the names could go on and obviously, truman capote. david remnick himself. what is that legacy as you go into "the new yorker" where there is such a rich history? [inaudible] when i am working on a story, i really try not to think about those things because if i had it in my head, truman capote while i'm trying to write my story i don't think i would get a single word out. i by use of this information-- inspiration and i will look for certain stories and read them which provides inspiration. perhaps it is about a character getting inside of a cure or. i look at these and they help me and when i'm working on a story i try to use all that stuff. i would be paralyzed if i was using too much truman capote. >> malcolm do you have writers who inspire you? [inaudible] i have been very inspired. [laughter] also i have had a huge impact on my writing. the thing about adams, i regard him as the quintessential practitioner of "the new yorker" because the stories he does and maybe you have to be a writer to understand it, the degree of difficulty is so high. you are tak

i would be paralyzed if i was thinking too much truman capote. >> writers who inspire you? >> yes. >> malcolm, do you have writers who inspire you? >> oh, yeah. i mean, like i said -- >> that's kind of large -- >> but i think of david's stuff. i've been reading it ever since he started at the new yorker. i've been very influenced thinking maybe i should leave my apartment from time to time. [laughter] >> and also on the other end someone like adam has had a huge impact on my writing. the thing about adam -- i regard adam as the -- as the absolute quintessential practitioner of the new yorker story. because those stories he does -- and you have to be a writer to understand this. the degree of difficulty is so high. it's not -- he's often taking something which is -- there's nothing there. [laughter] >> it's just kind of -- it's some sort of proprietary thing and he turned it into that. i'll read one paragraph four times in a row to figure out how did he do that? and there's an incredible level of -- that idea of -- it's something of the missing component in critical analysis

you can learn more about how to write good history from reading tom wolfe or truman capote or joan didion as much as you can reading an academic dissertation-like book. >> is that thomas wolfe or tom wolfe? >> tom wolfe of today who's -- write "the right stuff" and "electric kool-aid acid test," just a tremendous so-called new journalist but just a gifted american writer. >> what would you do? what would you recommend? >> i would agree with all that but with one dissent. i would -- i would side with the late great barbara tuchman who said the best thing that ever happened to her was not getting a ph.d. in history, precisely because she wanted to write history as literature. she didn't want to write exclusively for other historians. >> who is the best, in your opinion, the best writer of history, not in the history that you know of? who would you say wrote the best? >> ever or today? >> ever, you know, somebody that you -- >> francis parkman wrote beautifully. barbara tuchman, unbelievable, and i think david mccullough writes with such grace of our -- today's historians. >> now, i would ce

sitting on my desk when i started -- and this is before this had become repopularized, a copy of truman capote's "in cold blood" and i wanted to take -- this story you could not have made up, greg, this was so crazy, all of the pieces of it, in your -- with your wildest imagination, if you were writing fiction you could not have made this story up. so i wanted to capture it in a way that was readable for a completely broad audience. but i wanted to get it right. and, so, when -- early on in the process, i remember having a little talk with george stephanopoulos as i was getting started, in a informal chat and he said if anyone can get all of these pieces and show how they are connected -- which no once had done before, everyone treated them as separate -- you would have something. and that is what i tried to do. >> let's begin with this. because the characters, particularly in arkansas, that predate clinton's arrival in washington, d.c., are absolutely fascinating and you spend a good deal of time explaining this context that sets the stage for what is happening in washington, later on. and, the