RM: When did you decide to use your middle name?

 

JJS: When I was at Harper’s in 1999, I think there were like twelve John Sullivans in publishing. There was one writing for the Times, there was one who was, I think, one of the owners of the National Review? There were just a bunch of them. So I thought, it’s either come up with a pseudonym, or just use your whole name. I did it a little bit against inclination, because I thought it sounded pretentious. But, I mean, there’s a whole generation of Irish-American people who all named their sons John Sullivan, so…

 

RM: Correct me if I’m wrong, but it occurs to me that right around the time you were editing at Harper’s, 1999-2004, you start to see a resurgence in a certain kind of journalism, where a magazine sends a revered fiction writer out into the field—I’m thinking not just of David Foster Wallace but also of Denis Johnson, George Saunders, William T. Vollmann, and then a little later Wells Tower—and the writer returns with a vivid but somewhat bashful (the term “hack work” comes up a lot) account of how they got the story. Did that boomlet in lit-journalism register with you at the time? Did it seem important?

 

JJS: Well, when I was at Sewannee, Jack Hitt, who also went to Sewannee, was making a name for himself in New York, and he was one of the guys we worshipped.

 

RM: I noticed you thank him in the acknowledgements sections of your books.
 

JJS: Yeah, he’s taught me a lot, and he’s been the best mentor you could ask for in terms of navigating the magazine world. Jack just kind of sails above. And hes also just a really charming, hilarious guy. So I was aware as a student that what he was doing fit into this thing called The New Journalism, and I ended up reading a book called, It Wasn’t Pretty Folks But Didn’t We Have Fun? by a woman named Carol Polsgrove. It was about Esquire in the 50s and 60s, the Harold Hayes years, when Terry Southern did “Twirling At Ole Miss,” which I think kind of initiated that whole wave of writing, although he’s the least cited of those people, but probably the most interesting writer at the end of the day.