MightyWriters

Know Your (Grown Up) Mighty Writers: Ben Yagoda

Grew up: “Outside New York City, in a suburban town called New Rochelle, famous as the home of TV’s Dick Van Dyke. This affected my writing because my family got the New York Times (newspaper) and the New Yorker (magazine), both of which I read avidly as a kid, continue to read, and constitute my idea of what a newspaper and a magazine should be.”

Kind of books I read as a kid: “Baseball biographies, baseball biographies and paperback collections of the best of Mad Magazine.”

Person who inspired me to be a writer: “Russell Baker, who wrote a column for the New York Times from the early 1960s till he retired about fifteen years ago. He also wrote two great autobiographies, ‘Growing Up’ and ‘The Good Times.’ Baker’s column showed me how someone could use the written word to express humor, style, wisdom, and good sense.”

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“Cliches are the biggest turn-off of all.”
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Books I like to read now: “Books by smart people. By that I don’t mean books that are filled with with big words, or complicated formulas, or ideas that are hard to understand. But I mean books—fiction and non-fiction—that are thoughtful, and original, and imaginative, and respect me as a reader. Cliches are the biggest turn-off of all.”

Favorite all-time writer: “I would have to say either Mark Twain or Charles Dickens. I’ll go with Twain because he is an American. Probably THE American. Most everything he did is still as fresh and funny and pertinent as the day he wrote it.”

Hardest thing about writing for me: “Structure. Writing anything up to a page is easy. Two pages is twice as hard. Three pages is four times as hard. Four pages is eight times as hard. There must be a formula for that, but don’t ask me what it is: I’m a writer, not a mathematician.”

My writing makes me happiest when: “It’s expressed a thought I didn’t realize I had before.”

Best advice I can give about becoming a good writer: “Read as much and as great a variety as you possibly can.”

Ben Yagoda teaches English, journalism and writing at the University of Delaware, and is the author, coauthor or editor of nine books, including “The Sound on the Page: Style and Voice in Writing” and “About Town: The New Yorker and the World It Made.” He has written about language, writing and other topics for numerous publications. Ben’s new book—”Memoir: A History”—will be released in Nov.