{"id":26928,"date":"2025-09-17T02:09:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-17T02:09:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/26928\/"},"modified":"2025-09-17T02:09:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-17T02:09:10","slug":"adaptation-writer-susan-orleans-joyride-is-wild-witty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/26928\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Adaptation’ writer Susan Orlean’s ‘Joyride’ is wild, witty"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019ve ever read a Susan Orlean book \u2014 \u201cThe Orchid Thief,\u201d \u201cRin Tin Tin<\/a>\u201d or \u201cThe Library Book<\/a>,\u201d say \u2014 and didn\u2019t want it to end, here\u2019s good news. There\u2019s more. Her memoir, \u201cJoyride,\u201d a chronicle of her career in narrative nonfiction, shares the backstory and process of each of her books in edifying detail. <\/p>\n

From the title on out, \u201cJoyride\u201d acknowledges the great fortune that Orlean has had in knowing exactly what she wanted to do with her life from an early age and the pleasure she has derived from realizing it, while convincingly conveying the vast amount of work she has put in along the way. The message is not just to follow your bliss, but to follow your bliss with every resource you have, every erg of energy, every mote of passion and every ounce of confidence you can muster.<\/p>\n

Confidence, the nonfiction writer says, is the \u201csingle essential element in good writing.\u201d Well, maybe: Having as much raw talent as Susan Orlean is also useful. Modestly, she leaves that thought to the reader. Orlean\u2019s self-presentation sheds light on the difference between confidence and ego. <\/p>\n

She opens the book with an account of her process in writing \u201cThe American Man at Age Ten\u201d for Esquire in the early 1990s, showing us why this adorable piece \u2014 they wanted Macaulay Culkin, she gave them an ordinary kid from New Jersey \u2014 is her most anthologized.<\/p>\n

She then goes back to the beginning, with family snapshots and diary excerpts accompanying loving portraits of her parents, who sound so charming it\u2019s a surprise to read, \u201cI assume there was a spell when my parents enjoyed each other\u2019s company, but that was before my time.\u201d While \u201cJoyride\u201d is more a professional memoir than a personal one, her own miserable first marriage and happier second one are candidly discussed, too, with a funny detour between them with a Bhutanese tour guide.<\/p>\n

By the time she was in college, Orlean knew she wanted to \u201cwrite factual stories with as much wit and audacity and inventiveness as I associated with fiction.\u201d<\/p>\n

Orlean knew she wanted to write for the New Yorker. And she took dead aim, beginning at alternative newsweeklies in Portland, Ore., and Boston, Mass., selling a cover story on cult leader Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh to the Village Voice, moving on to Vogue and Rolling Stone.<\/p>\n

In developing the concept for her first book, \u201cSaturday Night,\u201d she crystallizes the process that will become her signature: \u201cI would voyage through an idea. I would take a frame and place it around a wide variety of circumstances and people and settings.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you\u2019ve ever read a Susan Orlean book \u2014 \u201cThe Orchid Thief,\u201d \u201cRin Tin Tin\u201d or \u201cThe Library…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26929,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[489,156,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-26928","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26928\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}