Bob Woodward Interview (page: 8 / 9) Investigative Reporter	Print Interview

When you were a child, who most inspired you? Were there particular teachers or relatives?

Bob Woodward: Oh, yes, I had teachers at Wheaton. A community high school history teacher named Elizabeth Duncan who taught American history and was a great teacher. Very forceful, very insistent that we write essays to answer questions, and not short answers. Somebody who through force of personality made history interesting and important.

Were there other people that inspired you? Writers or journalists who inspired you?

Bob Woodward: Not really. It looked like I was going to become a lawyer, and my father to a certain extent was my model. He was a very well-regarded lawyer in town. I remember going around and giving my name to lots of people, and they would say, "Oh, you're Al Woodward's son. He's a good lawyer, a fair man."

Where were you in the pecking order of siblings?

Bob Woodward: The oldest.

Do you think being the oldest had an influence on your life?

Bob Woodward: Who knows whether it's that? To a certain extent, I was able to go my own way. I would have summer jobs, while my parents and other siblings would go on vacation, for instance.

So you had a certain amount of independence?

Bob Woodward: An immense amount of independence.

What books impressed you as a kid? Are there particular books that you remember?

Bob Woodward: Sure. I didn't start reading seriously until probably junior high school. I had a friend who read books like Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky. I had fallen in love with some books at a younger age like Swiss Family Robinson, adventure stories, but I tried to read Crime and Punishment, and read some other books, and then in high school I took a course reading books, and that really kind of focused me on the value of a book.

At that period, what did you like to read? What were your favorite authors?

Bob Woodward: We read pretty much the range of classics, and nothing really jumped out or are books that I had distinct memories of.

The distinct memories I have of books are from college. William Faulkner's books, certainly. Probably one of my favorite books is All the King's Men, Robert Penn Warren's book about political corruption in Louisiana and about a reporter who watches this and gets to participate and see, but doesn't have all of the full consequences of the action fall on him.
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Sounds familiar.

Bob Woodward: It's the nature of the business. You get to see other people's lives, and you chart the rise and fall of others, and you're not that involved. You are an observer and you have to work pretty hard to preserve your outsider status, but that is what you get to do as a reporter.

You mentioned Faulkner. Are there particular novels of his that you remember liking?

Bob Woodward: Sure. Light in August; Absalom, Absalom; "The Bear," that little novella. It was mysterious always, his writing, but of great emotional impact.

There's so much richness in his language, it's almost the opposite of journalistic writing.

Bob Woodward: Well, of course, what Faulkner is trying to do is get to the interior, and in the end, as a journalist, you are trying to get to the interior. You are trying to understand somebody's reasoning and their emotions and the demons they may or may not have. You are trying to find out what really happened. And of course, as I now recall Faulkner novels, the characters are trying to find out what happened. It's not clear, it's obscure. Events are in no way simple or cinematic. Events are filtered through minds and memories and prejudices, and you feel intimate with his characters.

I'm thinking of the book, As I Lay Dying, which is from all different characters' points of view, like interviewing people for a story.

Bob Woodward: Or The Sound and the Fury, which is his great book. That goes back to the idea of family secrets.

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