Susan Orlean cuts a slight but certain figure. When she and moderator Christine Benedetti took the Paepcke Auditorium stage on Jan. 28, no one in the audience could doubt that Orlean enjoys a good conversation. That was how she passed the next hour: Cheerful chatting about her years as a features journalist and her newest book, “Joyride: A Memoir.”
Orlean’s career took off in Boston in 1982, where she was a staff writer for the Boston Phoenix. By 1987, she earned her first piece in The New Yorker, and has written for the lauded magazine ever since. She has served as a contributing editor for Rolling Stone and Vogue magazines, and is the author of books including “Saturday Night,” “Rin Tin Tin” and “The Orchid Thief.” Over the course of her career, Orlean has worked with and for writing industry icons including Tina Brown, Anna Wintour and David Remnick.
Benedetti is a local journalist who has lived in the Roaring Fork Valley for 20 years. She is currently editor-in-chief of Local Magazine, which publishes bi-annual issues, and serves as an Aspen city councilor and a member of the Aspen Historical Society board. In her conversation with Orlean, she focused on the newly released “Joyride” and Orlean’s lifelong relationship to writing. She kicked off the conversation by asking, “Why write memoir now?” after a lifetime writing about others.
Orlean shared that during the height of COVID, she felt very reflective. In addition to that feeling of increased introspection, she realized that the 25th anniversary of publication for “The Orchid Thief” was fast approaching. With those sparks, “I wanted to write a book about writing,” she said. But as she started to plan it, the advice she wanted to share felt inadequately grounded by itself. “I started realizing those stories needed more context.”
Orlean approached the project like a journalist. She hired someone to interview her as a way to force herself into the third person perspective. They built up hours of conversation over the course of two months. She also poured over years of notes, which she said was a unique experience as she had recently signed over decades of papers to Columbia University. She was therefore required to request and peruse her own work at Columbia’s archival library.
A major focus for Orlean was how to structure “Joyride.” “For me,” she said, “one of the big questions was how personal did I want it to be?” She ended up picking three major stories, though “Joyride” lightly touches on many anecdotes from her career. “There were so many stories that would have been fun to tell,” she shared, but “it will mean more to the reader to zero in on a few significant ones.”
Benedetti inquired about how “Joyride” has been received by a general audience, and how writers have responded. Orlean shared that she has gotten more response from people who are close to the reporting and publishing world. “There’s a certain kind of nostalgia in writing about an era of journalism that’s mostly gone,” she explained. “There were a lot of people who saw it as a nostalgic look at a specific period. I’ve had a terrific response in people feeling that I’ve described being a writer in ways they haven’t seen before.”
When Benedetti asked if Orlean has ever had doubts about her career in a challenging field, Orlean said she has always felt it is more of an identity than a job. Even during phases of challenge and intense pressure, “there’s never a time I thought about going into corporate communications.” Orlean described herself as a generally curious person who loves to learn. “It doesn’t feel like I’m acting as a writer,” she said. “It’s just who I am.”
Aspen Winter Words also presented conversations with novelist Lily King on Feb. 4 and adventure journalist Tara Roberts this week at TACAW on Feb. 11. The writing program of the Aspen Institute is accepting applications to its Aspen Summer Words workshops until Feb. 26.