Part two of Colin’s talk with author and historian G. J. Meyer goes deeper into the writing life. It’s an honest discussion of how the business works and how success is fleeting and difficult to predict amid what Jerry calls the “sorry state of the American publishing industry.”

Jerry is working on a novel, so he and Colin discuss the literary influences that have made Jerry want to write fiction. For him, those included The Paris Review, Cormac McCarthy, Flannery O’Connor, and Annie Poulx. They also find time to discuss Faulkner, Walker Percy, Robert Penn Warren, and how Otto Von Bismarck turned out to be a not-so-great subject to write about.