The Wright Stuff: Hotpress' Interview with Lawrence Wright

The North Korea breakthrough was on the verge of falling apart (later it was back on again), and special investigator Robert Mueller reportedly told Rudy Giuliani that his globally-anticipated report would be wrapped up in the autumn.
When I talk to Pulitzer Prize winning New Yorker reporter Lawrence Wright about his brilliant new book God Saves Texas - which explores the complexities of the state, including the national influence of its conservative movement - it had been just another week in the chaotic Presidency of Donald Trump.

Wright has said that the initial impulse for God Saves Texas came from one of his New Yorker editors asking him why he still lived in the state. Was that a pre- or post-Trump question?
"It was pre-Trump," says Wright in his soft southern drawl, speaking down the line from London where he's on promotional duties. "Part of the inclination was that it was early in the Presidential primaries, and there were still Texans or Texas-related figures involved, like Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush, who grew up in the state."

"There was some consideration that a Texan might get the nomination. That didn't turn out to be the case, although the person who did get the nomination could be described as embodying all the stereotypes that Texas tends to carry along with it."
One of the most fascinating points Wright makes in the book is that if Texas does eventually go Democratic - Trump won the state by around 10 percent last time out - the party would have the Presidency sewn up for the foreseeable future.

"I think it will inevitably go Democratic," says Wright. "When you look at the demography, it's 40 percent Hispanic, so we have a majority-minority state. It would be a Democratic state if the minority population - especially the Hispanic population - actually went to the polls. We have 29 million Texans, and 19 million are registered to vote, but only 9 million of them voted in the Presidential election.

"My feeling is that, first of all, Trump and Hillary Clinton were the two most disliked candidates in American history, so there wasn't much of a pull to the polls. But if the people who registered actually went to the polls and voted, then Texas would turn blue very quickly."

For all of the conservatism in the state, Wright talks in the book of the Texas' extraordinary diversity. For example, the city where he lives, Austin - thanks to the presence of the SXSW festival and globally renowned filmmakers like Boyhood director Richard Linklater - has become a major hive of cultural activity.

"I cherish it," enthuses Wright. "I had a dream once where a friend of mine who was a filmmaker came to me and said, 'Austin is Florence.' I thought it was interesting... I mean, who knows? It's not the capital, but it is a centre where a lot of artists flourish. Even by conservative metrics, it's a job-creation city; it's booming like crazy. "That might be discouraging to someone who went there when it was a much, much smaller town, but on the other hand, it's destined to become a great city and I think it'll add something to the world culture."

Does Wright know Linklater?
"We're good friends," he nods. "I just had a play in Houston and he came down to see it."
Still, Wright doesn't pull any punches in God Saves Texas, and isn't afraid to call out the damage the conservative movement has done to politics both locally and nationally.
"It's because I love Texas," says Wright, "that I feel obligated to criticise it when I see going in a bad direction. Texas has been a conservative, business-oriented state forever, but now it's taken this turn towards social conservatism - the extreme Tea Party anti-gay stance. And also regressive on issues of race and so on. This is not the future."

"The Republican party in Texas has taken an overdose of some kind of hallucinogen that makes it think it can alienate the minority demographics and the young, who are so past the kind of gay-baiting that's going on in the Republican party."

Given Texas' multiculturalism, it's a dichotomy that's hard to wrap one's head around.
"It's a paradox," acknowledges Wright. "It's a dynamic culture where there are a lot of different strands going on politically, which are reflected nationally. It's one of the reasons that Texas is so important, because what happens in Texas tends to eventually become part of the national agenda.
"Texas is expected to double by 2050, by which time it will be almost as large as New York and California combined. Ten percent of all school children in the US now are Texans, so what we do has national and even international repercussions."

Does Wright feel Trump's style of right wing politics is here to say?
"Nobody knows!" he replies. "We're all like mice who are hypnotised by the cobra. We don't know what's gonna happen or what he's capable of. It's a total mystery. Will he get reelected? I don't know, he might. Will he get a Nobel Peace Prize?! Nobody knows!
"What I can tell you is that he's totally reshaped the Republican party - it'll never be exactly what it was. But if I gave a definitive answer, it would be absolute BS. I just don't know."

Going back to when he first started writing for The New Yorker, Wright says his entrée came in 1992, when he also had an offer to join Rolling Stone. "I'd been invited up, I thought, for the 25th anniversary Rolling Stone dinner," he reflects. "I also went over to meet the editors at The New Yorker. They asked if I would write for them some more and I said, 'Unfortunately I have this contract offer with Rolling Stone.'

"About an hour later I had an offer from The New Yorker. Then I went over the Rolling Stone dinner and it turned out I hadn't been invited to the dinner - I'd been invited to the drinks afterwards. So I sat there in the bar with John F. Kennedy Jr, who also thought he'd been invited to the dinner."
What occurred next was quite incredible.

"Suddenly, Hunter S. Thompson burst into the bar with Keith Richards on his shoulder," explains Wright. "Hunter had his cigarette holder in his mouth and he was writing out something - he was just furious. I asked Keith what was going on and he said, 'Jann Wenner (Rolling Stone's publisher) has totally insulted the man!' Hunter said, 'Yeah, I had a photograph of Jann Wenner - and I took it out in my back yard, shotgunned it and sprayed it with goat's blood.'

"He was going to give it to him as a present, but then he thought it would have been irresponsible, because Jann Wenner was sitting with Yoko Ono. Hunter was writing his protest about free speech being compromised. I thought, 'Man, I so don't belong here!' I happily accepted the offer from The New Yorker."

Of late, Wright's non-fiction masterpiece The Looming Tower - which recounts Al Qaeda's history in the Middle East and the American intelligence agencies' failure to stop 9/11 - has come to a wider audience thanks to an acclaimed TV adaptation starring Jeff Daniels.

What prompted the journalist to write the book?
"First of all, I had lived in Egypt when I was a young man," says Wright. "I taught English at the American University in Cairo. I spoke some Arabic and I'd lived in a Muslim country. Also, I was the co-writer of a movie called The Siege, with Denzel Washington and Bruce Willis. It was about what would happen if terrorism came to America, the way that it already had in other countries - 'What if it happened in New York?'

"In some eerie way, this movie came out in 1998, right after Al Qaeda attacked the American embassies in East Africa. So when 9/11 happened, because of my past - and the fact that there were very few reporters, honestly, who'd had the experiences that I'd had - I felt it was up to me to find out what had really happened. I wanted to create some kind of narrative about the rise of Al Qaeda, and the failures of the American intelligence services to stop the attack."

Wright also felt compelled to get involved in the TV adapation to ensure that it was done properly.
"I produced it," he notes, "because I realised someone else was going to do it if I didn't. 9/11 is a kind of hallowed event in our history and I didn't want it to be exploited. It has to be handled with extreme taste. At the same time, I was noticing that kids who were going into college now weren't born when 9/11 happened, and those who were graduating weren't old enough to remember it."

"There were all these young people for whom 9/11 is not a part of their lived experience. They don't know why they live in the America that they do, and they don't know how the country was before 9/11. They don't have a narrative about why we failed to stop the attack.

"I thought it would be a worthwhile project, especially in this new era of television, where you have the space and money to paint a picture across 10 episodes. Those are the things that were really driving me."

God Save Texas is out now, published by Allen Lane.