Dick Meyer

Dick Meyer grew up in Glencoe, Illinois, just north of Chicago, and he describes it as “your basic suburb.” As he writes in his book, Why We Hate Us, he was initially wary of the city kids he met at Columbia: “Figuring they were fast and sophisticated, I was a bit scared of them.” Meyer found his home in Washington, D.C., where he moved while taking time off from school, and he never left. Read on to learn more about his childhood and his inside scoop on Dan Rather’s favorite words.

Q. What do you wake up to?
A. The Washington Post and The New York Times, and I always read the sports section first. I’ve read the sports section first since I was six years old. I listen to NPR but the real hardcore information load is those two papers.

Q. What music have you listened to today?
A. None….This is a hideously embarrassing question because it’s like that part of my brain died early on or something. I don’t listen to music by choice ever.

Q. What is your favorite word?
A. I’m hesitant to answer that because Dan Rather used to embarrass himself by saying “I love the word ‘meadow’” and “I love the word ‘courage.’” In my writing I overuse the word ‘grotesque’ the most.

Q. What do you find beautiful?
A. Nature. That’s probably the thing that hits me over the head again and again.

Q. How would you describe yourself in five words or fewer?
A. Some mixture of funny, cranky, philosophic, abstract and specific.

Q. When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
A. A baseball player – a center fielder. The only hero I’ve ever had in life is Willie Mays, though I dabbled in wanting to be a running back for the Chicago Bears. And at one point I wanted to be a garbage man because I liked how they got to ride on the back of those trucks.

Q. What is your greatest extravagance?
A. The pursuit of solitude, which, in the way that my life is organized, is very hard to come by.

Q. If you could take only one more journey, where would you go?
A. Africa.

Q. What profession would you like to practice in your next life?
A. Novelist. I think most of the things I try to write about are written about much better by novelists.

Q. If you were about to be executed, what would you want for your final meal?
A. Probably the judge, poached with a little Chianti and some fava beans, as Hannibal Lecter said.

Q. What is your favorite holiday and why?
A. Christmas. I was raised Jewish in a tradition of reformed Judaism that comes out of Germany and celebrates a secular Christmas. That was always our main family holiday, and I’ve always had a contrarian love for it.

Q. What is your fondest childhood memory?
A. Going fishing with my dad.

Q. What is your most prized material possession?
A. I did in fact go to Africa once when I was young, and Maasai men carry a stick with them…. They would throw it at small animals and use it as a walking stick. I have one, and I’ve had it since sixth grade, and it’s never very far from me.

Q. What promise do you make to yourself that you break the most often?
A. To curtail my sharp tongue with people.

Q. Who is the one person living or dead you would most like to have a coffee with?
A. Dostoevsky. He turned me from just being a teenager into an angst-ridden adolescent, and that has served me well over time.

*Photo by Aaron Salcido.