David Grann at RolfPotts.com

This month at the RolfPotts.com Travel Writers page I interview New Yorker writer David Grann, whose first book, The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon, recently hit bookstores. In addition to his book (which is being developed into a movie by Brad Pitt’s Plan B production company and Paramount Pictures), Grann has written for the likes of the New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, and the Wall Street Journal.

Here some outtakes from our interview:

• “For me finding the right story idea is often the hardest part. If I can find a subject that is compelling enough—indeed, that consumes me with obsession–then it’s a lot easier to overcome all the other obstacles, from coping with logistical nightmares to persuading people to talk.”
• “When I’m researching a story like The Lost City of Z, safety and logistics are inevitably an enormous challenge. How will I trek through the jungle? How will I make contact with Amazonian tribes? Yet ultimately the greatest challenge in every story—whether I’m searching for a lost city or chasing the giant squid—is to uncover some deeper truth about the subject.”
• “The first stories I remember being told were about my grandfather Monya. In his seventies at the time, and sick with Parkinson’s disease, he would sit trembling on our porch in Connecticut, looking vacantly toward the horizon. My grandmother, meanwhile, would recount memories of his adventures. She told me that he had been a Russian furrier and a freelance National Geographic photographer, who, in the 1920s, was one of the few western cameramen allowed into various parts of China and Tibet. (Some relatives suspect that he was a spy, though we have never found any evidence to support such a theory.) My grandmother recalled how, not long before their wedding, Monya went to India to purchase some prized furs. Weeks went by without word from him. Finally, a crumpled envelope arrived in the mail. There was nothing inside but a smudged photograph: it showed Monya lying contorted and pale under a mosquito net, wracked with malaria. He eventually returned, but because he was still convalescing the wedding took place at a hospital. “I knew then I was in for it,” my grandmother said. She told me that Monya became a professional motorcycle racer and when I gave her a skeptical look, she unwrapped a handkerchief, revealing one of his gold medals. These stories, along with photographs of his journeys, always filled my imagination, and gave me some sense that there was some other place to go. After college, I spent a year on a research fellowship in Mexico and have been traveling ever since.”

Full David Grann interview online here.