"All writing is show business, in a very broad way," he said. He is, however, a voracious reader: "I'm constantly reading novels, sometimes two or three at once." (Recent titles: On Beauty by the English novelist Zadie Smith and The Plot Against America by Philip Roth.) The investigation into that fire - arson and massive incompetence were both suspected - would form the spine for City of Falling Angels.īerendt declined to say what his next book project will be. Just as he'd stumbled into a sensational murder trial in Savannah, he happened to arrive in Venice just two days after a massive fire destroyed its La Fenice opera house. You find out a lot more when you do that."įor his follow-up book, Berendt said, he asked himself, "What city is very different from Savannah but has some of the same qualities?" Again, he'd traveled to Venice before with friends and already knew something of the city.Īgain, however, his luck held. All the time there was a tape recorder running in plain sight they knew they were being interviewed. We'd have good laugh, then they'd tell a story. "Rather than sitting there with a pen and pad, asking questions, I would tell them stories.
"My whole approach is to regard my reporting as a social occasion," he said. He insists his secret is that, instead of interrogating his sources, he conversed with them. The author had admitted that he altered a few details and slightly changed the chronology of events. Some people classify Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil as a novel, a term that Berendt rejects. Some critics questioned how Berendt managed to bump into such perfectly formed literary characters and wondered if he had invented some details. I finally talked to them enough to get them to reveal themselves to me, whether they meant to or not." They'll invite you to their houses, even invite you to a party. Not that Berendt ever became a part of the Savannah elite.
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