This this biography was different from 156 00:09:21,427 --> 00:09:24,597 my earlier ones for several reasons. 157 00:09:25,097 --> 00:09:28,034 One was that Jim Thorpe, 158 00:09:28,034 --> 00:09:29,936 you know, died in 1953. 159 00:09:29,936 --> 00:09:32,271 He was born in 1887. 160 00:09:32,271 --> 00:09:34,740 So it's really the first biography I've written where there were 161 00:09:34,740 --> 00:09:37,243 no contemporary people to interview. 162 00:09:37,910 --> 00:09:42,214 Even his children were all gone by the time I started researching it. 163 00:09:42,848 --> 00:09:45,151 So that's one significant difference. 164 00:09:45,217 --> 00:09:51,390 So I relied more on archival research and oral histories 165 00:09:51,390 --> 00:09:54,527 and all of that than I would in my other biographies. 166 00:09:55,161 --> 00:09:57,363 The second major difference was COVID. 167 00:09:57,997 --> 00:10:03,502 You know, one of my mottos is go there wherever the story is based. 168 00:10:03,502 --> 00:10:07,039 So, you know, for my Lombardi biography 169 00:10:07,573 --> 00:10:10,977 that's told the story many times that my wife always blanches. 170 00:10:10,977 --> 00:10:14,580 But I turned to her in 1996 and said, 171 00:10:14,580 --> 00:10:18,751 How would you like to move to Green Bay for the winter? 172 00:10:18,751 --> 00:10:21,320 Which she responded brrr but we did. 173 00:10:21,320 --> 00:10:23,589 And I've done that for almost all of my books. 174 00:10:23,589 --> 00:10:26,125 I could not do that this time because of COVID. 175 00:10:26,559 --> 00:10:31,163 You know, I would have spent considerable time in Oklahoma, and I couldn't 176 00:10:31,163 --> 00:10:34,233 it was sort of the epicenter of COVID. 177 00:10:34,233 --> 00:10:36,102 I just couldn't be there. 178 00:10:36,102 --> 00:10:37,570 I didn't get to Stockholm. 179 00:10:37,570 --> 00:10:40,406 Where he won his gold medals for the very same reason. 180 00:10:41,007 --> 00:10:42,875 So in that sense, it was different. 181 00:10:42,875 --> 00:10:44,410 I found ways around that. 182 00:10:44,410 --> 00:10:48,247 But but but the go there, part of it was harder for this book. 183 00:10:49,281 --> 00:10:51,717 I lived for 184 00:10:51,717 --> 00:10:56,856 23 years in Oklahoma, sort of before I moved to Seattle 185 00:10:56,956 --> 00:11:00,960 because my husband was got a job teaching at Oklahoma State University. 186 00:11:00,960 --> 00:11:03,596 So we were there and even there 187 00:11:04,063 --> 00:11:06,032 Jim Thorpe 188 00:11:06,432 --> 00:11:09,001 still I mean, he wasn't somebody. 189 00:11:09,502 --> 00:11:10,936 He wasn't buried there. 190 00:11:10,936 --> 00:11:13,939 First of all. 191 00:11:13,939 --> 00:11:17,143 So there wasn't you didn't learn a lot about Jim Thorpe 192 00:11:17,910 --> 00:11:22,314 being in Oklahoma or even as my children did growing up in Oklahoma 193 00:11:22,314 --> 00:11:24,717 I think. 194 00:11:24,717 --> 00:11:30,122 And I wonder whether if he had not been a Native American 195 00:11:31,290 --> 00:11:34,026 and therefore “the other” 196 00:11:34,026 --> 00:11:36,362 whether we would have learned more. 197 00:11:36,362 --> 00:11:39,665 It would have been he would have been more at the front of 198 00:11:39,699 --> 00:11:44,370 of our experience, especially for people who are interested in sports. 199 00:11:44,704 --> 00:11:46,172 Yeah, I would expect so. 200 00:11:46,172 --> 00:11:49,875 I mean, I think that, you know, in terms of Oklahoma, it's 201 00:11:49,909 --> 00:11:53,179 he's on a level with Will Rogers, who you probably heard more about. 202 00:11:53,746 --> 00:11:54,513 Right. 203 00:11:54,780 --> 00:11:58,651 I mean, I would say those are the two transcendent figures, 204 00:11:59,819 --> 00:12:01,153 not political. 205 00:12:01,153 --> 00:12:01,787 Right. 206 00:12:01,954 --> 00:12:04,724 And, you know, 207 00:12:05,024 --> 00:12:08,494 I did travel through Oklahoma on the book tour, Nancy, 208 00:12:09,528 --> 00:12:12,465 you know, in Tulsa, in Oklahoma City. 209 00:12:12,465 --> 00:12:15,835 And one of the more meaningful aspects of 210 00:12:15,835 --> 00:12:19,538 that was the number of Native Americans who came 211 00:12:20,339 --> 00:12:22,508 and thanked me for writing the book. 212 00:12:23,409 --> 00:12:27,012 So, you know, the experience of white Oklahomans 213 00:12:27,379 --> 00:12:30,983 might have been somewhat different from Native American Oklahomans in terms 214 00:12:30,983 --> 00:12:35,421 of where Thorpe stood in their pantheon of bright figures 215 00:12:35,888 --> 00:12:38,157 or even among white, you know, I mean, 216 00:12:40,059 --> 00:12:42,027 Congressman Cole, who 217 00:12:42,027 --> 00:12:44,797 I might not agree with on any political issues, 218 00:12:46,165 --> 00:12:49,068 is giving the book to all of his people 219 00:12:49,068 --> 00:12:51,036 for Christmas. 220 00:12:51,036 --> 00:12:52,838 You know, so, 221 00:12:54,840 --> 00:12:57,076 in Oklahoma City, I, 222 00:12:57,076 --> 00:12:59,979 I met the mayor who I really like, David Holt, 223 00:13:01,013 --> 00:13:06,752 who's a big book person, spoke at Full Circle Books and and 224 00:13:08,754 --> 00:13:11,157 said, you know, I didn't find 225 00:13:12,825 --> 00:13:14,093 Thorpe be buried there. 226 00:13:14,093 --> 00:13:14,994 He maybe he wasn't. 227 00:13:14,994 --> 00:13:15,995 That could have been. 228 00:13:15,995 --> 00:13:19,765 But I was heartened by the reception. 229 00:13:20,166 --> 00:13:22,635 Mm hmm. So. 230 00:13:22,968 --> 00:13:25,671 So, Jim Thorpe, you talk about 231 00:13:26,505 --> 00:13:30,676 of course you talk about Thorpe's childhood and his experiences. 232 00:13:30,676 --> 00:13:35,014 And one of the formative experiences in his life was that 233 00:13:35,014 --> 00:13:39,218 he was sent to the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania. 234 00:13:39,485 --> 00:13:42,922 And I think for a lot of readers 235 00:13:43,422 --> 00:13:45,991 reading about 236 00:13:46,325 --> 00:13:50,162 about the Carlisle Indian School and the other Indian schools 237 00:13:50,162 --> 00:13:54,300 that were at that time in Canada and the United States 238 00:13:54,900 --> 00:13:57,336 was really a revelation. 239 00:13:57,903 --> 00:14:00,105 What what part do you think 240 00:14:00,573 --> 00:14:03,909 being there played in Thorpe's life? 241 00:14:04,510 --> 00:14:07,446 Well, I think that the Indian boarding school experience 242 00:14:08,080 --> 00:14:10,983 was at the center of anyone's life who went through them. 243 00:14:11,650 --> 00:14:14,954 And I found that to be true with so many people 244 00:14:14,954 --> 00:14:19,225 I talked to while I was doing the book, and then even more so afterwards. 245 00:14:20,626 --> 00:14:23,462 For Thorpe, it's sort of a mixed bag in the sense 246 00:14:23,462 --> 00:14:27,766 that nobody would know of him at all if not for that boarding school where I 247 00:14:28,300 --> 00:14:30,936 that's where he gained fame as a football player 248 00:14:31,437 --> 00:14:35,507 and track star of international fame after the Olympics. 249 00:14:36,542 --> 00:14:38,444 On the other hand, 250 00:14:38,978 --> 00:14:41,714 it was always a, 251 00:14:41,714 --> 00:14:43,282 you know, a 252 00:14:43,449 --> 00:14:46,986 diminishing experience for anybody who went through that. 253 00:14:47,486 --> 00:14:51,223 Carlisle was actually the third boarding school that Jim had been to. 254 00:14:51,690 --> 00:14:55,160 The first one was in Oklahoma, the Sac and Fox boarding school, 255 00:14:55,661 --> 00:14:59,965 where his twin brother died when a disease swept through the school. 256 00:15:00,499 --> 00:15:03,002 And that was a very, very common experience 257 00:15:03,002 --> 00:15:05,371 in all of the Indian boarding schools. 258 00:15:05,371 --> 00:15:06,171 You know, the 259 00:15:06,171 --> 00:15:09,909 the preponderance of deaths of young students at all of those schools, 260 00:15:10,442 --> 00:15:11,644 including Carlisle, 261 00:15:13,045 --> 00:15:14,446 you know, where 262 00:15:14,446 --> 00:15:18,951 the most haunting experience for me when I was there was was going through 263 00:15:18,951 --> 00:15:25,658 the student cemetery, you know, 186 young students who went to Carlisle 264 00:15:25,658 --> 00:15:29,461 and never got back to their homelands because they died there. 265 00:15:29,828 --> 00:15:32,097 And that's just a partial number of them. 266 00:15:32,698 --> 00:15:35,434 Of those who got sick or died. 267 00:15:36,268 --> 00:15:39,104 So, you know, the motto of the Carlisle School 268 00:15:39,838 --> 00:15:44,176 was that, you know, unbelievable, “kill the Indian, save the man” 269 00:15:44,810 --> 00:15:47,613 that was meant to be a progressive idea. 270 00:15:48,113 --> 00:15:50,883 You know that the well-intentioned white 271 00:15:50,883 --> 00:15:53,652 people, rather than literally killing 272 00:15:53,886 --> 00:15:57,923 Native Americans, would try to make them white to save them. 273 00:15:58,390 --> 00:15:59,725 That was the whole process. 274 00:15:59,725 --> 00:16:02,361 It was forced assimilation. 275 00:16:03,462 --> 00:16:07,633 And so, you know, Jim Thorpe went through that process, 276 00:16:07,967 --> 00:16:11,804 like most of the young Native Americans who did 277 00:16:13,172 --> 00:16:15,307 he didn't fully buy into it. 278 00:16:15,307 --> 00:16:18,210 It didn't fully change him, he maintained 279 00:16:18,210 --> 00:16:21,447 his Native American identity, as did so many. 280 00:16:22,381 --> 00:16:24,583 But that was the process that they had to deal with. 281 00:16:25,050 --> 00:16:30,155 And it was something that that sort of reflected 282 00:16:30,155 --> 00:16:33,659 everything that Native Americans dealt with throughout their lives. 283 00:16:34,727 --> 00:16:37,663 One of the one of the themes that runs through 284 00:16:37,663 --> 00:16:43,168 the book is the number of people who really took advantage of, 285 00:16:43,502 --> 00:16:47,373 used Jim Thorpe in many ways. 286 00:16:47,373 --> 00:16:51,810 And one of those was Pop Warner, the great football 287 00:16:52,244 --> 00:16:54,947 well great, the football 288 00:16:54,947 --> 00:16:56,882 the successful 289 00:16:56,882 --> 00:16:59,585 football coach at the Carlisle School. 290 00:17:00,019 --> 00:17:04,423 Could you talk a little bit about that period 291 00:17:04,423 --> 00:17:09,461 and how Pop Warner, who when we think about Pop Warner, I mean, there's 292 00:17:09,461 --> 00:17:13,332 that whole Pop Warner football, you know, 293 00:17:13,332 --> 00:17:16,635 people revere him, you know. 294 00:17:16,635 --> 00:17:19,471 But his relationship with Thorpe was more complicated. 295 00:17:19,838 --> 00:17:23,776 It was as it was with all of these Native American athletes. 296 00:17:24,343 --> 00:17:29,548 He was a it was a innovative and brilliant football coach. 297 00:17:30,149 --> 00:17:36,255 He developed many of the formations that are still in use today. 298 00:17:36,255 --> 00:17:39,525 And he was an early proponent of the forward pass, 299 00:17:39,525 --> 00:17:42,761 which only became legal while he was at Carlisle. 300 00:17:44,463 --> 00:17:47,299 And you know, he had winning teams. 301 00:17:48,333 --> 00:17:50,402 The Carlisle Indian School 302 00:17:50,402 --> 00:17:55,541 defeated all of the great schools in the East Coast, which that period, 303 00:17:55,541 --> 00:17:58,710 unbelievably, were Ivy League schools, you know, 304 00:17:58,710 --> 00:18:02,448 Yale and Penn and Harvard and Princeton plus West Point 305 00:18:02,448 --> 00:18:06,218 and Syracuse and a few others. 306 00:18:06,218 --> 00:18:11,223 And his his team was incredibly popular 307 00:18:11,990 --> 00:18:14,626 wherever they played 308 00:18:14,626 --> 00:18:17,062 there would be sellout crowds. 309 00:18:17,763 --> 00:18:21,533 But the irony there, Nancy, is that people came to see them play 310 00:18:21,533 --> 00:18:24,636 because they were good, but also because they were exotic. 311 00:18:24,670 --> 00:18:26,605 They were Indians. Right. 312 00:18:26,605 --> 00:18:27,773 But they were playing for a school 313 00:18:27,773 --> 00:18:31,310 that was trying to drum that part of them out, make them white, you know. 314 00:18:31,743 --> 00:18:35,180 So but anyway, Pop Warner, 315 00:18:35,180 --> 00:18:37,983 brilliant coach, not a brilliant human being. 316 00:18:39,151 --> 00:18:41,487 By the end of his tenure at Carlisle, 317 00:18:41,820 --> 00:18:45,824 his players had turned against him, said he was physically and mentally abusive. 318 00:18:46,625 --> 00:18:49,995 And at the crisis point of 319 00:18:49,995 --> 00:18:54,466 Jim Thorpe's life, when his medals were rescinded, 320 00:18:54,466 --> 00:18:59,271 taken away from him after the Olympics because he played minor league baseball, 321 00:19:00,439 --> 00:19:03,642 Pop Warner lied about it to save his own reputation. 322 00:19:03,909 --> 00:19:09,448 Yeah. Another person who doesn't come off very well and in the biography 323 00:19:09,615 --> 00:19:14,486 is Avery Brundage, the head of the IOC, the International Olympic Committee. 324 00:19:15,320 --> 00:19:18,290 Well, Brundage doesn't come across well in any of my books. 325 00:19:18,290 --> 00:19:23,662 He's in another one too, a book I wrote about the 1960 Rome Olympics. 326 00:19:23,662 --> 00:19:28,333 And even in a book that my son Andrew wrote about the 1936 Olympics. 327 00:19:28,667 --> 00:19:31,637 He was a miserable human being 328 00:19:31,637 --> 00:19:33,438 and, you know, 329 00:19:33,438 --> 00:19:35,941 the interesting thing about his relationship with Thorpe 330 00:19:36,542 --> 00:19:41,713 was that he, too, was a decathlete at those 1912 Stockholm games. 331 00:19:42,214 --> 00:19:44,950 He was not very good. He was mediocre. 332 00:19:44,950 --> 00:19:48,053 Thorpe crushed him in the competitions, 333 00:19:48,420 --> 00:19:52,758 and Brundage actually dropped out before the final of the ten events 334 00:19:53,425 --> 00:19:57,296 because he was being beaten so badly, which sort of goes against his 335 00:19:57,296 --> 00:20:03,101 whole notion of it's not what nationality you represent or how you perform, 336 00:20:03,101 --> 00:20:07,372 but just the beauty of amateurism, which was a sham from the beginning. 337 00:20:07,773 --> 00:20:11,210 But in any case, after that period, 338 00:20:11,210 --> 00:20:15,414 he rose to become, as you say, the head of the International Olympic Committee. 339 00:20:15,781 --> 00:20:19,885 And for decades, he refused to give Jim Thorpe his do. 340 00:20:19,918 --> 00:20:22,921 It wasn't until after Brundage was dead and gone 341 00:20:22,921 --> 00:20:26,992 that Thorpe finally got his medals restored in records. 342 00:20:28,093 --> 00:20:30,095 And another theme that runs 343 00:20:30,095 --> 00:20:32,764 through the book is the way Jim Thorpe 344 00:20:33,899 --> 00:20:38,303 was exoticized, but was kind of romanticized 345 00:20:38,403 --> 00:20:42,441 and dehumanized at the same time. 346 00:20:42,774 --> 00:20:47,212 And and you talk about the phrase “lo, the poor Indian.” 347 00:20:47,579 --> 00:20:50,515 Could could you expand on that? 348 00:20:50,515 --> 00:20:53,752 Well, I think that one of the central 349 00:20:53,752 --> 00:20:56,255 threads of the book is that that 350 00:20:57,322 --> 00:20:59,558 way of dealing with Native Americans 351 00:20:59,558 --> 00:21:02,394 romanticizing and diminishing them at the same time. 352 00:21:03,295 --> 00:21:05,731 It’s common with all of them, not just Jim Thorpe. And that’s 353 00:21:06,298 --> 00:21:08,500 white society dealt with Indians. 354 00:21:08,500 --> 00:21:10,869 You know, there are you know people would say that 355 00:21:11,603 --> 00:21:16,108 we would probably say that they had some Cherokee blood in them, you know, white people. 356 00:21:16,308 --> 00:21:19,111 They would never say that about having African American blood. 357 00:21:19,111 --> 00:21:24,583 It there's a different sensibility based on, you know, the history of the two. 358 00:21:25,017 --> 00:21:25,751 You know, even though, 359 00:21:26,852 --> 00:21:27,252 you know, 360 00:21:27,252 --> 00:21:32,024 African Americans were enslaved and Native Americans were killed, 361 00:21:33,058 --> 00:21:35,360 the white society dealt with them differently. 362 00:21:36,194 --> 00:21:38,196 So, “lo, the poor Indian” is a phrase that 363 00:21:38,730 --> 00:21:42,301 for reasons that I can't tell you, Nancy, became 364 00:21:42,934 --> 00:21:47,939 popularized by sportswriters in the early parts of the 20th century. 365 00:21:48,106 --> 00:21:52,844 Whenever they're writing about Indians that use that phrase, it became so popular 366 00:21:53,278 --> 00:21:56,315 that they could just write “lo poor” or “lo,” 367 00:21:56,315 --> 00:21:58,650 and the readers would know what they were talking about. 368 00:22:00,018 --> 00:22:02,087 And it could be used for better or worse. 369 00:22:02,954 --> 00:22:06,992 You know, if a Native American was suffering in some sense “lo, the poor Indian.” 370 00:22:07,759 --> 00:22:11,496 If they were defeating the white, the white team of football. 371 00:22:11,496 --> 00:22:12,331 “Lo, the poor Indian.” 372 00:22:12,331 --> 00:22:16,468 Nonetheless, for Jim Thorpe, it was very commonly applied to him 373 00:22:16,468 --> 00:22:20,372 after he lost his gold medals and so many of the events that he suffered 374 00:22:20,372 --> 00:22:21,273 throughout in his life. 375 00:22:22,808 --> 00:22:23,642 You mentioned at the 376 00:22:23,642 --> 00:22:29,381 beginning of of when we started talking about the the biographical film 377 00:22:29,381 --> 00:22:32,284 that was made of him starring Burt Lancaster. 378 00:22:32,484 --> 00:22:36,722 That's that's ironic in and of itself. 379 00:22:36,722 --> 00:22:37,289 Did... 380 00:22:37,289 --> 00:22:40,158 And there's a scene in the book where Jim, 381 00:22:40,292 --> 00:22:45,263 one of Jim Thorpe's daughters, is waiting for a bus and the film 382 00:22:45,263 --> 00:22:49,735 is playing at the movie theater across the street, I believe it was. 383 00:22:50,702 --> 00:22:53,372 Did he see the film? 384 00:22:53,372 --> 00:22:54,272 He saw it. 385 00:22:54,272 --> 00:22:58,076 And his wife, his third wife, Patsy, saw it. 386 00:22:59,611 --> 00:23:01,380 He was given 387 00:23:01,380 --> 00:23:07,486 a modest, modest salary for being a consultant on the film. 388 00:23:07,486 --> 00:23:11,490 But but the people who produced it didn't really consult him much at all. 389 00:23:12,023 --> 00:23:14,960 And he had very mixed feelings about the movie. 390 00:23:16,027 --> 00:23:19,231 First, I mean, you know, Burt Lancaster is a movie star, 391 00:23:19,498 --> 00:23:21,700 he’s actually a very good athlete as well. 392 00:23:22,234 --> 00:23:25,570 So in that sense, you know, it was could have been worse. 393 00:23:26,505 --> 00:23:29,775 Thorpe always wanted a Native American to play him. 394 00:23:29,775 --> 00:23:35,580 And a matter of fact, you know, for much of that latter 395 00:23:35,580 --> 00:23:38,016 period of his life, he lived in Southern California 396 00:23:38,583 --> 00:23:41,186 and worked on the fringes of the studio industry. 397 00:23:41,686 --> 00:23:44,990 It appears in more than 70 films, you know, as an extra 398 00:23:44,990 --> 00:23:47,492 or a very minor character. 399 00:23:47,492 --> 00:23:50,662 But during that period, he was constantly campaigning 400 00:23:51,363 --> 00:23:53,832 for the studios to hire 401 00:23:53,965 --> 00:23:56,968 real Indians, to play Indians, real Native 402 00:23:56,968 --> 00:24:00,272 Americans, to play Native Americans, which they often did not do. 403 00:24:00,772 --> 00:24:05,444 So it's classic that in this case it would not be a Native American playing 404 00:24:05,444 --> 00:24:11,016 Jim Thorpe, the director of that movie, Michael Curtiz, 405 00:24:12,184 --> 00:24:15,120 was an excellent director who directed Casablanca. 406 00:24:15,454 --> 00:24:19,825 So, you know, it had it had a pretty high powered people behind it. 407 00:24:20,559 --> 00:24:23,195 And, you know, in essence, it's 408 00:24:23,195 --> 00:24:25,764 a sympathetic movie, but it's wrong. 409 00:24:26,398 --> 00:24:28,867 And it's, the most 410 00:24:28,867 --> 00:24:31,136 wrong thing about it is something we talked about. 411 00:24:31,136 --> 00:24:34,372 Pop Warner, who is the narrator of the movie. 412 00:24:34,840 --> 00:24:39,277 And the implication is that if only Thorpe had listened to Pop 413 00:24:39,277 --> 00:24:44,182 and more successfully assimilated into white society, he wouldn't suffer, 414 00:24:44,216 --> 00:24:47,719 wouldn't have suffered the way he did, which is, you know, it's just wrong. 415 00:24:48,386 --> 00:24:50,922 So that that's the way I view the movie. 416 00:24:50,922 --> 00:24:54,693 And there's a chapter in the book sort of deconstructing all of that. 417 00:24:54,893 --> 00:24:55,627 Right. 418 00:24:55,627 --> 00:24:57,662 Was what was the thing that most 419 00:24:57,662 --> 00:25:00,932 I guess this is got to be our last question but, sadly. 420 00:25:01,032 --> 00:25:06,671 But what is the what was the thing that surprised you the most in doing the book? 421 00:25:06,671 --> 00:25:10,542 Because when I was reading it, the thing that surprised me the most was 422 00:25:10,542 --> 00:25:16,448 that was it Marianne Moore, the poet who taught at the Carlisle Indian School? 423 00:25:16,448 --> 00:25:18,717 I thought, that is wow. 424 00:25:18,717 --> 00:25:20,051 Who would have thought? 425 00:25:20,051 --> 00:25:21,753 Oh, I agree completely. 426 00:25:21,753 --> 00:25:22,487 Oh, yeah. 427 00:25:22,487 --> 00:25:23,822 I mean, it's not a huge thing, 428 00:25:23,822 --> 00:25:26,558 but who would have thought this great American poet? 429 00:25:26,925 --> 00:25:30,562 You know, she was 23, just out of Bryn Mawr, 430 00:25:30,929 --> 00:25:34,733 and her family lived in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and she taught there. 431 00:25:35,600 --> 00:25:39,571 And I went up to the Rosenbach Library in Philadelphia 432 00:25:40,005 --> 00:25:44,142 and found a sort of a partial or a memoir that she wrote where she talks 433 00:25:44,142 --> 00:25:46,545 about all of that and some other materials up there 434 00:25:46,978 --> 00:25:49,147 that allowed me to introduce her into the book. 435 00:25:50,315 --> 00:25:52,183 And yeah, I just... 436 00:25:52,183 --> 00:25:56,154 you know, she's probably the jewel of the so so many, 437 00:25:56,154 --> 00:26:01,493 many famous people who somehow intersected with Jim Thorpe throughout his life, 438 00:26:01,493 --> 00:26:04,896 you know, from the generals, Dwight Eisenhower, who played football 439 00:26:04,896 --> 00:26:08,567 against him, and George Patton, who was on the Olympic team with him 440 00:26:09,167 --> 00:26:09,901 all the way through. 441 00:26:09,901 --> 00:26:14,205 You find all of these characters that Marianne Moore was the most 442 00:26:15,407 --> 00:26:18,043 surprising and delightful. 443 00:26:19,044 --> 00:26:21,046 So, I guess we could say that 444 00:26:21,046 --> 00:26:25,951 Jim Thorpe was the Kevin Bacon of his day. 445 00:26:26,284 --> 00:26:27,752 Yeah, that's right. 446 00:26:27,752 --> 00:26:29,988 He was. 447 00:26:30,722 --> 00:26:33,158 One of the things that I just 448 00:26:33,158 --> 00:26:36,995 so admire about your books is the way you take a subject. 449 00:26:37,329 --> 00:26:40,999 And you alluded to this at the beginning, how you take a subject 450 00:26:40,999 --> 00:26:44,235 and give us give us the readers, 451 00:26:45,003 --> 00:26:50,342 the whole picture of the society, because it would be so easy. 452 00:26:51,409 --> 00:26:52,110 I mean, it's never 453 00:26:52,110 --> 00:26:57,882 easy, but but without all of that context, there's no way of understanding 454 00:26:57,882 --> 00:27:02,754 who Jim Thorpe was or any of the people whose biographies, you know. 455 00:27:02,988 --> 00:27:04,422 Yeah, I'm glad you say that. 456 00:27:04,422 --> 00:27:08,026 I mean, that's that's my philosophy of what I do. 457 00:27:08,526 --> 00:27:12,430 You know, there are always going to be a few reviewers who say, you know, 458 00:27:12,631 --> 00:27:13,565 there's too much of that. 459 00:27:13,565 --> 00:27:16,868 But I don't care if they say that because that's what I do. 460 00:27:16,901 --> 00:27:19,804 I mean, that's the way I want to do it. 461 00:27:19,804 --> 00:27:24,442 And so, I mean, because I believe deeply that to understand 462 00:27:24,442 --> 00:27:30,515 someone in their fullness, you have to see the forces that shaped them. 463 00:27:30,815 --> 00:27:33,618 So that includes, you know, geography 464 00:27:33,618 --> 00:27:36,688 and family and the context of their time. 465 00:27:36,788 --> 00:27:38,089 Right. Right. 466 00:27:38,089 --> 00:27:41,860 David Maraniss, thank you so much for being on Book Lust today. 467 00:27:42,127 --> 00:27:46,731 And I'm so glad I finally got to meet you in person, more or less. 468 00:27:47,132 --> 00:27:50,335 I hope I get out to Seattle someday and we can meet. 469 00:27:51,369 --> 00:27:53,772 What did they say in IRL. 470 00:27:53,772 --> 00:27:56,675 Yes. Right, right, IRL. 471 00:27:56,675 --> 00:27:59,010 Okay. I will look forward to that. 472 00:27:59,044 --> 00:28:01,179 Thank you so much. Okay. 473 00:28:01,179 --> 00:28:02,781 Bye bye. Bye.