You, Talking to Me is an informative and entertaining look into the mind of a journalist whom Writer's Digest called "legendary." In concise lessons of only a few pages each, Grobel details what he's learned from talking to 120 of the most fascinating people of our time, among them Gov. Jesse Ventura, Coach Bob Knight, kidnapped heiress Patty Hearst, Nobel Prize winners Saul Bellow, Richard Feynman, and Linus Pauling, and he reveals stories about Angelina Jolie, Halle Berry, Dolly Parton, Kiefer Sutherland, James Spader, Robert De Niro, Henry Fonda, Norman Mailer, Joyce Carol Oates, Elmore Leonard, Goldie Hawn, Barbra Streisand and so many more. No other journalist has spent the time or has had the insight to such a wide variety of celebrated artists. Grobel's lessons range from the serious ("Don't Be Bullied," "Anger Fuels Conversation," "A Lie Can Be as Telling as a Truth"), to the humorous ("Shlock Can Be Art If You Believe It," "If They Offer You a Drink, Don't Make it Soft," "If They Mistake You for Someone Else, Let it Ride," "If They Offer to Lasso You, Go With It"), to the absurd ("When You Save Someone from Getting His Head Smashed, He'll Respond with Kindness," "Know How to Defuse a Potentially Threatening Situation, and Keep Enough Cash in Case You're Thrown Out of the Car Onto a Deserted Highway in Ohio," "Treat Your Plants to Baroque Music, and Stay Clear of Fluffers"). Over the years people have asked Grobel what he's learned doing in-depth interviews for Playboy, Rolling Stone, Newsday, the N.Y. Times, and his books of conversations. This is his answer.
About the Author: Lawrence Grobel (www.lawrencegrobel.com) is a novelist, journalist, biographer, poet and teacher. Five of his 25 books have been singled out as Best Books of the Year by Publisher's Weekly and many have appeared on Best Seller lists. He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for his fiction. PEN gave his Conversations with Capote a Special Achievement Award. The French Society of Film Critics awarded his Al Pacino their Prix Litteraire as the Best International Book of 2008. James A. Michener called his biography, The Hustons, "a masterpiece." His The Art of the Interview is used as a text in many journalism schools. Writer's Digest called him "a legend among journalists." Joyce Carol Oates dubbed him "The Mozart of Interviewers" and Playboy singled him out as "The Interviewer's Interviewer" after publishing his interviews with Barbra Streisand, Dolly Parton, Henry Fonda and Marlon Brando. He has written for dozens of magazines and has been a Contributing Editor for Playboy, Movieline, World (New Zealand), and Trendy (Poland). He served in the Peace Corps, teaching at the Ghana Institute of Journalism; created the M.F.A. in Professional Writing for Antioch University; and taught in the English Department at UCLA for ten years. He has appeared on CNN, The Today Show, Good Morning America, The Charlie Rose Show and in two documentaries, Salinger and Al Pacino's Wilde Salome. His books can be found in print and as ebooks at Amazon and on his website. He is married to the artist Hiromi Oda and they have two daughters.