But at the same time, I don’t know if I truly believe that having a diverse set of people write for elite institutions will change much in terms of the way the public thinks. I think these institutions should change, and I hope that people find ways to get fairly paid in those institutions

Yes. I think it’s very easy to gatekeep when the work itself is an expression of self. And the response is well, we don’t want people like you in here talking about yourself.

I don’t think writers should hate the process of writing.

I find that some of the ways in which journalists avoid inserting themselves is a little unnatural. I didn’t want to construct sentences in a way where I was consciously taking myself out.

Obviously everyone likes Joan Didion, but I really love Joan Didion. For me, it’s her profile on John Wayne, how she would sit in his hut in Colorado and listen to the wind whipping through the grass.

I don’t have much self-awareness about my own writing, and so I don’t have a theory about it. But I do tend to write about myself.

I think what mattered was that what they were asking for was not tied to being wealthy and famous. That night, they had the power to reject that. That was the distinction, at least in my head.

it creates a meta-conversation about an athlete’s responsibility to a political ethos, rather than the idea itself. You said it doesn’t push the idea forward.

There’s too much putting critical theory onto pop culture. Parts of the media glom onto stories that create mirages.

we deify athletes, and turn them into political figures when perhaps they’re not.

We should care about celebrities. We shouldn’t deify them. If they’re great people, then perhaps we should say so, but when people are great that’s boring.

I think there’s definitely a place for profiles that are more of a mutual celebration between writer and subject, and there are people who do that well.

His upcoming book, The Loneliest Americans, will continue to explore these themes of identity and community, race and class, reporting and recounting what it means to tell the story as it happened.