Diving Deep
Serial immersionist TED CONOVER on the connections between anthropology and journalism; knowing when to resist digression; and the importance of writing “across the aisle.”
TED CONOVER has spent his entire career delving into different cultural worlds. “Why not?” he asks. “It’s a big universe to explore.” Conover’s empathy runs as deep as his curiosity. He is a writer, as William T. Vollmann observed in a review of The Routes of Man, who cares about “not merely that convenient abstraction, humanity, but people in particular.” Indeed, people—everyone from hoboes riding freight trains to Mexican immigrants to prison guards—animate the pages of Conover’s books. Living with them, sharing the indignities they suffer and the pleasures they enjoy, is the foundation of his immersion journalism—a beat he shares with Barbara Ehrenreich, Lauren Kessler, and Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, among others, each of whom opens up the experiences of frequently ignored people and communities.
For his first book, 1984’s Rolling Nowhere, Conover spent a year riding the rails across America, collecting the stories of his fellow travelers. Inspired by that book’s success, he turned his focus to Mexican migrants on both sides of the border, which he crossed four times doing research for Coyotes. His deft use of first person created a lens for seeing unique individuals as well as the social issues surrounding immigration. And then, defying easy classification, Conover turned from the disenfranchised to the elite for his next book, Whiteout: Lost in Aspen. Driving a taxi and then writing for the Aspen Times, he reported on New Age resorts and celebrity hangouts, exploring the seductions of fame and money. But those hazards paled against those posed by the research for his next book, Newjack. After the New York State Department of Correctional Services denied his request to spend time with a corrections officer or to shadow a recruit through training, Conover instead applied for the job himself. For nearly a year, as a corrections officer in Sing Sing, he steeled himself against the work’s constant stress and the need to maintain a secret identity.
In each of these books, Conover shifts with ease between storytelling and broader discussions of the promise and disappointments of American life. In The Routes ofMan, he explores the impact of six roads in six different countries. Together, these stories detail how development, disease, and military occupations are changing lives in locations as diverse as the Peruvian jungle and the West Bank.
Conover’s latest book, Immersion: A Writer’s Guide to Going Deep, shares the practical knowledge he’s gleaned and places immersion journalism within the broader context of creative nonfiction and ethnography. He acknowledges ethnography as a “literary cousin,” drawing on the participant observation methods he learned as an undergraduate anthropology student. He balances the anthropologist’s quest to understand other cultures with the compelling narrative style of his literary ancestors, including the New Journalists.
As a faculty member in New York University’s journalism program, Conover teaches this blend of research methods and literary nonfiction forms. now makes that knowledge available
