The President’s Analyst

David Remnick talks about Muhammed Ali and Obama, the Clintons and the Tea Baggers, how he managed to write The Bridge, his acclaimed new biography of Barack Obama, while editing The New Yorker, and how he can hear every writer’s voice except his own.

By Compiled by Eric Scigliano

There’s nothing crucial [missing from the book because some sources wouldn’t cooperate]. There’s just nothing in it for Hillary Clinton to talk about Barack Obama for a book. Absolutely nothing in it. She’s secretary of state. It’s the last thing she’s going to do.
Bill Clinton…. I talked to Clinton about Obama, but a long time ago. Bill Clinton’s desire to pick over the campaign of 2008 while his wife is the secretary of state is zero. And I can’t blame him.

Michelle Obama has been very wary of giving interviews to book writers while in the Oval Office. The White House made it very clear that wasn’t going to happen. I don’t mean this in any derogatory way, but it’s almost a certainty that Michelle Obama will write a book after they leave. Barack Obama will with absolute certainty write at least one book after he leaves. Neither one of them had much money till Barack signed a big book contract. He’s a writer, and writers are always a little bit wary of giving away their story. I’m not saying this in terms of money—more in terms of.… I think he’d like to have something to say down the line.

[ On how he managed to research and write this tome while editing The New Yorker:]
First of all, colleagues—this magazine is not a one-man band, there are editors who are immensely better than I am. Plus an extremely indulgent family and an extremely hardworking espresso machine. You get up in the morning and you push the ball up the hill. You get out and go to work and push it up the hill again. After a year and a half of that I was really, really tired, but it was the bet that I made for myself. I wouldn’t say it was fun, because it was just this side of too much. Writing that kind of book while doing that job— ooff. [But] I felt really felt that I couldn’t take two or three years or more. For the sake of the book, because the goal of the journalism is to publish and try to understand him while he’s still in office. And second, I’ve got this other thing to do, which is more important, and it involves a lot of other people…. So I did it.
People do much harder things, by the way. Coal miner. Fireman. That’s hard. This is a pleasure.

When I wrote Lenin’s Tomb , I had a very great book editor named Jason Epstein who said, “You’ll read this book in ten years, you won’t read it anytime sooner than than, and you’ll see what you’ve done that is good, bad, or indifferent.” So in ten years I’ll pick up this book and see what I think of it.
I do have this phenomenon, and maybe other writers don’t—in time you look at your own stuff and it feels like it was written by someone else. Not because you’ve changed so much, but just the effect of time. People say, “Oh, that sounds just like you, this book.” I don’t hear it. I really hear some other writers’ voices, but I can’t hear my own. If I have a voice, I can’t hear it. I can recognize in the first paragraph nearly everybody who writes for The New Yorker, and many, many other writers besides. I’m not sure I could do it with myself. It’s very odd.


To read more from our conversation with Remnick, click HERE.