How to Write About Another Person, with Joseph Dalton

Writer Joseph Dalton is a polymath, with many skills and interests, but one of them is knowing how to write about another person. He is the perfect person with whom to have a discussion on this topic, which I did, in this episode of QWERTY. This skill is particularly tricky when that other person is a beloved relative. But Joseph not only managed this, but mastered it in his new book. Listen in and read along to The Qwerty podcast as he and I discuss his assignment.

My guest today is writer Joseph Dalton. He’s a former classical music record producer who moved into being a classical music critic, for which he has won numerous awards, from both ASCAP and the Associated Press. He’s been a contributor to Time Out, Opera News, The Advocate, among other publications, and is the author of a fabulous new book, Washington’s Golden Age: Hope Ridings Miller, the Society Beat, and the Rise of Women Journalists. He’s going to walk us through the skills needed to know how to write about another person. Welcome to QWERTY.

Joseph: Hello, Marion. Thank you. It’s a thrill to be here.

Marion: I’m delighted. And I love this book. I have to tell people how we met because it’s one of my favorite stories.

Joseph: I’ve told this story many times. Let’s hear your version.

Marion: I was sitting on an Amtrak train some years ago, probably 18 or so years ago. And I, you know how we are, we always hope that somebody won’t sit next to us. And you walked into the car and I said, “I hope he sits next to me,” because you looked so interesting. Now, that’s a subjective conversation to have, what’s interesting. But I said, “Oh, I’d like him to sit next to me.” And you blew away any expectations I could possibly have because we immediately got into this conversation that lasted from Manhattan to Albany. And it was, you related to me your work establishing a particular music archive. So, maybe you could explain that, but also give us your version of how we met.

Joseph: Well, I feel like my spirit guides, who don’t talk very much, were very, very chatty at the moment and they said, “Sit next to the red-headed lady.” And I listened. And I’ve been trying to listen ever since, but it was one of those times of being in the right place and sort of being aligned, and I’m grateful for it.

Marion: Yeah.

Joseph: So, yeah, I just remember saying to you, “I’m a consultant in classical music.” And you said, “Well, what does that mean?” I said, “Pretty much whatever I can get.” And my current project was really cool though, and it was about a three-year stint. I was commissioned to study the effects of AIDS on American music, and it was very powerful work. The primary method was to research the work of composers and performers who died, primarily composers. And we wrote a report and we helped establish some archives and it was primarily promotional, informational, and it was a very good thing. That was sort of my bridge to then becoming a critic upstate. I landed upstate not quite knowing where I was going or what was next. And I owe the connection to the Albany Times Union to you.

Marion: Oh, well, I did. I remember introducing you to someone at the Albany Times Union, yes. So, let’s explore that a bit. I think for people who have passions and have dreams and have educations, that we still try to talk ourselves out of, sort of braiding those things together and making a life. And yet, that’s what writers do all the time. We put those things together and form a writing life, or am I oversimplifying it in your case?

Joseph: Well, I’m remembering, as you were saying that, I was like, where did I hear this term? And it was on a prior podcast of yours, A Portfolio Life?

Marion: Mm-hmm.

Joseph: Identified with that, where I’ve got this, I’ve got that, and I’m a writer.

Marion: Yes. Jeff Goins, that’s his phrase. And I agree with it.

Joseph: Yeah, I like that.

Marion: Yeah, it’s very helpful. And I think it’s inspiring to people because I think we don’t realize, I think a lot of people who want to become writers don’t realize that you draw on what you have, and you also realize what you don’t yet have. So, you kind of take it from where it is. But I suspect it’s also difficult to create and maintain a freelance career in a certain specialty, especially perhaps classical music. So, what’s the best way to go about it? Do you think singling out that one area of expertise and digging deep into it, and establishing yourself in a single market is better or trying to go national? How would you advise a young writer who’s interested, for instance, in classical music?

Joseph: I had long thought, I managed, I was in the record business and I had long thought being a classical critic would be a way to stay in music and not have to live in New York City.

Marion: Ah.

Joseph: And so, I held that and it sort of happened. I don’t know what my advice would exactly be, but to still follow your passion. I’m not a full-time writer. I sell real estate and I’ve done other things. I’ve produced concerts and various things. And I make it work. The first way I usually identify myself to people is a writer. I think you’re kind of touching on discovering or acknowledging you’re a writer. And once I started, I didn’t start making my money as a writer until I was in my late 30s. But looking back, I realized writing was a constant through everything else I did. Whether it was grant writing, promotional writing, I think I was an early blogger, in fact, when I was in New York City and… Yeah.

Marion: Yeah. So, I know that this interest you have in the life resulted in a book called Artists And Activists, in which you collected many of your profiles from upstate New York creatives, which I loved that book. And in there, we meet puppeteers. There’s a piece on the Albany Symphony’s budgetary decisions, which I really liked. There’s sopranos, filmmakers, activists. But you did something that writers really talk about, that I think results in more writers drinking gin straight out of a bottle than anything else, which is you had to go back and read your stuff, to make a collection. So, let’s just literally talk about that. I mean, I have friends who say, “I never read it once it goes to my publisher.” So, what was that process like? Going back and developing an ear and an eye for selecting your best work?

Joseph: It was fun. It was gratifying. I printed it all out and I had a big three-ring binder. There were some… I saw my development as a writer. I was, I think I took to it pretty quickly, journalism in general, and the nature of writing a profile. Most of those were for the Sunday Times Union. But there were some people that, and I got to know all these people, they’re in the region, and there were some people I wrote about too early on, and they’re not in the book because I said, “That’s not a good enough story.”

Marion: So, it did help you develop your eye and your ear for also making the choices, something writers have to be able to do. If we’re going to submit something, we have to know which of our pieces to submit, and I think it’s perilous not to bring that cold eye to things. So, one of the ways you sort it was, if that was an undeveloped person. Did you learn anything else from creating a collection of your own work?

Joseph: Well, I’m not sure what… I would have to think about what I learned about myself, but I learned about the region. And I think the thesis of the collection is that it’s not institutions, it’s not buildings, it’s not patrons that make an art scene, it’s the people. So, it was about people. And artists are fascinating people.

Marion: They are. For the most part, they are.

Joseph: Except writers.

Marion: Yeah. Just a little tough. Well, this new book of yours, which I just adore, is called Washington’s Golden Age: Hope Ridings Miller, the Society Beat, and the Rise of Women Journalists. And you open the book by explaining that you grew up in Texas, and regularly heard the name of your older cousin, who has the best name ever, Hope Ridings Miller. You’re going to pay attention to this woman, absolutely. She was an east coast institution, a point of pride in your family, and there were three books of hers that sat on a family coffee table of yours. That would be really inspiring for a kid. It’s formidable stuff. And yet, I love this story, while a sophomore in high school and on a week-long model Congress program on Capitol Hill, you call her, from a payphone, and she in turn invites you to lunch at the National Press Club. Boy, there was a dime well spent, huh?

Joseph: You know, I go back… Most every time I go to Washington, which seems to… I went to college there. I went on, as you know from reading the book, to we became friends. I was in my late teens and early 20s. And when I go back now, I try and have a meal at the Press Club, because in a corner of the Press Club is the women’s corner, and there are photographs of early women journalists, and there’s a photo of her and Eleanor Roosevelt on the wall there.

Marion: Is it the one in the book?

Joseph: Yes.

Marion: Oh, it’s beautiful.

Joseph: Well, there’s more than one in the book.

Marion: Yeah, there is more than one.

Joseph: It was Eleanor Roosevelt’s birthday and my cousin was president of the Press Club at the time. So, she was standing at the front table when Eleanor Roosevelt blew out her candles on her cake.

Marion: Oh, it’s just fabulous. So, this is where I think writers get stuck. We have this idea. We have this relative, an impressive relative, perhaps, either living or dead. And the skill of how to write about another human being is more than one skill. It’s many, many different skills. Your cousin was vibrant. She’s your cousin. She lived and wrote on the cusp of when women’s journalists were just making their way in the newspaper business. And you knew her. She was what we used to call a society columnist. So, let’s just start there and explain what that is. But then I want to talk about the formidable task of taking her on as a topic.

Joseph: Well, she became society editor of The Washington Post, and covered Washington during the tail end of the New Deal and most of World War II. And that was when Washington became what we think of as Washington, the World War II. And that’s when the federal government became the behemoth that it has ever been ever since. There were thousands of people arriving in New York City every week. And they would get their jobs, but they needed to network. They needed to promote their cause, find opportunities and connections. And they did it through the social scene. Hope was there covering it. And she said, she went as a guest and hope they’d forget she was a reporter.

Marion: I love that line. I love that and it makes perfect sense, because it also explains how she penetrated a market that could in some way be really hard to penetrate. And they did forget, it seems, because she fits so beautifully in. She was given access to all of Washington, and that’s an extraordinary vantage point. So, let’s walk into the process of choosing her as someone to write about. This drops into your head one day, maybe early, early on in your life, but then it sort of, or whenever it did. And your first reaction when she first occurred to you as a topic was what?

Joseph: Well, it first occurred months or maybe a year or so into my writing for the Times Union, when I said, “Oh, I’m a journalist, what do you know?”

Marion: Look at what I do for a living.

Joseph: And I thought, “Well, it’s in the family.” My mother was a journalist, and then there’s Cousin Hope, and I had never read those books of hers. And they were easy to find. Maybe I had one of them at the time. I don’t think so. The signed copies went to my sister and my mother. But I decided to start reading one of her books and I started with Embassy Row: The Life and Times of Diplomatic Washington. And I realized, she was not writing history, she was writing personal experience, the parties she was at, the hilarious circumstances of diplomacy and society and whatnot. She was there. And that’s when I struck on the idea. So, to give you some perspective of having an idea, getting it done, and getting it out, that was probably ’03 or ’04 and the book came out in the fall of 2017.

Marion: Yeah, it’s a lot of work. So, you read her three books, and that’s just the beginning because… Let’s talk about the research that takes place as part of a process, of learning how to write about another person. Because you’re learning about the person, but you’re also learning how to write about the other person simultaneously.

Joseph: And you’re learning how to write.

Marion: Oh, yeah, there’s that. Every day-

Joseph: Isn’t that a constant thing?

Marion: It is a constant thing and anyone who thinks it isn’t is wrong. It’s absolutely a constant thing. You don’t wake up in the morning with anything but a blank page, and how you fill it is up to you. So, yes. I think having the… I think at the beginning of all these skills is curiosity. I think you’ve got to start there because if you don’t have that, of course, you’re not going to get very, very far. So, after that, where do you go and how much did you read?

Joseph: Well, you’re setting me up for the part of her stories for the newspaper. She wrote for The Washington Post for about eight years. And most old newspapers aren’t archived and digitized and searchable. The Washington Post was. The first time I sat down at the newspaper database at Williams College, I had to drive to another state to get to a library that had this fancy database. I typed “by Hope Ridings Miller” and 1200 stories came up.

Marion: And did you go get coffee or did you put your head down on the desk?

Joseph: My jaw hit the desk, I guess. It was one of many moments in the process when I go, “Oh my gosh, Hope, I had no idea.” Because we spent time together. I knew the outline of her career. She wrote for the paper, she was president of the women’s Press Club, and she had three books. That was about it.

Marion: Right.

Joseph: I knew she hobnobbed, so there were moments of awe at her, the intimate relationship with Eleanor Roosevelt. They were not lovers. She was not that kind of intimate. But there are many pictures of them together at parties. And Eleanor Roosevelt once visited Hope’s hometown near Dallas and had dinner with Hope’s parents. That’s how intimate.

Marion: Wow.

Joseph: And there were other moments of awe when she was pulling off what we would call today a media buyout. After being at The Post, she tried being in public relations and then she edited a magazine for 12 years, and she twice engineered the sale of the magazine.

Marion: What an extraordinary human being. And both of my parents were journalists, so I know what it looks like to look at someone’s clip file and say, “I can’t.” But you looked at someone’s clip file and said, “I can.”

Joseph: Yeah.

Marion: And I love that. Because this is the issue that I run into all the time when working with writers, even writing memoir, they don’t understand that you’re going to have to do some research. And so, “when do you start writing,” is what they always ask me. They want to start writing. And I say, “Okay, I’m going to ask Joseph.” So, I mean, you want to write a book proposal and you don’t want to write the whole, do all the research to write the book proposal, but you want to make sure you know enough to sell the book. And I know there… I don’t believe there is a system to this. I believe it’s personal and each writer does this differently, and anyone who sells these online systems for best-sellers is lying to people. So, talk to us a little bit about how you made the decision that, “I know enough to write a proposal” or “I know enough…” Where did you know enough to do what?

Joseph: I wrote the book first.

Marion: There we go.

Joseph: Then I did the proposal. And I remember when I… Actually, I got Hope’s blessing before she died. She died in ’99, she died at age 99 in ’05. And so, I got in touch with her people that were sort of minding her, and they had me to lunch and one of them said, “What publisher are you with?” And I said, “Oh, we’re a long way from that.” I want to contrast, in getting into your question, journalism versus books, and biography. The journalism I do is very small pieces of writing that I do in one sitting, basically. And within 10 days, I see it in print. And by the time it comes out, I’ve done two or three more. And I like that rhythm. You get immediate gratification and you move on to another topic.

This long-term thing, boy, at times, it’s really tried me. And writing about… I knew Washington, I knew Cousin Hope, I always had a vision of who she was. That was sort of a compass during the writing process. But at some point, I knew I wanted to open the book with a particular, the dinner, the night she had dinner with the Roosevelts in the family quarters. Oh my God, am I going to put words in the mouth of the president? How am I going to paint a scene when I only have so much information to go on? And there are so many more people that know the Roosevelts better than I do. So, those were things weighing on my mind and keeping me reading and searching. But eventually, I had to start writing, and I did.

Marion: Yeah, absolutely.

Joseph: Somehow, I did the whole thing.

Marion: Well, let’s talk about that voice and point of view, because that can be deeply perplexing to a writer. You’ve got these people, some of whom are very, very well documented. And so, what I really like is how you got her on the page. How to write about another person takes skill. You never pretend to be in her head, but instead, you write things like, here’s a quote that I love, “She must have been longing for a party to kick the high season into full gear.” And as a reader, I felt the full confidence of your understanding of your subject, that she must have been feeling that way. So, when did that kind of confidence develop in your character?

Joseph: Well, thank you. It was gradual. And maybe I had, once I started, I had the confidence. I’ve been to one biographers conference in my life after the book was already done, and someone told… There was a class or a seminar on the organized biographer. And he said, “Start at 1% writing and 99% research, and move the scale as you go.” And I, of course, did not do that, for a long time. Another one of those great advice, is it real? But once I was writing, I had a sense then of what research I needed to do. So, it wasn’t like, “Okay, research is done, check, start writing.” The writing led me to find what I needed to find, to fill in the holes.

Marion: Yes. That’s the kind of truth that writers need, I think. And the other thing that I found, one of the many things I found fascinating about this is, and it’s a question I get all the time from people, is when they’re submitting a book proposal, I say, they ask, “Well, what’s the agent or the editor going to want to know?” And I say, “The first two questions that will be asked by anyone is, why this writer and why now?” And you are right on time with this book, since Hope Ridings Miller’s story illuminates for us a time when gentility was still the norm in Washington, for the most part. And we paid a very different kind of attention to one another’s behavior than we do now. How in the world did you time this so perfectly? Did you know that the timing was going to be right? I suspect you couldn’t possibly have done that, but you did, because this is such a stark contrast to what’s going on in Washington right now.

Joseph: Well, I don’t want to contrast. Sometimes when people hear society editor, they think gossip columnist, and they’re a long way apart.

Marion: Yes.

Joseph: And Hope had to have heard every secret in town. Late in the book… I begin and end the book with my relationship to her. And I tell the little anecdote of what we would talk about when we had Sunday lunch together. The presidential election was coming up. That was Mondale. So, what would that be, ’88?

Marion: Mm-hmm.

Joseph: She said, “Who are you liking?” And I said, “Alan Cranston.” She said, “After the way he treated his wife?” And I didn’t know what she meant, but there was a lot behind that, and she buttoned her lip, but I realized this woman is still plugged in.

Marion: Oh, that’s great.

Joseph: So, she knew things that never made it into her columns. And I say, of all… How did I put it? She was a vessel of information with no leaks.

Marion: That’s it. And it’s still a challenge to get us to be interested in someone that we adore. In other words, I adore this person, but I’ve got to get her out there for the reader. So, what I tell people with memoir, if you want to get me interested in your transcendence, whether it’s that you just learned to meditate or you sober up or you leave the abusive relationship or whatever it is, to create a gap at the beginning of the book, to create who you were and who you are, or who you are and who you were, and you do that beautifully. As you say, you’ve got this fabulous dinner party that begins the book, and it sweeps us into the story, providing characterization of all those involved, including Franklin Roosevelt, and then you jump back, after like just a page and a half or two pages, a couple of pages, right?

Joseph: Mm-hmm.

Marion: You jump back to her birth, to Hope Ridings Miller’s birth in 1905, and you create this gap. And the reader is curious to know how this kid becomes a person who’s having dinner with FDR. Then she goes, she sweeps, her career goes from FDR to LBJ. And we’re with you every step of the way because you created that gap. So, can you just talk a little bit about making that decision to create the gap that way?

Joseph: I’m very aware, no one has heard of her, at this stage. And so, you’ve got to wow them. You’ve got to say, “Here’s a story.” And I don’t know, there’s probably some name for that technique.

Marion: The gap.

Joseph: That’s your… That’s a good name.

Marion: That’s mine.

Joseph: That’s a good name. And yeah, thank you, I’m glad it worked.

Marion: It worked beautifully.

Joseph: I want to bring up something else, contrasting my journalism and my writing about a relative.

Marion: Oh, yes.

Joseph: And I had affection for Hope. I spent a lot of time with her over five years and the longer I look back on that, the more significant it was. So, I approached the subject with love. And another thing I heard from that one biographers conference, and this I don’t think was at a class, it was just chatting with other people. “A relative, how will you have, how can you be objective about that?” And I’ve thought about that. I’m like, “Who said I was being objective?” I’m not going to spend all these years and time on someone that’s an SOB or that I’m indifferent to. I cared about her. I care about classical music. Every concert I go, I hope for the best. And I care enough about the art form to spend all this time on it. But it doesn’t mean I can’t be critical.

Marion: There you go.

Joseph: And tell the truth. And it’s the same with writing about a relative. I still told the truth. There are things in the book that she… I mean, most of the book is stuff I learned after she was gone. But there’s a couple of things. She was, in the early ’50s, she got a divorce. That was significant, and it meant for a hard life. And she-

Marion: And highly visible.

Joseph: Yes. And she ended up remarrying the man, which is even more interesting. There was also a small tax scandal. She testified before Congress. And a little bit, touching on an earlier question you had about decorum and respect for each other, the dignity and such of an earlier age of Washington. I suspected Hope was very close with Sam Rayburn, the speaker of the house. And I thought the Republicans… This was when Rayburn was not speaker, but minority leader. He went back and forth like Pelosi has done a couple of times. And I thought, “She’s known in Washington as an intimate with him, and they’re trying to get at him through her.” And I went to the Library of Congress for a variety of things. Some of her papers were there. This was one of those wonderful research moments. And I went up to a librarian and showed him the clipping about her testimony. I said, “Would it be at all possible to find the transcript of that subcommittee special thing?”

And he said, “Oh, yes, yes.” Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. “They’ll have it for you after lunch at the law library.” I read every word of that testimony. And so, I found in that testimony, she referred to her former husband. I had only had it as a memory that she divorced, so I was like, “Busted, Hope. You put it there in front of Congress, your former husband.” And they also, back to Rayburn, there was no caustic, opportunistic shots at the speaker in that conference. At one point, I think it was the lawyer for Hope said, “Well, everybody knows Sam Rayburn would never do that. He’s cleaner than a hound’s tooth.”

Marion: Oh.

Joseph: Someone’s… So, there was the… She had a certain dignity to her that reflected the times. And in Washington, it was a time when people assumed the best of each other’s intentions, and the business of government was respected as well. And that’s the larger theme. That’s the reason for the title of the book.

Marion: So, let’s talk about those themes because that interests me. When you write anything, memoir, straight piece of memoir, short piece of memoir, lots of themes start to pile up. And so, as I said, she goes from FDR to LBJ, her life. But her life, not just her career, stretches a long swath of history of American feminism. And in other words, you have a bunch of themes here. You’ve got the woman, you’ve got the White House, you’ve got Washington, you’ve got the newspaper business, you’ve got being a writer, you’ve got a divorce and a remarriage-

Joseph: And being a Texan too.

Marion: Being a Texan, bringing that to Washington. So, as you’re writing, these themes start to pile up. And did you choose amid them? Do you have to whack some out of there? What do you do?

Joseph: I trusted the process of… I trusted her life, that it would all come through. And each of those streams, particularly women journalists, I had a file on the computer of women colleagues. And there would be a name and I would… This is something I’ve learned other biographers do. You go down that path and get as much information as you can and then you backtrack back to your writing. And that afternoon with that data results in one sentence.

Marion: Yes.

Joseph: But God, it was fun.

Marion: Yeah. The trick is to not go down the rabbit hole, right? I always tell people that the single hardest genre to edit is memoir, since you’re cutting out dogs and second teachers, family members and the like. But I don’t know, after reading your book, I’m not so sure that the single hardest genre to edit is not writing about someone who is beloved and a change-maker and compelling. Knowing how to write about another person is hard. And so, what did you leave on the editing floor?

Joseph: I’d have to think about it, but a lot. This is where the brevity of journalism came in handy. One place I submitted the book was good enough to give me a little feedback and said, “You have an outline of a book. You need far more context, and your manuscript should probably be three to four times longer.” And I’m like, “A thousand-page biography of a society journalist in Washington? I don’t think so.” This is the book I wanted to write.

Marion: Good for you.

Joseph: And it’s concise. And I left out things that were interesting tidbits that didn’t have a context, that weren’t more than a sentence that would be kind of just hanging there. Here’s one. In her archives in Texas, there’s a letter. “Dear Hope,” the letters always begin, “so sorry I’m late sending this thank you note.” Don’t we all say that?

Marion: Right.

Joseph: So, “finally getting around to answering your emails,” we still do that. And he said, “What a thrill to be the first to sign your 23rd guest book.” She was a hostess in her own right. And that, I didn’t get in the book too much. But she entertained. She had to repay her obligations. And she had a guest book at every event. And after 50 years in Washington, she had 23 guest books.

Marion: Wow. That is a fabulous detail.

Joseph: But that didn’t get in the book because I didn’t know where to drop it. And there are other things like that, moments with so and so. She went to the races in Baltimore with J. Edgar Hoover. She just says that in an oral history. That’s all I have.

Marion: That’s all you have.

Joseph: And there were some of those that I could flesh out. I could find something about the person, and flesh it out and weave it into the narrative. Speaking of those long biographies, most of them, I can’t read. I want to learn about the person, but I don’t want to know what he did every Thursday afternoon. “And the following Sunday, they drove to…” Some of them just go way too far. And I wanted a book that moved along.

Marion: It does move along and it’s because of your discernment that it does. And I think it’s a really important skill to know. The 23 guest books would be almost impossible not to use, but we’d spot it if you put it in there gratuitously. And that’s the thing to know.

Joseph: Thank you.

Marion: So, as we wrap this up, I have to know what you’re doing now.

Joseph: It’s another biography. I don’t want to say who it’s about, but I’ll say this. In comparing… I thought I did a lot of research on Cousin Hope.

Marion: Uh-oh.

Joseph: She left a pretty neat little package for me. The Washington Post‘s database was one thing that took time. But in those stories, she was chronicling her life. You read about the parties she was at. This next one is also a long life and spread all over the country, and it’s more challenging. And I’m doing the same thing. For better or worse, I’m writing it and then I’m doing the… Because I don’t know how to write it yet. I can’t fathom doing three sample chapters, and I’m working with a young man who’s asked my guidance on preparing a book proposal. So, this morning, I pulled out the proposal I did for Cousin Hope. I could never have done that proposal until I had the book.

Marion: That’s a great lesson. Thank you, Joseph.

Joseph: It’s been fabulous.

Marion: It’s been such a pleasure. I so look forward to the next book.

That’s Joseph Dalton, author of Washington’s Golden Age: Hope Ridings Miller, the Society Beat, and the Rise of Women Journalists. I’m Marion and you’ve been listening to QWERTY. QWERTY is produced by Overit Studios in Albany, New York. Reach them at Overit Studios dot com. Our producer is Adam Claremont. Our assistant is Lorna Bailey. Want more on the art and work of writing? Visit MarionRoach.com and take a class with me. And thanks for listening. Don’t forget to subscribe to QWERTY and listen to it wherever you go.