Who: Rich Cohen

Claim To Fame: Rich Cohen is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Tough Jews, The Avengers, Monsters, and The Fish That Ate The Whale. He is a co-creator of the HBO series Vinyl and a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and Rolling Stone and has written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Harper’s Magazine, among others. Cohen has won the Great Lakes Book Award, the Chicago Public Library’s 21st Century Award, and the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for outstanding coverage of music. His stories have been included in The Best American Essays and The Best American Travel Writing.

Where To Find Rich: His Website, Amazon, Twitter

Praise For Rich: “Rich Cohen books constitute a genre unto themselves: pungent, breezy, vividly written psychodramas.” — The New York Times Book Review

When and where do you like to write? Are you the same-thing-every-day kind of guy or can you write anywhere?

I’m an advocate of habit. Same day, same place—just keep writing those words. I learned this while crossing the country in a Dodge Daytona in my youth. If you want to make it coast to coast, just got to keep logging the miles. Don’t worry if those are good or bad miles, just keep going.

Do you have any pre-writing rituals or habits that you do before you sit down?

It might sound silly, but, before I write, I like to read the paper, drink a pot of coffee, then read three poems. Reading poetry makes me concentrate on words. It settles my mind, causes me to read and see one word at a time. Otherwise, my mind races and it blurs into a line.

Do you have a daily writing goal? A word count, amount of time, etc.?

I try to write about 500 words a day.

When did your aspirations to become a writer begin? At what age did you start writing in hopes of making a living out of it?

I had terrible penmanship, was awful at spelling and grammar, often dropped the last letter or two off words, not realizing I was doing it, was diagnosed dyslectic—though I am not—and did terrible in English, was often admonished in fact, but always loved to write, stories and little books about all the crazy shit my father and brother and mother and sister and dog did before I was born.

You have a really unique style as a writer. There’s nothing you write that doesn’t feel like Rich Cohen wrote it. Was it always that way or do you feel like you’ve become more yourself as you’ve gone on?

I feel like you write under the influence of other people when you are young, then, over time, that influence bleeds away and the real thing, that is, an approximation of the voice in your head, is what remains. For me, that seemed to happen with my fourth book, which was a little book about Chess Records called the Record Men. It was like I mopped the mist of the windshield and could suddenly see the road.

You’re also far more prolific than most writers. How do you keep the output and the pace that you keep? It’s enviable.

I have a very impoverished social life, don’t take strong medicine and just try to do a little work each day. Over time, it adds up. What seems like my being prolific is just day after day after day after day after day.

What books or writers have most influenced the way you think and the way you write?

The Moviegoer by Walker Percy. Up In The Old Hotel by Joseph Mitchell. Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion. Miguel Street by VS Naipul. Cannery Row by John Steinbeck. On Bullfighting by AL Kennedy. The Jazz Essays of Ralph Ellison. Great Plains by Ian Frazier. Son of the Morning Star by Evan Connell. The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe. The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard. I could go on.

What is your advice to aspiring writers? Or better, what’s something aspiring writers should NOT do?

Don’t worry about good or bad. Just read and write every day.

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