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A mostly accurate transcript for Ep. 469¹

“I don’t feel envy. I don’t think. Maybe in some deeper and maybe even more troubling psychological level. I do feel competition with people, competition over resources, trying to claim certain ideas, stake a claim to certain ideas before other people can, especially when you’re working with a subject that’s in the public sphere. You don’t have any personal, any real wider claim to something than somebody else. It can be nerve wracking.” — John O’Connor, from Ep. 469

John O’Connor returns to the podcast to talk about The Secret History of Bigfoot: Field Notes on a North American Monster (Source Books). The paperback is out any day now. We spoke back in January, then he let me know that the paperback would be out in May and I’m like, sweet, let’s table this bitch and package it then. You can find him at johnmoconnor.com and on the gram @centerforhighenergymetaphysics.

John’s first appearance on the show was to talk about his True Story essay “Everything Gets Worse,” which has one of my all-time favorite passages about despair. That was in November of 2019. This book is his first and who doesn’t like a deep dive into mythology, belief, fantasy, and the like?

John’s work has appeared in The New York Times, GQ, Men’s Journal and the Boston Globe, The Believer, Oxford American, and True Story. He’s a really funny writer, dry wit, self-deprecating. I’d say he’s the perfect person, but he hates IPAs so I know we can no longer be friends and he’s never welcome back on this podcast …

Jkjkjk

On the ivory-billed woodpecker …

“I knew I wanted a real life, biological corollary to Bigfoot, to investigate how actual scientists and ornithologists vet the existence or non existence of a once real species.”

On getting lost without technology …

“I didn’t have cell service. It was at a time of the year where there were no other hikers, and you realize right away how isolated you are, and also how little it takes, how ill equipped we are, most of us are to deal with that. We’ve lost our ability to navigate for ourselves, and we’ve lost our confidence and our ability to navigate, and we’ve just become, for better or worse, very enfeebled by technology.”

On speaking with a ranger at Arches National Park …

“I was like, ‘Could you just, if you wanted to, just pull over here and just walk through one of these arroyos and see where you end up, turn around, follow it back?’ And he was like, ‘oh, yeah, you could. And I was like, ‘well, do people ever do that?’ He said, ‘No, no, no, almost never.’ And to me, that’s so sad. To me, personally, that’s totally the allure of it. Now, it’s not for everybody. I realize some people want to do the whole tour bus thing. That’s fine, but that just struck me as so sad and kind of depressing, just a sad commentary of where we are and where our relationship to nature and to the natural world is. That sense of connectivity has just been lost.”

On writing with humor …

“I have a hard time taking myself seriously for very long. I have a hard time with writing that takes itself seriously for too long. I had to be careful with the subject, to not make it seem like I was poking fun or talking down to them at all. When I’m making fun of anybody, it’s me for the most part. So the punchlines are mostly, I think, if not entirely, at my expense. Tone was a big, big concern at first, and I lost sleep over it. And my wife could tell you, I was like, I just did not want to come across as this guy from Cambridge parachuting in behind the bigfooting lines to cast my disparaging eye around at people, and wag my finger or whatever. Like, I just, I didn’t want to do that.”

On belief …

“At some point you just have to have faith and in the work, I think.”

John’s Rec

Tropical Depression, a Substack by David Ramsey

Paradise Bronx: The Life and Times of New York’s Greatest Borough by Ian Frazier

Parting Shot: The Front Runner is Here

I won’t bury the lede about the barfing … At about 3 p.m., three hours before my book launch event, I get this email from a key source, Neta Prefontaine’s daughter. Once you read the first chapter of this book, you’ll realize there’s sensitive material.

Her daughter wrote:

Hi there,

I am inquiring for Neta Prefontaine about your book. He son just got a book he purchased. She would like to speak with you regarding some errors she feels very strongly about.

Will you please call as soon as possible. We understand you have a book signing tonight.

Sincerely …

IMMEDIATELY, my stomach balled up into a Gordian knot and if I had food in my stomach I definitely would have thrown up. What could be wrong? We handled this opening chapter with delicacy and skill. Did she not realize she was on the record while we spoke? Was she going to dispute some of the material I dug up through court records of her parents divorce from the the 1946? I immediately pulled up our transcript, I pulled up the court records, all of which detail some gnarly shit she and her brother endured.

I call her. Doesn’t pick up. Voicemail.

I wait an hour, my head in my hands. Stomach imploding. If there are major errors in the one chapter most people will actually read — because it’s the opening chapter — I can’t exactly issue a correction in tomorrow’s paper. I email a friend. I email my editor.

Everyone is on edge.

I think, just call her back, say ‘I understand you have some concerns, I’m here to listen. Any errors I made were not malicious.’ Do not get defensive. Hear her out.

I call her.

She picks up.

Her voice is bright and sunny, just as I remembered it. I said, “I’m here to listen, what did you notice?” … my stomach is gone now. I’m stomachless.

“Well,” she said, “you called me Neta Fleming. I am not Neta Fleming, I’m Neta Prefontaine.” My stomach starts to come back. I said, “I understand … so in 1975, in the prologue, in the article I cited, that was your married name AT THAT TIME. Now, I could’ve and maybe should have made a parenthetical or a footnote that says you go by Neta Prefontaine in the current day.” She understood.

Next, she asked, “What did you mean by corporal punishment?”

“It’s my understanding that when parents beat their children it’s corporal punishment.”

“Oh, that’s what I thought. I think that was a little dramatic. I would have used a different word.”

Fair enough, fair enough.

Next she says, “In the audiobook, he pronounced my name Neta (short e, Nehta), not Neeta. … It’s Neeta.”

“Oh, OK, I didn’t read the audiobook, but maybe I can ask my editor if we can find a way to re-track your pronunciation,” I said.

Then she said how much she’s enjoying it, how the early part made her cry, how true it was, how happy she was that I included this abuse that was so traumatic and foundational to Neta and Steve’s upbringing.

We spoke and laughed a little and we plan to meet up so I can give her a signed book. She let me know she had recently gone ax throwing and hit the target. She’s in her 80s.

That was Wednesday, the day after pub day, and to be met with that threat of inaccuracy in an email that was worded in a way that felt heavy and earnest and, yeah, heavy with concern, it flipped me inside out. Neta said she’d call with any more errors she finds.

Pub day itself was pretty slow. I made an appearance on the radio, Fox Sports Radio with Danny and Justin and they were great, engaged, really fun. Danny asked me if I was nervous when we were off mic, I said yeah, I’m just getting started with all this and live interviews aren’t my strong suit.

There wasn’t this rush of media. It was pretty quiet, borderline morose. It weirdly felt like the end of something, not the beginning, which if and when you write and publish a book, you experience this weird sense that it’s no longer your little secret.

Maybe it’s akin to seeing your kid off to college. You nurtured and shaped this thing for years and then somewhat unceremoniously, you have to trust it to walk through the world on its own, to be met with judgement, to stand on its own two feet. It represents itself, but just as much reflects and represents its caretakers: the writer and editor and other villagers who helped raise this bit of ink and paper.

The feeling is of proudness, and what makes my eyes burn up, even as I write this script, is when some of my dearest friends reached out and said how proud they were of me. How much they’ve always believed in me, even when I so rarely believe in myself. How they wish success for me, even when I so rarely think I deserve it for myself.

So those messages in texts and posts to Instagram stories made parting with The Front Runner far less … sad … and a chance to celebrate how fucking hard we worked on this.

The event with Run Hub and ColdFire drew about 25, maybe 30 people. J. Michael’s sold 16 books on site, which was admittedly a little low, this for a LAUNCH. I did read a passage at the behest of Jeremy of J. Michael’s … he’s selling the book, and if he thought me reading a passage would help, I acquiesced. It was a tight little scene. I signed all the books, stamped a bunch with STOP PRE custom stamp. Answered questions from Lillie of Run Hub, who’s actually a journalist and signing on with Lookout Eugene. The audience asked some great questions. I was so busy talking that I couldn’t even get my favorite beer, the Cumulus Hazy IPA. Maybe later.

I’m sure there will be more drama going forward, but for now, stay wild, CNFers, and if you can’t do, interview, see ya!