How much research goes into making them more than just humor pieces?
Research? Well, sometimes. But often I just respond to what I read in the paper, on the net, or in magazines. I read all the time, and I try to remember what I read. You expect a lot from your readerson one hand you’re the self-described Greatest Living American Writer, and under that persona you write smart, witty and boastfully; but, on the other hand, you write informed pieces on politics or touching ones on ordinary people. Do you ever find yourself in a schizophrenic limbo of identity confusion? I haven’t really done the profiles of “ordinary” people, whoever they are, since I left the Chicago Reader in the fall of 2000. I would do them again, gladly, but they’re a lot of work and I would have to find a magazine that would, first, be interested and, second, pay me a substantial amount of money. That combination is hard to come by. When I did those pieces for the Reader, I was a staff writer under contract, so it was a different story. As for the so-called “informed” political piec
