Ron Chernow on writing about great Americans | Rethinking with Adam Grant

1. 0:00 – 0:22

   Intro

   1. RCRon Chernow0:00

      As a biographer, you're peeling away layer after layer after layer. I would always say to people, you know, I knew more about George Washington than Martha did. I knew more about Hamilton than Eliza, uh, Hamilton, uh, did, uh, et cetera. But after you've peeled away all the letters, you never get to the bottom of it. [upbeat music]

2. 0:22 – 2:32

   Choosing biography subjects

   1. AGAdam Grant0:22

      You are one of the great biographers of our time. How do you decide who you write about, and is the goal to inspire another Lin Manuel Miranda musical part of the process?

   2. RCRon Chernow0:34

      Well, I think we can safely say [laughs] that none of my books is going to inspire another Lin Manuel Miranda, uh, musical. No, actually, the choice of subject, as a biographer, that's the single most important choice that I make. So much flows from that, uh, uh, decision. And so what I've looked for is not simply people who had colorful or fascinating lives. I've looked for people who really created the building blocks of American culture. And I think also I have something of a, uh, contrarian streak. What happens in history is that a consensus forms around someone's image, and if I feel that that consensus somehow is missing, uh, something, that to me is very, very tempting to wade in and take another look at this, uh, figure. Arthur Schlesinger once said, "History is an argument without an end," and so there's always need for another biography, another take on these major historical figures.

   3. AGAdam Grant1:31

      That's fascinating. So where do you get the sense that something might be missing or wrong?

   4. RCRon Chernow1:35

      Well, you know, i- in the case of, uh, Alexander Hamilton, for instance, uh, almost all of the books [laughs] up until the show, uh, portrayed that Jefferson was this saintly figure and Hamilton was this, you know, villainous, uh, character. And yet the more I read about him, not only was it far and away the most dramatic personal story of, uh, any of the founders, but his accomplishments were really, uh, second to none. So that was a, a, a good example. And it was interesting, Adam, 'cause when I decided to do the Hamilton book, all the average person knew about Hamilton was that he was on the $10 bill and he'd been shot by a guy named Aaron Burr. Uh, and he w- had become the least known of the founders. He was fading into historical, um, obscurity. And so it's been delightful between the book and, and the show. [laughs] He's become everyone's favorite founders. That was not the case when I decided in 1998 to write that

3. 2:32 – 6:36

   Getting to know a historical figure

   1. RCRon Chernow2:32

      biography.

   2. AGAdam Grant2:32

      Uh, one of, one of the things I'm really curious about in terms of how you work is as a psychologist, I find it hard enough to get in, to get to know a living person.

   3. RCRon Chernow2:42

      Mm-hmm.

   4. AGAdam Grant2:42

      How in the world do you get inside the mind of someone who's no longer alive?

   5. RCRon Chernow2:47

      Well, I'm basically a documents person, and so with all of the people that I've written about, there were thousands upon thousands of letters and diary entries, and I immerse myself into this. To give you some idea, this may sound masochistic [laughs] when I describe my working methods. I put everything on, um, four by six index cards, uh, and by the time I sit down to write, I have approximately, uh, 25,000 cards, which then I arrange in these index card boxes, actually work out the flow and the, uh, at, and the narrative. There's a certain kind of, what do the Germans call it, fingerspitzengefühl, you know, a fingertip, a feel for it that you have to, almost like an actor, be psychologically projecting yourself into the mind to get inside the skin of this, uh, person.

   6. AGAdam Grant3:35

      Yes, although in a sense you're, you're doing this like a true scientist would, which is instead of starting with a hypothesis and then [laughs] looking for, you know, for facts to confirm it, you're actually collecting all the facts and then forming and reforming hypotheses.

   7. RCRon Chernow3:50

      Yeah, and I think very, very important is just to completely open yourself up to the experience of what you're finding. I'll tell you, uh, uh, um, uh, an experience that had a profound impact on me. When I was doing my biography of John D. Rockefeller, it was the first, um, biography of Rockefeller where the, uh, author had access to Rockefeller's Standard Oil correspondence, and I was going up every week. I would spend two or three days at the Rockefeller Archive Center, uh, north of, uh, New York. And I imagined when I started going through Rockefeller's papers that it was going to be full of startling revelations. Instead, every single letter [laughs] that he wrote, it's about two or three lines long. A typical letter would be, uh, "Dear sir, received yours of the 27th. Would proceed with all du- due caution. Signed John D. Rockefeller."

   8. AGAdam Grant4:40

      [laughs]

   9. RCRon Chernow4:41

      And there were thousands, there were tens of thousands of these very brief and completely mysterious little letters. Well, I remember I, I came home from one of these trips and I was having dinner with my wife and I was saying, "This book is going to be a full-blown disaster." She said, "Why?" I said, "Because these papers are not yielding anything. This man, he was running the biggest business operation in the world. This man has trained himself to write every single letter as if it might someday fall into the hands of an investigative [laughs] committee or a prosecutor or a district attorney."

   10. AGAdam Grant5:14

       [laughs]

   11. RCRon Chernow5:14

       He was running this vast, the biggest business, uh, enterprise in the world, and he was running it through all of these winks and nods. And I'm getting angrier and angrier as I'm telling my wife, and she's, her smile is getting broader and broader. I said, "Why are you smiling? This is a disaster in the making." And she said to me, she said, "What you're describing is absolutely fascinating." She said, "You're kind of trying to go behind this man to discover these things, but the story is, uh, staring you in the face." It's, uh, and, and, you know, what it taught me, Adam, was that we, even when we're trying to hide, we reveal ourselves in the methods by which we try to hide, and there was actually nothing that taught me [laughs] more about his personality than this fact that he had trained himself to write all these letters without using- ... a proper name. So that was a wonderful lesson for me in terms of follow the story where it, uh, leads, and it may lead you in a much more interesting place than the one that you had originally expected to go.

   12. AGAdam Grant6:14

       It's such a great insight, and it, it tracks for me with one of the, the most powerful lessons that I've learned in, in psychology, which is [laughs] people will often say, "Why would you, why would you trust what people say about themselves?" Like, of, of course, they're motivated to... They're trying to create an image. I'm like, "Yes, I want to learn how they wanna be seen, and that teaches me something about who they are."

   13. RCRon Chernow6:35

       One

4. 6:36 – 8:37

   People are full of contradictions

   1. RCRon Chernow6:36

      thing that's interesting, I think interests you with your, uh, background in psychology, is that I find with all of my books I've tried to create a coherent picture. Uh, but that coherent picture is made up of very heterogeneous elements. And it may seem counterintuitive, but this is the way that we know people, because, you know, we have friends or family members, um, um, colleagues, uh, we've seen them in a lot of different moods and a lot of different, uh, situations. We're hearing rumors about them, and gossip also may, you know, contradict what we think we know. But somehow our mind is able to process all of these disparate elements into a portrait that works, and people are inherently contradictory. We understand that, you know, we know that, and so readers, instead of being thrown by that, actually find it more convincing, because everyone they know [laughs] is as contradictory and confused as the person you're writing about. Goes with the territory.

   2. AGAdam Grant7:36

      Uh, that's a relief in some ways, to know that, you know, even after pouring out 700 pages about a person, you still feel the contradictions.

   3. RCRon Chernow7:45

      Yeah, and also what happens, you, as a biographer, you're peeling away layer after layer after layer. I would always say to people, you know, I knew more about George Washington than Martha did. You know, I, I, I knew more about Hamilton than Eliza, uh, Hamilton, uh, did, uh, et cetera. But after you've peeled away all the letters, you never get to the bottom of it. Even, uh, someone as chatty [laughs] and verbal as Alexander Hamilton or Mark Twain for, for, for that matter, there's always a secret corner to the life, and of course, the silences, it's not what they're, you know, they wanna tell you, it's what they're trying very hard not to tell you about. And so at the end of the, uh, the day, you know, you don't have the luxury as a biographer of putting your subject on the analytic couch. Uh,

5. 8:37 – 12:09

   Similarities between Ron's subjects

   1. RCRon Chernow8:37

      I mean, for instance, one thing that I found in- interesting, all the books that I've, uh, uh, written about in terms of a surprising consistency, uh, is that, um, all my subjects have been, uh, men. All of them had, uh, fathers who were, uh, difficult and distant and domineering, the three Ds. And so a- and, and that was something that, uh, surprised me when I saw that, uh, trend. And in all of those cases, almost without, uh, exception, they never talked about their fathers. Uh, the, the father was a figure of fear and hatred. In fact, John D. Rockefeller, uh, when he became the richest world and man and his father was money mad, must have driven his father crazy, uh, Rockefeller pretended that his father was dead when the reporters asked him. I mean, he literally edited his father out of existence. Mark Twain, can't get a chattier figure than that, um, had this very cold, distant father, and, uh, uh, he, he left, uh, two comments on his relationship with his father. Uh, one, uh, "Our relationship amounted to little more than an introduction." And the other comment was, uh, "We existed in a state of armed neutrality." [laughs]

   2. AGAdam Grant9:53

      [laughs]

   3. RCRon Chernow9:54

      You know, if he suddenly came back, I think that would be the first thing that I would wanna ask him about, because, you know, the shadow of the absent father is always there. Washington's father died at 11. Poor Grant had this very pushy, domineering father who was always pushing him for- forward against his will. But I think that what happens is, I started thinking about this consistent strain in my book, was that by, uh, having to protect yourself or push back against a dominant father, uh, I think you become maybe more precocious. Uh, you become tougher. Um, in a number of the cases, uh, you know, the teenage son became the father of the house, so they're kind of precocious in that, uh, way. But it's an interesting parallel, isn't it? Uh, it, it surprised me when I saw it. [laughs]

   4. AGAdam Grant10:46

      It, it is interesting, and it's, it's obviously n- not what I would recommend if you wanna raise a, a high-achieving child. But, um, there, there is something to be said for that kind of adversity. Just as, as we're, we're thinking about this compare and contrast exercise, you know, when, when you think about Washington to Hamilton to Grant to Rockefeller to Morgan, are there other commonalities or differences that have really stuck with you as you've studied them?

   5. RCRon Chernow11:10

      It's a good question. I mean, one thing that I've, uh, learned is that, uh, there are certain figures in history, some of whom I've written about, where you feel from the beginning they're built for success. They have a drive and a discipline, a focus, maybe a, a, a brilliance. And I think that one quality that I see in common is that there was a clarity of vision. Uh, there was a single-mindedness of purpose, of an ability to, uh, focus on a goal and then harness all of their energy to achieve that goal. And not only to have that clarity of vision, but to be able to communicate that to the people, um, uh, around them. And it's been interesting, 'cause I know we both have been interested in le- leadership, and one thing that I've seen again and again is that, uh, in terms of leaders, uh, courage is contagious and fear is no less ... contagious. It's an interesting phenomenon.

   6. AGAdam Grant12:08

      This is personally

6. 12:09 – 14:22

   Ulysses S. Grant

   1. AGAdam Grant12:09

      interesting in part because, you know, I, I, I guess I would say I have a vested interest in, you know, in the life of anyone named Grant-

   2. RCRon Chernow12:16

      [laughs]

   3. AGAdam Grant12:16

      ... because people assume we're related. [laughs]

   4. RCRon Chernow12:19

      [laughs] Yeah.

   5. AGAdam Grant12:20

      I, I did joke before our son was born that I was gonna name him Ulysses, uh [laughs] -

   6. RCRon Chernow12:24

      It's a good thing you didn't. [laughs]

   7. AGAdam Grant12:25

      Yeah, my, my wife was not enthusiastic about that at all. But your, your commentary about his vision, I think, helps to explain a little bit why he wasn't that much of a standout as a cadet, um, but, you know, became a great commander because he seemed to be a better leader than a doer. If that's the case, why was he such a mediocre president?

   8. RCRon Chernow12:47

      Grant in the Civil War, he perfectly meshes with his historical moment. There's a, a desperate need, uh, for, uh, generals. He's been at, at, at West Point, he's been in the Mexican War. Uh, he's, uh, trained all of these people, so he meshes perfectly with his moment. He meshes very imperfectly with his historical moment when it, uh, comes to his presidency.

   9. AGAdam Grant13:11

      What do you, what do you think prevented him from being a greater president or a great one?

   10. RCRon Chernow13:16

       Well, Grant was, was, was very naive. Uh, he was very innocent. Uh, Mark Twain said that he was the most lovable great child in the world [laughs] . And he's the only person that I've written about whom I would describe as naive in certain ways. I can't... It's one of those things that I was never able to fully, fully figure out because when it came to his evaluating, uh, you know, other generals and officers in the Civil War, he was extremely shrewd and insightful. He knew them, he knew their, their, their history. And yet, um, when he got into the, uh, into the White House, I guess that it was an environment that was unknown or alien to him, and he seemed to be, uh, completely, uh, blind. But I have to say, you know, um, I think partly 'cause of my book and partly 'cause other, other books, uh, written on Grant, uh, he keeps rising now in polls of historians. You know, he was... Last, I think it was up to around number 22. Again, it's an ongoing conversation that we have with, uh, uh, history, and it's very kind of nice, and people pick up a biography, and they, um, open themselves up to the possibility of seeing this person in different terms.

7. 14:22 – 17:58

   Mark Twain

   1. AGAdam Grant14:22

      Well, let's, let's talk about opening ourselves up to a different view of, of Samuel Clemens or, or Mark Twain. So I'd love to hear a little bit about how you chose him, and based on your earlier comment, what did you have a hunch that we've gotten wrong about him?

   2. RCRon Chernow14:36

      I said that I chose people who've created building blocks, you know, of American society, and I think that in terms of our culture, he was absolutely indispensable. He wrote about people in the heartlob- heartland. Here was this kind of, you know, wild, throbbing energy in small towns and rural areas across the country. He wrote about ordinary people. He wrote using the vernacular, uh, of those, uh, people. Uh, Twain once said that he didn't write for the cultivated classes. They could go to theater and opera. He wrote for the masses. And, uh, one of my favorite Twain lines is, uh, he said that, uh, "Fine literature's like wine. Uh, my writing is like water, but everyone drinks water." [laughs]

   3. AGAdam Grant15:21

      [laughs]

   4. RCRon Chernow15:21

      You know, so I think that he infused this new democratic spirit into, um, American, uh, letters, whereas, um, you know, American fiction had been very much dominated by kind of, you know, Eastern seaboard elites up until that time. And so he opens up, you know, a, a, a vast continent. But I think some people are very, very surprised, as I was, that he spent 11 years of his life outside the United States. You know, he was the most, uh, uh, worldly and well-traveled American writer by, uh, by far.

   5. AGAdam Grant15:55

      Well, it, I think it, it might be fair to say that you never really understand a place until you've stepped out- outside of it and seen it from a distance.

   6. RCRon Chernow16:02

      But one of many, many surprises about Mark Twain was that even though he immortalized this, this town and immortalized his boyhood, he almost never went back. Uh, it was as if he wanted to preserve all those memories in amber. I think that his nostalgia was less for place than for his own boyhood in that, uh, place, and it was such a happy, uh, boyhood. It almost ruined his life. He, he, uh, was asked, uh, in later years if he would like to live his life over again. He said, "I would like to relive my youth and then drown myself." You know-

   7. AGAdam Grant16:43

      Oof

   8. RCRon Chernow16:43

      ... like adult life was a disappointment after this, these boyhood adventures that nothing could ever quite match.

   9. AGAdam Grant16:51

      Oh, that's, that's brutal given how accomplished he was as an adult and what an interesting life he led.

   10. RCRon Chernow16:57

       Yeah. And it's, it's, it's funny, you know, I think that Mark Twain in many ways fits the stereotype of the, the funny man where there's an underlying sadness. And in fact, you know, we have this image of the man in the white suit, uh, smoking cigars, dispensing witticisms, but he was a very volatile personality. There was a lot of melancholy under the surface. He didn't say life was a comedy. He said, "Life was a tragedy with comedy distributed here and there in order to heighten the pain and magnified by contrast." It's quite a statement. I think that, uh, he was a case, kind of a classic case of someone of kind of a depressive personality who was constantly relieving that stress and anxiety through, through humor, and the humor is always there. The humor is there right until the end of his life. He's somebody who had a, a quip for every occasion, for everything that happened

   11. AGAdam Grant17:57

       Well, that,

8. 17:58 – 21:24

   What made Twain successful?

   1. AGAdam Grant17:58

      that goes to one of the things I was, I was wondering about, which is after doing a, a careful study of, of Twain's life, what do you think are the qualities that most propelled his success?

   2. RCRon Chernow18:07

      Uh, that's a good question because it's as, as, it's an almost sort of manic, uh, creativity that is, uh, pouring, um, out of him. Uh, I think, you know, he was very, very lucky that, um, w- we know him as a writer, but he's, he's first a printer. Uh, then, um, he's a steamboat pilot. Then he's a miner, then he's a journalist, then he's a novelist, then he's a lecturer. You know, then he's an investor, then he's an inventor, and kind of goes on and on. And I think that he had this need to kind of transmute all of this experience into, uh, fiction and, uh, story. You know, he's a tough nut to figure out. Uh, but one of the things motivating him was that he loved what he called notoriety and notice. And I think his unbelievable facility with words and language and storytelling was one way that he drew the attention of the world. The other figures that I've written about in history, there was this kind of clarity of vision, and there was this single-minded pursuit of a goal. That's not Mark Twain, um, at, at, at all. In, in fact, I did, uh, uh, speak to a friend who was a, uh, a psychologist. Um, and I was describing Mark Twain. She said, "Oh, attention deficit disorder." You know, he was, he was, uh, disorganized. He himself said that he would go to these volcanic extremes. He would go from, uh, mood to, uh, to mood. And I don't... I've made a point of, uh, never in the books using modern, you know, psychiatric language. Uh, one, I f- feel uncomfortable [laughs] analyzing people in that way-

   3. AGAdam Grant19:51

      Yeah

   4. RCRon Chernow19:51

      ... at a distance. And, and, and also, I think that our categories fit us. They may not fit, you know, a Victorian, uh, man. But I think that there was some, some truth to that because everyone, particularly who saw him in his early years, said that, you know, his room would have papers everywhere, and cigar butts, and, you know, pipes and ashes. He just would kind of live in the midst of this, uh, chaos. Uh, and he saw himself... He always said that he was very, very lazy, and yet, um, he left behind 9,000 letters, you know, 50 notebooks, hundreds of unpublished, uh, manuscripts. People just know him from Tom or Huck or Life on the Mississippi. You know, he published two dozen books, somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 magazine articles, gave thousands of lectures, gave thousands of, um, interviews. It was really kind of an embarrassment of riches story from this man, uh, who claimed that he was lazy, but he had this mind that was kind of a, a hive, you know, like a buzzing bees buzzing with these words and stories and images. He did have a lot of trouble with insomnia. I think it was very, very difficult, uh, uh, for him to [laughs] ... His problem was, he said in order to, to write, he needed to smoke, and then he would smoke 40 cigars a day, and then he couldn't sleep at night. So then he would try to drink himself to sleep. [laughs]

   5. AGAdam Grant21:21

      [laughs]

   6. RCRon Chernow21:21

      The, the classic mistake of insomniacs.

9. 21:24 – 26:02

   What would Twain think today?

   1. AGAdam Grant21:24

      It does strike me that if Twain were alive today, he would go viral every day. And, and people would be logging into social media just to read his latest quip.

   2. RCRon Chernow21:35

      Absolutely.

   3. AGAdam Grant21:37

      What do you think he would make of our current vices and virtues? Like, what would, what would his commentary be on, on our time?

   4. RCRon Chernow21:44

      Well, I think that there are a few places where he's really, uh, important, uh, today. You know, one, um, we're having an ongoing debate in terms of what constitutes patriotism. And, you know, uh, Twain said he was driven up the wall by the saying that was common in his time, uh, "My country, right or wrong." And, uh, he said that this is sacrificing our most valuable asset. He said, you know, um, our country we should always support, and our government whenever it deserves it. So I, I think that that's important. I think he's also... He was infuriated by the hyper-partisanship of his own time. He said that the, uh, partisanship had become so extreme that if the Democrats incorporated the multiplication table into their electoral platform, the Republicans would vote it down at the next election, [laughs] you know? So he saw all these people, you know, marching in lockstep. And I think kind of a third area where his views are very important today, uh, have to do with the press. Uh, and, and the press is constantly under siege, and he felt that, um, as a humorist, that he had a very important role. He said that, um, "Irreverence is the champion of liberty, and its surest defense." And then one of my favorite, like, Twain lines, he said, "The, the devil's aversion to holy water is a light matter compared to the dread of a despot at a newspaper that laughs." And so I think he really was functioning as the conscience of America. He, he himself wrestled with this idea of being outspoken, and he said, almost in so many words, he said, "The need to make a living and support a family makes all of us cowards." And he felt that there were a lot of different issues that, at least in the early years, he was not speaking out on, uh, because of that, uh, fear. You know, so at, at, at a moment where there's, uh, you know, fear of people speaking out, uh, I think that he sets an important example of someone who showed a lot of courage. My God, you know, in his later years, he opposed the, uh, American occupation of the Philippines. And he made this speech, he said this at a banquet, um, where he was the toastmaster. He said that, uh, "Our soldiers are marching with disgraced musket under a polluted flag." Well- The audience gasped in shock. They were really horrified. You can imagine how difficult in the middle of a war it was to oppose government, um, uh, policy. So he increasingly was willing to, to stick his neck out.

   5. AGAdam Grant24:19

      I wonder how much courage that really took, in the sense that he'd amassed a lot of cultural power. It would've been pretty difficult to cancel him in his day. And [laughs] some of that power came from being contrarian, and so it was, it was expected from him. Was he really putting himself at risk?

   6. RCRon Chernow24:35

      That's a good question, Adam, because I think that, um, it's really the last 10 years of his life when he becomes the most outspoken politically. And so I think that when one has been such a beloved figure to so many people, and then he kind of made a transition into a much more controversial figure. And I think that that can be for anyone, you know, no matter how rich or famous that person is, I think it'd be a very difficult transition.

   7. AGAdam Grant25:03

      Yep. I think that makes sense.

   8. RCRon Chernow25:05

      Yeah.

   9. AGAdam Grant25:06

      Now, coming back to the [laughs] the theme of laziness.

   10. RCRon Chernow25:09

       Yeah.

   11. AGAdam Grant25:10

       O- one of my longstanding favorite Twain quips is, "Never put off till tomorrow what you can do the day-"

   12. RCRon Chernow25:16

       "... the day after tomorrow." [laughs]

   13. AGAdam Grant25:18

       "... tomorrow." What I didn't know was that he wrote that making fun of Ben Franklin's aphorisms.

   14. RCRon Chernow25:24

       Yeah. Also, I think what people don't realize, you know, in terms of all the Mark Twain quotes was they were created as Mark Twain quotes. You know, he started when he published a novel called, uh, Pudd'nhead Wilson, um, as the, um, what would be... E- epigraph to each chapter, he printed, uh, one of these aphorisms. And, uh, he was certainly mocking Ben Franklin, uh, 'cause he felt Franklin had produced all these sort of do-gooder quotes, and he would do these quotes that started out sounding like do-gooder, and then they would have this kind of, you know, wicked tale, the sweet twist. [laughs]

   15. AGAdam Grant25:59

       So the other, the other question that raised for me

10. 26:02 – 27:46

    Mark Twain and Ulysses S. Grant's friendship

    1. AGAdam Grant26:02

       is Twain is alive at the time that most of your other subjects are. Um, he has a relationship with Grant, Rockefeller, Morgan. W- what did you learn from looking at sort of Twain through their eyes?

    2. RCRon Chernow26:17

       Well, I mean, the most interesting relationship is the one with, uh, Ulysses S. Grant, and there was a lot of stuff that I have in the Mark Twain book that I wish [laughs] I'd had in the Ulysses S., uh, Grant book. Um, because at first glance, Twain and Grant seem to be complete polar opposites. Uh, Twain has fought for two weeks in this Confederate militia and then retreated. He made all these jokes about his own cowardice. He said, "I knew more about retreating than the man who invented retreating." You know, and then he comes upon Ulysses S. Grant, [laughs] who was gen- genuinely courageous and fearless, um, uh, person. But the two men form, uh, a bond which is quite remarkable because, uh, uh, Twain is really getting to know Grant in this deep way, uh, as Grant is dying. And Mark Twain said that Ulysses S. Grant was the greatest person he ever knew. And then he makes this beautiful statement, 'cause he was watching Grant throughout this illness and death. He said, uh, "Manifestly dying is nothing to a really great and brave man." You know, which was just a beautiful, uh, tribute. And he thought that Grant... This is interesting 'cause again, talking earlier, you know, Adam, about you go in and there's a consensus, there's a stereotype about people, and one of the stereotypes about, from the Civil War was Grant the Butcher. And yet Mark Twain said that Ulysses S. Grant was the, the kindest and sweetest man he had ever met.

    3. AGAdam Grant27:44

       Wow. All

11. 27:46 – 34:40

    Lightning round

    1. AGAdam Grant27:46

       right. In our last few minutes, I wanna do a lightning round, if you're up for it.

    2. RCRon Chernow27:49

       Oh, God. Okay. [laughs]

    3. AGAdam Grant27:50

       [laughs] Okay. First question is, what was the biggest thing you changed your mind about on Twain or any of your other subjects?

    4. RCRon Chernow27:59

       I think the, the thing that most shocked me really was his business life. You know, he said, um, "I must speculate. It is in my nature," and he fails at one business after another. There is no, uh, learning curve. And Mark Twain could have led a very beautiful, serene, placid life and, uh, he makes a fortune from his book royalties, his lecture fees, marries an heiress, but it's just one self-inflicted wound after another. That's the tragedy.

    5. AGAdam Grant28:34

       Wow. Wow, such a misapplication of intelligence. [laughs]

    6. RCRon Chernow28:36

       Yeah.

    7. AGAdam Grant28:37

       What is the worst advice that Mark Twain gave?

    8. RCRon Chernow28:40

       Mark Twain's story is not an inspirational tale, it's a, a, a cautionary tale, and the lesson of his life is, um, when you're hurt, let it go.

    9. AGAdam Grant28:51

       Oh, that's such an important lesson to learn from him.

    10. RCRon Chernow28:53

        Yeah.

    11. AGAdam Grant28:54

        Okay, thinking ahead, uh, if you were going to write a biography of a great American woman, who would be on your radar?

    12. RCRon Chernow29:02

        Well, the three who would interest me the most, and I would have done them if they were done well already, would, would be, um, Abigail Adams, Harriet Tubman, and Eleanor Roosevelt. And I have to say, Adam, because I've been criticized for years, people saying, "Mr. Chernow, why don't you do a woman?" In this book, five of the six main characters are women. There's Twain, there's his wife, Livy, their three daughters, and then also his secretary, Isabel Lyon, who's a very significant figure, uh, later on. So that was actually one of the pleasures of doing this book. I got to, you know, write extensively about the women characters.

    13. AGAdam Grant29:37

        And you can see in the book their influence on him. This is not just a story about Mark Twain.

    14. RCRon Chernow29:41

        Yeah, I thought it was kind of one of the great stories in terms of, uh, of, of a marriage because his wife Li- Livy is, you know, she's very prim and proper. You know, she had to teach him when he wrote an angry letter, instead of sending it, to put it in the desk. It even reached the point where they had this system of cards at a dinner party. Like, you know, a red card meant, um, why don't you stop monopolizing the woman who's sitting to your right. You know, a blue card, uh, would mean, are you gonna sit back and say nothing [laughs] all evening? You know, so she's constantly coaching his-

    15. AGAdam Grant30:12

        She, she has cards to signal appropriate behavior to him?

    16. RCRon Chernow30:15

        Yes. [laughs] She, and he-

    17. AGAdam Grant30:16

        Wow

    18. RCRon Chernow30:16

        ... never learned. And, and the three daughters used to sit on the stairs kind of watching this. They, they called it, um, Mother dusting off Father. [laughs] But he, but he-

    19. AGAdam Grant30:27

        Oh, that's amazing

    20. RCRon Chernow30:27

        ... he never learned. You know, and she had... She was very socially skillful He was not, and she really gave him a life

    21. AGAdam Grant30:36

        Oh, that's fascinating. Um, okay, what's a question you have for me?

    22. RCRon Chernow30:40

        Well, of your psychological training, I'm very curious about your analysis of Mark Twain. I don't know if you wanna kinda pin a label on him or a, a diagnosis of something. I'm really curious how you reacted to the, the character.

    23. AGAdam Grant30:55

        Well, it was, it was interesting as I was reading the book, because the first thing that came to mind was maybe manic depressive. And, you know, I'm not qualified to diagnose, let alone from a distance, but the, the patterns felt familiar in that way. The, the, you know, the extreme highs and then, you know, kind of the l- the lasting lows and the repetition of those cycles. The other thing that had crossed my mind as I was reading about, um, his reluctance to comment on his own greatness, I actually wondered about covert narcissism. I think there was, you know, both a tremendous sense of insecurity that comes through in your portrayal of him, but also an extremely high opinion of himself that he's able to conceal for the most part. But it, it just, it made me wonder a little bit about, okay, is there a, you know, an inflated but fragile ego that's constantly seeking, you know, um-

    24. RCRon Chernow31:49

        Absolutely. Well, you know-

    25. AGAdam Grant31:50

        I don't know. Yeah

    26. RCRon Chernow31:51

        ... well, you know, one of my, uh, f- favorite Mark Twain quotes is, he said, um, "Good breeding consists in, um, hiding how little we think of other people and how much we think of ourselves."

    27. AGAdam Grant32:04

        [laughs]

    28. RCRon Chernow32:04

        You know, and so I think that that adds... And actually, the, the vanity, he himself was constantly talking, uh, about his vanity. It was very hard for his, uh, family. One of my favorite Mark Twain stories is that the middle daughter, Clara, pursued a career as a singer. And so when she had her first recital in Connecticut, you know, she was torn whether to invite her father and then to invite him up on the stage. She finally decides to, uh, to do it, so this is kind of a big moment. You know, Twain comes out with her at the curtain calls, and he starts telling the audience about, uh, the first time that he ever appeared on a stage. And he talked for about 15 or 20 minutes, and, um, all of the press coverage afterwards was about Mark Twain [laughs] talking about his debut-

    29. AGAdam Grant32:49

        Oh, no

    30. RCRon Chernow32:49

        ... as a lecturer, you know, to his daughter's honor. But that daughter, Clara, felt completely smothered by him. Uh, she said that she was reduced in social situations to Mark Twain's daughter. And she had a very kind of revealing, uh, sentence. Uh, she said, you know, "We would be at a party or reception, and Father would come in." And she said, "He would flood the room with his talk." Um, so he was a difficult person to, to live with. He had a, you know, an adoring and long-suffering wife who knew exactly how to handle him. But I think with the daughters, saw Father as this magical figure when they were young, but he could never make the transition to dealing with them as they were, uh, maturing and became, uh, adults. So, so there's this, this strange blindness. I say somewhere towards the end of the book that it was a tragic blindness that he, he had, and it led him into all sorts of disasters that he should have foreseen coming, which he couldn't.

Episode duration: 34:51